Early David Bowie music video for “Ching-A-Ling” taken from the Love You till Tuesday promotional film. Made in 1969, but unreleased until 1984, this film also features Hermione Farthingale (Space Oddity’s painfully intimate love-song “Letter to Hermione” was for her, obviously) and his friend Jono “Hutch” Hutchinson. The trio performed under the name “The Feathers.” The filming for Love You till Tuesday would be the last time Bowie and Farthingdale would see ever each other.

Note that Bowie is wearing a wig: He’d had to cut his hair for a role in a film called The Virgin Soldiers. “Ching-A-Ling” was recorded on the sly at Trident Studios by famed producer Tony Visconti in 1968. The harmonies would be revisited on The Man Who Sold the World’s “Savior Machine.”
 

 
After the jump, another early Bowie video for “Sell Me a Coat.”

 
Marianne Faithfull and David Bowie performing ‘I Got You Babe’ at London’s Marquee in 1973. This was filmed for American TV show The Midnight Special and was Bowie’s last appearance as Ziggy Stardust.

Faithfull’s nun habit created a bit of a scandal when the show was aired. Her other habit, heroin, may explain her somewhat disengaged performance that night.

From the Ziggy Stardust Companion:

The last song - “I Got You Babe” was a duet sung with Marianne Faithful and was filmed at about 10pm at night.  Bowie warned the audience - “This isn’t anything very serious.  Its just a bit of fun - we’ve hardly even rehearsed it.”  Bowie’s costume for this song was the bright red PVC corset, PVC thigh-length stiletto boots and two black chest-hugging feathers (he was The Angel of Death), while Marianne Faithful was dressed as a decadent nun with cowl and a black backless cape, which left her bottom exposed to the audience as she quickly ran off stage at the end of the performance. 

In the outtake footage that appears in the second half of the following clip, you can see, for a brief moment, that Marianne indeed was wearing nothing underneath her costume.

 
Since we at Dangerous Minds have previously found ourselves marveling at his film Performance, it only makes sense to salute the wonderful English filmmaker Nicolas Roeg on this, his 81st birthday.

Check out Steve Rose’s great interview in the Guardian with the oft-aloof and prickly director (from which I paraphrase this post’s title), and for heaven’s sake check out the man’s films. He’s currently working on a screen adaptation of Martin Amis’s book Night Train.

Here’s a cool overview, with five themes spotlighted, by the excellent film video-essayist Hugo Redrose.
 

Elizabeth Taylor and David Bowie at their first meeting in Beverly Hills, 1975. Photographs by Terry O’Neill. Scanned from the book Legends by Terry O’Neill.

Via Glamour-a-go-go

2010 marks the 46th year since a young dandy named Davy Jones made the media scene. On June 6th 1964, at the age of 17, he’d released a typical mod-blues single with the King Bees called “Liza Jane.” Later that same year, he’d appeared on Cliff Michelmore’s BBC Tonight show as head of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men.

Two years before this, he’d gotten into a scrap with his friend George Underwood, who punched Jones in the eye with a ring on his hand. Although imperceptible in the BBC Tonight clip, it would leave the young Jones with a permanently dilated pupil a different color in that injured eye, one of the many features of the future superstar that would later fascinate millions.

 
It’s hard to believe, but the then-controversial, Iggy-tweaked version of Raw Power that set the original David Bowie mix to 11 was released over thirteen years ago.  These days, that’s a long time for anything to go un-reissued, so Legacy‘s come out with an expanded edition that pairs a remastered version of the Bowie mix with a ‘73 live set from Atlanta (but not, as Pitchfork notes, the more logical choice: a remastered version of the Iggy mix).

However you slice it—or mix it—Raw Power still packs a wallop.  I’ll always prefer the primitive thump of Funhouse, but, as the below short attests (featuring, among others, Henry Rollins, James Williamson and Chrissie Hynde), there’s no denying Raw Power was more the shape of things to come.

 
The Official Iggy and the Stooges site

. 
Forget about Twilight or that lame True Blood series, this is how vampire should be done! The insanely brilliant opening moments—featuring Bauhaus performing Bela Lugosi’s Dead—from Tony Scott’s 1983 film, The Hunger has lost none of its power over the years. The film stars Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon and if you haven’t seen it, it’s a sexy, smart delight. The unlucky goth chick who is the recipient of Bowie’s vampiric intentions in this scene was played by none other than Dangerous Minds pal, singer/actress Ann Magnuson.

This is one of the great opening scenes of any movie ever made if you ask me. I actually saw this in a theater all by myself—or so I thought—and the effect was electrifying. I was 17 at the time and I’d just gotten massively baked in the parking lot. I walked in, sat down to THIS and just when things calmed down a bit onscreen, I was scared witless by an extremely elderly woman, who had been sleeping two rows in front of me, suddenly darting up and staring straight at me and wagging her finger in my face!
 

 
Bowie turns 63 (!) today, and as much as his music continues to resonate, his roles in film, be they bit (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, The Last Temptation of Christ), or starring (The Man Who Fell To Earth, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence), are no less enduring.

The “otherness” Bowie exerts as an onscreen presence, in my eyes, always seems matched by the obvious thoughtfulness he injects into his roles.  And now, thanks to YouTube, we can turn to the accompanying, mostly silent, clip to see where it all started. 

Directed by Michael Armstrong, The Image stars Michael Byrne, who plays an artist tortured by Bowie when his painting of him “comes to life.”  Here’s what Cinebeats says of the ‘67 short:

David Bowie plays the mysterious apparition who is haunting the artist and his unusual good looks and other-worldly appearance are used to great effect here.  Bowie was just 20-years-old when he made his acting debut, but he had studied with the avant-garde performance artist and actor Lindsay Kemp who included elements of Mime and Butoh into his teaching.  Bowie obviously made use of the skills he developed studying under Kemp for his role in The Image and his wordless performance as an unrelenting spectre is undoubtedly the most memorable element of this short film.

The Image was shot in just three days, but its official debut was held off for 2 years.  And due to its relatively violent content, it was one of the first British features to receive an X rating.

 
To learn more about The Image, visit the official Michael Armstrong website

 
Could the artistry of David Bowie be tied somehow to the appearance of his teeth?  That appears to be the subtext of the following video.  Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie?  As “Surgeon To The Stars” Alex Kardis points out, “his teeth don’t look particularly great.”  By the time he got around, though, to recording Let’s Dance, Bowie’s choppers look brighter and tighter.

I find it interesting that Rolling Stone’s Alan Light feels that after Bowie cranked out not only Ziggy Stardust, but Hunky Dory, Low, Station to Station, etc., the one thing “holding him back” was a self-consciousness about his teeth.  Hmm, by that logic…did cosmetic surgery beget Tin Machine?!

Check out this hilarious 1967 response letter from David Bowie to his first American fan. So innocent! So na?ɬ�ve! So… genial!

Well over forty years since David Bowie became a well known artist (now legend), a letter has surfaced online of what appears to be a response to his first fan letter from the great United States of America.

The letter that started it all was written by Sandra Dodd (Sandra Adams, back then) who was a 14 year old fan from an unknown location in the states. Bowie?��Ǩ�Ѣs writing is sincere and gives you brief glimpse at Bowie before he had the world in his hands for the taking.

(Revivl: David Bowie’s Response to First American Fan Letter)

(David Bowie: The Album Under Discussion)

 
Model, painter, disco diva and the absolute fiercest of the pioneering transsexuals (along with Candy Darling), Amanda Learwas born Alain Tap in Saigon, 1939. Or it could have been Paris. Or Hong Kong. The year might have been 1941, 1945 or as she now claims 1948. There is much competing information about her parents, none of it conclusive. In general, not much is known for sure about the early life of Amanda Lear and she would like to keep it that way. She claims to have been educated in Switzerland and she eventually made her way to Paris in 1959, taking the stage name Peki d’Oslo, performing as a stripper at the notorious drag bar, Le Carrousel.
 
The story goes that the gangly, yet exotic Eurasian beauty Peki had a nose job and sex change in Casablanca paid for by Salvador Dali, who frequented Le Carrousel, in 1963. Amanda, as she is now known, then makes her way to London to become a part of the swinging Chelsea set where she is rumored to have had a relationship with Rolling Stone, Brian Jones. She models for Yves St. Laurent and Paco Rabanne and is a constant muse for the Divine Dali, but her career is held back by rumors that she was born a man.
 

 
Roxy Music front man Bryan Ferry sees Lear on the runway during an Ossie Clarke fashion show and invites her to be the model for Roxy’s For Your Pleasure album cover walking a black panther on a leash. They had a fling and that image has become iconic. Lear also has a yearlong affair with David Bowie who sings Sorrow to her in his 1980 Floor Show (broadcast here on the Midnight Special in 1974). Bowie helped Lear launch her musical career and by the late 70s she had become a best selling disco singer and television personality in Europe with hits like Queen of Chinatown and I Am a Photograph. She collaborated with Eurodisco duo La Bionda (who Tara is nuts about and has posted here about them)

 
Her autobiography, My Life With Dali came out in 1985 and it begins when she would have been approximately 24 or 25 years of age. No mention is made of her life before arriving in London in 1965. When Dali biographer Ian Gibson confronted her on camera about the gender of her birth, Lear angrily—and not at all convincingly—stonewalled him. She has always vehemently denied that she was a transsexual despite it being a well-established fact. She even posed nude for Playboy and sunbathed naked on beaches to dispel the rumors. All this really proved was that she had a kickin’ bod!
 
Amanda Lear still looks amazing and continues to perform She has a thriving side career as a painter.

 
Modeling in the 60s with Patti Boyd Harrison and Karianne Muller (later a Roxy Music cover girl herself):

 
Bonus: Another incredible performance of Queen of Chinatown

 
Ever hear David Bowie‘s ?��Ǩ?�Team, Meet Girls; Girls, Meet Team??��Ǩ��  Well, chances are, neither has he.  In a feat (fit?) of “Bowie-mania,” University of Hertfordshire psychologist Nick Troop sat down with a inguistic analysis program to map the possible correlations between Bowie’s chart success and his subject matter.

The results were then fed into a randomizer to engineer the “Best Bowie Song Ever.”  Okay, well if not the best, it’s no Bring Me The Disco King.  You can decide—and sing along—yourself in the accompanying Troop-hosted video.  And check out Dr. Nick’s site if you wanna try composing your own “Rebel Stardust Daydream.”

 
(Via Seed Magazine)

Although saddened by the recent passing of dance legend Merce Cunningham, I was happy to read that “punk” ballet dancer and choreographer, Michael Clark—whose style I find has much in common with Cunningham’s kinetic choreography—was creating new work again.

I followed Michael Clark’s career closely in the 1980s and early 90s and was always curious about what had happened to him. Back then, Clark seemed touched by the gods. His angular, asymmetrical, yet bizarrely graceful form of movement caused a sensation in the dance world. On a trip to London I caught an astonishing performance of I am Curious, Orange, his ballet conceived around the music of The Fall, who played live while Clark and his company danced. I was completely and utterly floored. It was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. I thought Clark was a genius. Nijinksy with a mohawk.

I met Clark once, in a Manhattan nightclub and I have to say, he did live up to his reputation for druggy excess. He was a glamorous figure, to be sure, but his eyes were rolling back into his head. After a certain point, you just stopped hearing about him.

Anyway, he is back working, that’s the main thing. At one stage, in the mid-90s, he disappeared so completely that rumours swept around London that he had died, perhaps of AIDS, perhaps of drugs. He was the boy from nowhere - in fact, a farm near Aberdeen - who went to his sister’s Scottish dance classes when he was four, and ended up the brightest star of the Royal Ballet School. But then, to the grief of his teachers, he refused to join the Royal Ballet company and instead went to the Ballet Rambert and then the American Karole Armitage company. At 22, he founded his own company and spewed out an incredible stream of new works throughout the 80s, with titles such as No Fire Escape in Hell, Because we Must and I am Curious, Orange. He was the punk choreographer who strapped dildos on his dancers and had Leigh Bowery staggering across the stage in 10in heels with a chainsaw. The ballet world deplored such gimmickry but still admired the beauty of his choreography. He won commissions from the Paris Opera, Scottish Ballet, Deutsche Oper, and was just embarking on a major work for the Royal Ballet when, in 1994, he disappeared.

Clark’s New Work, choreographed to the music of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed will premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival on August 28th through the 31st.

The Michael Clark Dance Company with The Fall, performing to Big New Prinz:

Here is another fascinating example of Michael Clark’s unusual choreography, featuring the late fashion designer Leigh Bowery (and his clothes) and the Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs. An excerpt from Because We Must, a film by Charles Atlas.

And yet another, Lay of the Land, with The Fall on the Old Grey Whistle Test TV show

Here’s another clip from Hail The New Puritan, a film by Charles Atlas.

The interview: Michael Clark by Lynn Barber

Thanks John Bertram!