"A lady said, 'I don't know if I want to meet him, I have a feeling he's into black magic,"" the urbanely hip US talk show host, Dick Cavett, tells his guest, David Bowie, on November 1974. "And other people just see you as a very skilful performer who changes from time to time, from one thing to another."
The white-suited Cavett leans back with almost horizontal ease in his chair, a picture of post-hippie cool, but the Englishman's body language now offers a crazed contrast. Maybe it's the mention of black magic, maybe some inner synaptic frenzy, but Bowie almost jumps out of his tautly drawn skin, biting on his nervously flying fingers, eyes and mouth bouncing through multiple startled expressions in a manic split-second, as if all his recent personae - Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, the Diamond Dog - are bubbling through his system, like John Carpenter's Thing bulging through assumed human forms. Settling into a still more disturbing impression of friendliness, unnaturally bright, tired eyes sunk deep in his skull and teeth too big for his mouth instead essay a rictus, Joker grin.
More so even than the gaunt spectre glugging 2 per cent milk for sustenance as his limo glides through the desert in the BBC's Cracked Actor, filmed that autumn and viewed with horror on 26 January 1975, The Dick Cavett Show is the defining document of cocaine's vampiric consumption of Bowie in 1974. Snorting loudly as Cavett goes to an ad break, he fires a phantom hit to his brain.
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Esta historia es de la edición February 2024 de Record Collector.
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"Things can go very badly wrong"
But not too often. The Iron Maiden singer, aviator, business mogul and awardwinning everyman, Bruce Dickinson, returns with a new solo album, The Mandrake Project – Top 10 across the planet at the time of writing – and a ton of anecdotes about his extraordinarily successful career. Just don’t try and put him in a box. “I’m not a number, I’m a free man!” he warns Joel McIver.
Out Of The Darkness
Long-anticipated solo debut from Portishead singer is worth the wait
Clearing The Way
The end of an era for Bolan's glam-rock trailblazers.
SOCK IT TO ME DISC-ITS! WHEN TWO TRIBES VINYL AND CD (AND CASSETTE) WENT TO WAR
Dream, if you can, a courtyard. An ocean of violets in bloom. Alternatively, a 1984 record shop and all its pristine treasures. Close your eyes, let’s go there together. What do you see? From chest-level down – vinyl.
Steve Harley 1951-2024
As frontman for Cockney Rebel, the singer-songwriter crafted one of the glam rock era's greatest singles in Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me).
The Collector
Swiss-based Icelander Sunna Margrét is a rising force in experimental pop. Having begun her career as a teenager touring with electro-pop ensemble Bloodgroup, she is about to release her debut full-length solo LP, Finger on Tongue.
She'd only Just gun
With their rapturous harmonies, the Carpenters dominated the 70s’ airwaves, selling over 100 million records with hits like Close To You and Yesterday Once More. But by 1979, lead singer Karen was seeking a new direction… Biographer Lucy O’Brien recounts her attempts to move out of the restrictive environment of the family band that had made her a star
PNEUMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE
Forming in West Berlin in 1980 and achieving their greatest notoriety circa 1984, industrial noise-punks Einstürzende Neubauten have far e xceeded t he i r p ro jec ted l i fe expectancy. Founding frontman Blixa Bargeld traces the evolution of the metalbashing pioneers. Jeremy Allen is all (suitably protected) ears
FRUITS OF THEIR LABOUTES
Bananarama had their first Top 3 hit in 1984, Robert De Niro's Waiting. Rob Hughes meets lifelong friends and bandmates Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward as they look back on their career, album by album
Being Soaring.
In April 1984, the original, faster Bobby Oproduced version of West End Girls was released.