Loving the alien

As David Bowie turns 60 on 8 January, NEIL TENNANT from Pet Shop Boys talks about his lifelong obsession with the man who fell to earth back in 1947.

My friends and I became big Bowie fans as soon as Hunky Dory came out in 1971. I couldn’t actually afford to buy the album, as I only used to get something like five shillings pocket money a week, so we’d go into the record shop and ask to hear it in the stereo listening booth, instead. It was only meant to be for classical records, but we’d cheekily get the three of us in there and listen to the whole album. Even now, when I hear the opening chords to Changes, it reminds me of that listening booth back in Newcastle.

Of course, David used to do a lot of sessions for Radio 1, as well, so my brother and I used to tape them. By the time the Ziggy Stardust album came out, we knew almost every song on it already. I’d taped Hang On To Yourself, Moonage Daydream and Ziggy Stardust off the radio, Starman had been the single, Five Years he did on the Old Grey Whistle Test, and so on.

When he did Starman on Top Of The Pops, with his arm around Mick Ronson, it was a great moment in pop. I remember that very well. One forgets that Starman wasn’t a particularly big hit. David didn’t actually have a Top Three single until The Jean Genie and it all seemed rather frustrating at the time.

But the thing that really did it for us was the advert for John, I’m …

by Neil Tennant
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