David Bowie’s links to Kent remembered 10 years after his death

People across Kent are remembering the music icon David Bowie 10 years after his death on 10 January 2016.

Although born David Jones in South London, he spent much of his childhood and early career in the county.

Alan Johns told BBC Radio Kent that he would try on Bowie’s stage costumes while working for him as a security guard.

“My mate and I would go into the basement and put on his stage costumes, I remember trying on his blue Ziggy Stardust jacket and thinking it quite suited me!” he said.

Johns said he worked at David Bowie’s Chelsea home in 1974.

“He was there every day and we had the great pleasure in listening to him putting the finishing touches to the Diamond Dogs Album,” he said.

“He was a lovely man and always said ‘hello’ to us.”

Bowie’s mother Margaret was born in Folkestone and, while living in Southborough, met his father at the former Ritz Cinema on Mount Pleasant Road, Tunbridge Wells.

He attended Burnt Ash Primary and Bromley Tech Schools, which were still part of Kent in the ’50s and ’60s, becoming interested in music and playing with local bands The Konrads and The King Bees.

However it’s in Maidstone in 1964 where Davie Jones really cut his teeth after joining local band The Manish Boys as singer and saxophonist.

Speaking in 2016, one of his former bandmates, Woolf Byrne, explained that the 17-year-old had the potential to be a star as “when our other singer John Watson, who most of us thought had a better voice, was performing the people used to carry on dancing but when Davie sang a lot of people would stop dancing and stand still to watch him”.

“The charisma was there but I don’t think we were particularly aware of it at the time,” he added.

Sheila Burns, from Rainham, told BBC Radio Kent that when she was a teenager she was horse-riding in Beckenham when another rider was thrown off.

Fortunately a young Bowie was nearby, jumping a fence to calm the horse down and they became friends, regularly helping to muck out the stables.

“I was a bit younger than him and my parents wouldn’t let me go out with anybody,” she said. “But if I was a bit older I may have done.

“My kids joke and say he could have been our father!”

While with the Manish Boys, Bowie lived in a flat and regularly played at The Royal Star Hotel, which is now a shopping arcade.

A blue plaque to mark this was unveiled by Nick “Topper” Headon from The Clash on BBC Music Day in 2017.

The Manish Boys also played the Astor Theatre in Deal, Wye College, near Ashford, Medway County Youth Club, the Invicta Ballroom in Chatham and even Sellindge Village Hall.

The Manish Boys recorded extensively throughout March 1965 but only ever released one single.

Byrne said: “I Pity The Fool was the A-side and on the B-side was Davie’s own composition Take My Tip, which I actually really liked mostly because of the bass guitar intro.”

Despite television appearances and promotion the record flopped and Bowie left the band soon after to join Ramsgate-based The Lower Third, subsequently playing the Grand Hotel in Littlestone, the Working Men’s Club in Minster and the Conservative Club in Sheerness.

David changed his name from Jones to Bowie in September 1965 to avoid confusion with the lead singer of The Monkees, but success did not follow for The Lower Third and he formed another backing band, The Buzz, who appeared at the Coronation Ballroom in Ramsgate on their only trip to Kent.

Bowie moved back to the Kent/London borders and started the Beckenham Arts Lab, hosting a free festival at the Croydon Road Recreation Ground bandstand on the same day as Woodstock in August 1969.

By then he had finally found fame with the top five single Space Oddity which soared in popularity due to the Apollo 11 moon landing, yet it wasn’t Bowie’s last appearance in the county.

Just a few months after his chart success, Bowie was booked to perform at The General Gordon pub in Gravesend, however, the crowd booed him off after he played one song and then read poetry to them for 15 minutes.

The Thin White Duke hated flying so would often be seen boarding trains at Dover’s Marine station after returning from the continent and was a guest at Bob Geldof and Paula Yates’ Faversham wedding in 1986, alongside a host of other stars from the era.

Bowie also had strong ties with Sussex.

Fans in 1980 will remember him shooting the video for Ashes to Ashes on the beach at Pett Level but there is one man from the county who got to know him better than most.

“I first came across his music in the early ’70s, my brother was a huge fan, he used to bring records home from the record shop on the day of release,” said Kevin Armstrong, from St Leonards.

“I knew them very well by the time I met David.”

That first meeting came in 1984, when Armstrong, a musician, was told to take his guitar to Abbey Road studios to record with a secret artist.

“The musicians arrived at Abbey Road and we were all talking about ‘who’s this going to be’. We didn’t know and then David breezed in.

“It was pretty exciting to see him in the flesh and realise we were about to work with one of the biggest rock stars on the planet.”

Armstrong worked with Bowie on and off for a decade, even playing at Live Aid with him in 1985.

But perhaps his biggest moment was during a practice session in New York in 1989, when cameras caught Bowie saying: “I’m not a great rhythm guitarist, so Kevin does what I pretend to do. Kevin’s a proper musician.”

Now, Armstrong tours with other former Bowie musicians, playing the Starman’s songs and keeping them alive.