The travel Bowie made months before dying – Diario Uno

First came hippy where there were none. Then he became incarnate in alien glam and dramatized provocation. Later nicknamed the White Duke, a decadent dandy, Visconti tape almost revered as a paradigm of glamor. But David Bowie was also David Robert Jones , self-taught working-class, suburban neighbor of South London , where he lived until age 22. A fearful of inheriting the family madness, who blew his Kerouac and Little Richard head, leading him to proclaim in his polytechnic boy. “Now I want to be Superman”

In 1991, a year before settling in New York with his second wife, Somali model Iman, Bowie went through Brixton, the city where he was born in January 1947 and lived until age seven. “That it was Harlem,” he summed up as an adult, perhaps exaggerating. In Brixton walk he accompanied by guitarist of his band. He has told that in those streets to Bowie, the boy Jones was clouded eyes and acknowledged: “It’s a miracle. I probably should have been accounting “.

In 2014, aware of the countdown, the musician wanted to teach the places of his childhood and teenage Magnet daughter, Alexandria. He showed little Stansfield Road Victorian house where he was born, surrounded these days by pilgrims and flowers. Also it came to their places of Beckenham and Bromley, the two suburban towns where parents brought seeking a better life.

Loop boredom

Beckenham and Bromley, whose helmets are around 20,000 inhabitants, are actually continuous. The seven-kilometer apart, dotted with residential houses. Some are towns of a certain size. Other, townhouses and some utilities, social apartments, sins of rationalist architecture. Central London is just 16 kilometers, twenty minutes by train. But you get to another planet . Aupadas in their respective hills, still seem self-absorbed people, loop folded over his boredom. There continues to plumb the Church where Bowie sang in the choir, with gardens behind them calling themselves “Ornamental” but could well be said devoured. From his vantage green horizon is endless and London Suburbia.

Haywood Jones , the father of David, came from the Northern England and had an entertaining past. Orphan, inherited a shoe with a theater company that went bankrupt was purchased. He fought in Africa and then was used in the network of hospices Doctor Barnado, an Irish philanthropist. Haywood was a player and butler and brought a daughter from a previous marriage. Bowie loved him well. He always carried a cross around his neck gave teenager.

Sometimes Haywood brought surprises of their raids in London. In 1955, when David was eight and only had disappeared for two rationing, he appeared with a gramophone and records of Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Frankie Lymon. But the eureka child arrived with Little Richard and his “Tutti Frutti”: “I almost head burns. I heard God “.

Peggy Burns , the mother, was more complicated. Waitress and usher in a movie theater, liked to sing and dance. Until he fantasized of being an artist. He had two children from previous relationships, delivered to the orphanage. The other was Terry, the older stepbrother Bowie, schizophrenic, who committed suicide after fleeing from a clinic and throw a train . Peggy Burns David treated with a mixture of eccentricity and repression.

Throughout his life, the musician always feared succumbing to what they called home “the curse of Burns’ which included a lobotomized aunt. That anguish groundwater flow makes its disturbing / interesting work. “People often say:” In my house are half crazy. ” On mine they actually were. ” The emotional temperature of the family home was zero. A marriage of television and lean hypnotist words.

Boredom leads to introspection, which in turn sharpens the mind. Or at least something caused Bromley. In its huge shopping center, which shares a street with department stores that are relics seventies, a mural at the door of the bathroom reminds illustrious sons of the village: the praised Prime Minister Pitt the Younger, Darwin, HG Wells and a bunch of pop figures, Billy Idol, Siouxsie, Fatboy Slim, Peter Frampton, drummer of The Clash and the greatest of all. Bowie

Music and girls

David reminds the child as educated and early instrumental use his good looks and charm. At 14 school bored him. Now there is only music and girls. At 15, George Underwood, friend and fellow band, part will try to lift the face by his girlfriend, Carol (with which it is said that David lost his virginity). And bequeaths the famous gray eye. In his honor we can say that maintained friendship and hired him as a designer of his early records.

David enrolled at the local polytechnic to study industrial design. Then works something like an office assistant. Buddhism tempts with a lama who was lost by Bromley (protagonist of the novel “The Buddha of Suburbia” Kureishi, neighbor too). Studying mime with Lindsay Kemp. Rueda as an ad model ice cream with a guy called Ridley Scott, who unknowingly being filmed her first alien. long hair

It is left and in 1967 released his first album, but still lives with his parents. In April 1969, at 22, tenant of a journalist divorced 33 years and two children ago Mary Finnigan, who receives it with “Would you like some tea and tincture of cannabis?” . Party. Charged five pounds a week, Bowie, who now calls himself and never pay you, because they become lovers. Together they organized in the summer of 1969, two years after the Summer Love, the first hippies festivals Beckenham. create also a “Lab Art” on Sundays David Bromley and offers spectacular concerts at the Three Tuns pub Tudor style, but now the epicenter of the future.

The home, now a grandmother of 77, gossips David “heart was always heterosexual,” a “horny and sexually sophisticated” lover and a “great worker”. But David burning ships. Without reporting anything to home-girlfriend, installed in his room at a US model of 19 years, Angela Barnett, Angie, with whom he will marry (for worse) in 1970. Angie short matted hair hippie, what dyed red and contacts one of his many lovers , which has office in a record. At the end of the year, “Space Oddity”, the parable of the astronaut who does not want to return, gets to number one. Angie Bowie and move to Chelsea. Suburbia left behind. Major Tom again only to say goodbye before he died.

The Three Tuns pub of the first concerts is today a pizzeria chain (bad, by the way). In the mourning of a clear and chilly January, before the facade they piled bouquets. Within remembers a mural. Two very English girls rush desserts settled over a bottle of wine. You point the mural with Bowie and tipsy laugh riot, “If you want to take a photo of Bowie, we also get out.” Small emotions of Suburbia 2016.