Simon Goddard - Bowie Odyssey: 71

Also by Simon Goddard

Bowie Odyssey 70

The Comeback

Rollaresque

Simply Thrilled

Ziggyology

Mozipedia

Songs That Saved Your Life

TO LEESA

Alexandra Maternity Home, 1971

BOWIEODYSSEY71

Every day it becomes more apparent that people are not going to take the shit thats coming down! People are organising everywhere the shipbuilders are running Clydeside, the people of Ireland are fighting for their self-determination, women are fighting back a male-ego-chauvinist world and our black brothers and sisters are fighting the racism of a white-dominated world. And now, also, homosexuals are standing up and saying, No more shit! Our oppression ends here.

GAY LIBERATION FRONT YOUTH GROUP,

SPEAKERS CORNER, HYDE PARK,

LONDON, 28 AUGUST 1971

THE BELLE OF THE BALL ASKS PRINCE CHARMING, her lips so close her breath tickles his ear. Its the only way she can be sure hell hear her above the booming buh-buh-buh-buh of The Jackson 5. Beneath their feet flashes an aurora borealis of reds and greens as the lights under the crowded coloured Perspex dancefloor flicker to the bubbling beat, though these two would cast a limelight strong enough without it. She is a starlet: Hollywood by way of Chelsea, Terry de Havilland heels spreading the gospel of glitz with every tread. So is he: a blond Nureyev in a home-sewn ballet of jacket and culottes, every stitch flattering his lithe physique like cotton applause. They come not merely to dance, but to dazzle. And they do.

OH MY GAAAD!

Not two minutes ago a new admirer blew up in their faces like a Texas oil gusher.

YOU TWO LOOK FAAABULOUS!

An invitation followed.

COME OVER AND SIT WITH US AND HAVE SOME CHAMPAAAGNE!

The messenger then sashayed back to one of the red velvet booths surrounding the dancefloor occupied by the other half of US a longhaired creature in something like a dress. It was the girl who recognised the face beneath its fringe: the same cute face that sang the song she loved a year or so ago about the loneliness of space. But where that head used to be covered in short blond curls, this one has hair like Rapunzel. Thats why she had to ask her friend: Is that David Bowie?

IT IS. David Bowie, known for Space Oddity and nothing else, sits in a salmon-pink floral gown enveloped by the velvet upholstery, legs crossed and skirted, one hand absently toying with the stem of a glass as he stares across the rainbow ripple of bumping bodies. On the table in front of him sighs a plate of limp lettuce and jaundiced ham, deposited ten minutes earlier by a blur of a waiter in dungarees by Mr Freedom. David, frocked by Mr Fish, doesnt touch it. Identical plates wilt undisturbed in the adjacent booths, compliments of the management who include a snack supper in the price of entry to satisfy late licensing laws. The salad is purely superficial. So are the clientele. The men from the magazine that once was Jeremy came, saw and catclawed scathing judgement a year ago. Here the ultimate is cool. Fashion. Poise. The trendy dolly set where the impression is that if any of the boys, or girls, have sex its in front of their bedroom mirror on their own. The trendy dolly set sum it up in a single phrase: piss-elegant. Its the only style that counts in the Sombrero.

Nothing here being what it seems, the Sombrero isnt really the Sombrero. The clubs proper name, as its silver matchbooks remind, is Yours Or Mine? The actual Sombrero El Sombrero is the Mexican restaurant above it on Kensington High Street at the corner of Campden Hill Road. Eees good! swears the advert. Eees very good! El Sombrero is unmissable on account of the neon sombrero mounted outside which lights up at night beside the ground-level entrance to the club in its basement. Both are owned by the same little Swiss man called Harry who opened the Sombrero as a caf in the Fifties, choosing the name because he liked holidaying in Spain. When it burned down in the Sixties he rebuilt it, enlarging the cellar into a nightclub, the first in London with an illuminated dancefloor, which he brought over from Switzerland. Dining above or dancing below, its all the Sombrero.

The unruly queue to what nobody calls Yours Or Mine? snakes along the front of the restaurant, waiting to reach the foyer beyond the neon hat. Once past two butch Yugoslavian doormen and the cherubic cloakroom boy, its down the stairs to be greeted by the flamboyant manager, Amadeo, a sweep of blond hair and a Nol Coward cigarette holder clenched between his large teeth, removed only to welcome his regulars with a three-syllable dha-rrr-ling! A podium waits beyond the bottom step, lure to a steady pageant of Glorias out-Swansoning one another as they make their entrance. Only when theyve posed long enough to be seen by all tossing a wrist, batting an eyelid or tilting a chin in imaginary close-up have they finally arrived.

Some of these lives are penny-poor, but their chic remains priceless. Many are gimcrack Cinderellas, underpaid boutique assistants taking the merchandise they sell but can never afford out on the tiles for a midnight twirl before hanging it back on the rails to be sold on as factory-fresh Yves Saint Laurent. Even the most destitute boast the apparel of rich imagination: a bedsheet becomes a toga and a cheap plastic crown of laurel leaves painted gold makes a daytime nobody a disco Nero. No awkward questions are asked. Everyone is taken at face value and nothing here has more value than face. It is a place to be what you wish, not what you are. Kings Road queens, Mandraxed coquettes, hustlers, dandies, fops, tarts, gigolos and speed freaks. All damned, but in the glow of the Sombrero, all damned beautiful.

The most beautiful never go on Saturdays, the air too soured by the hick perfume of awayday amateurs. Better are odd nights midweek and best of all Sunday, the in-est in-crowds favourite, when those who come to sparkle and be envied sparkle brightest and are envied greenest. The ones who never queue, never pay and who, when not dancing, blow pearls of Polari slang between cigarette puffs in the DJ booth with Antonello, a handsome, dry-witted Italian hairdresser who supplies the sounds to keep the black bombers ticking till 3 a.m. Ones like the glittering Fred and Ginger currently stealing glances at the homi-polone they think might be the one-hit-wonder David Bowie.

Fred is a Freddie, but Ginger is a Wendy a streetwise Fulham girl, slender, attractive and naked if not in Quorum, Biba or similarly swish fabric. Most days she sleeps long past noon after working nights as a hostess at Churchills on New Bond Street, her job to flatter its wealthy gentlemen into leaving the premises several hundred pounds poorer on a bellyful of champagne and caviar. Few can resist Wendys allure. Freddie is six foot, fair of hair with eyes of blue, registered with a model agency though the main benefactors of his pulchritude are a rougher sort of trade. First and fashionmost he is a tailor, for now employed taking in alterations on the Kings Road but conserving his full talent for the private industry of the little sewing machine he uses like an indispensable fifth limb. He is an entirely self-stitched creation, even his name, Freddie Burretti, a necessary Italianate embroidering of Bletchleys Fred Burrett. His wardrobe is his world and the world a catwalk to exhibit his wardrobe, complemented, always, by black lace-up shoes with thick cork soles.