Bowie in Heddon Street ’72
In Heddon Street in January
Bowie in Heddon Street ’72
The London drizzle falls the same
as softly as it did the night,
the camera caught in failing light
the famous phonebox, currant red
with Ziggy Stardust in the frame
A tinted showbiz biscuit tin
which drew the viewer in.
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An atmosphere that seemed
to speak
Of basement studios, upstairs flats,
bell-push models, queenly spats
And rent collected once a week
from burned-out boys who’d known
Joe Meek.
In England, done with swinging now,
its party over, drab new nights
Of keg-beer pubs and candle stubs
the IRA and mid-week subs
Wildcat strikes at factory gates
an apathetic audience waits.
The Sixties now are firmly dead
A man from Mars arrives instead
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What was it in the water then
that forged a breed of pop messiahs
From underfed suburban lads
grown up by gas convector fires?
Skinny, pale, with poor dentition
Actor, clothes-horse, pop musician
In David’s case, all three in one,
An odyssey which he’d begun
in sixty watts of Bromley sun.
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When Ziggy sang and played guitar
No one, yet, had gone that far
In Sutton Coldfield, Aylesbury, Bucks
and Sunderland they’d cheer
The brickies bellowed, “’Ello, ducks!”
the dads asked, “Is ’e queer?
Gets harder now to tell the boys
from girls, with every year.”
The critics, too, blew cold and hot.
But critics do.
Why would they not?
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The Seventies then bedded in
in feather boa and satin fl are
The suburbs sat like Hamelin
awaiting anthems on the air
From some pied piper not yet heard
to woo them with a magic word:
the oddball kid, the bookish geek
the one their classmates labelled
“freak”,
Sequestered in their rooms all week.
They’re captivated by his eyes
“You’re not alone!” the Starman
cries.
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Now of his band, what shall we say?
The Spiders, not from Mars but Hull
Were best of any of their day
If Kingston upon Hull, the name
did not roll off the tongue
the same,
The Spiders seemed to play guitars
as if they really were from Mars
Now all the teenage kooks
who went
To hear these boys from Hull
– and Kent
Remember, late in middle-age,
how Ziggy broke the gender cage.
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And when we dig his records out
from hard-drives, iPods, racks
or shelves
And shed a tear, we find the truth
is also, that we mourn our youth.
Immortal youth, its peerless light
that twinkles in the ageless night
Until we find how frail we are
Crashing in the same old car.
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In Heddon Street in January
The phone-box now is gone
Where fans took pictures of
themselves
Once Ziggy had moved on
Where did they go, those slips
of boys?
Grown up with steam trains
in their eyes
And rockets in the Dan Dare skies
Above the dingy terraced streets
of Britain after war?
America, by any score, would seem
some kind of Shangrila
Best slap some lippy on, then, kid
and bring your best guitar.
America eats talent like a wolf
devours a lamb,
With tenderising powder which can
turn your mind to spam.
That’s when you have to wrestle
with your inner Peter Pan.
Then, if the boy stops swinging,
he may just become a man.
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But even politicians cough,
describing him as nice.
They missed him at the kick-off
now they’re gagging for a slice.
He helped bring down the Berlin Wall
it’s said, young Bromley Dave
Fashion icon, futurist... and genius.
Oh, behave!
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The ones who’ll really miss him,
are the girls then in their teens
Recalling that one weekday night
he burst on to their screens
Instantly monopolising all their
magazines
Promoting moral panic from
St Mawes to Milton Keynes
They won’t remember mourning
any pop star in this way
And won’t know why they’re
weeping in the middle of the day.
He was Youth and he was Beauty
he was talented and clever
So stunningly original and...
They thought he’d live for ever.
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In Heddon Street in January
The sun falls on a plaque
Like an actor taking encores
in a Mayfair cul-de-sac.
And here beside the doorway
are his flowers in a stack
But Ziggy Stardust’s never
coming back.
And all the worldly traffic may
resume its migraine rumble
While all the Babylonian showbiz
rumour mills can crumble.
Let legend be his epitaph
The lily needs no gilding
Ladies and gentlemen...
Mr Bowie’s left the building.