bald truths
David Bowie and Me by Simon Parry
“I
t’s a God-awful small affair/ To the Dad with the missing hair/ But his children are yelling ‘no’ /Because they know it will never grow.’ Life on Mars was one of the first records I ever bought. So you can imagine just how grief-stricken I was when I heard the news last month that David Bowie was dead at 69. Grief-stricken mainly because while everyone else was boring their children with Bowie anecdotes, I had to admit that Life on Mars was only one of the first singles I bought. It wasn’t actually the first, and it was the last Bowie record I bought before Let’s Dance a whole decade later. Instead, embarrassingly, my vinyl virginity was cast wantonly aside to Chicory Tip’s Son of a Father – a forgotten one-hit wonder that topped the charts in 1972, some 18 months before I toddled down to Woolworths at the age of eight to buy the Bowie single now regarded as the greatest song ever written. Probably. To make matters worse, in the intervening months, I believe I might have gone out and spent my pocket money on the Wombling Song, along with a poster of Orinoco which briefly disgraced my bedroom wall. Even when I did get around to buying Life on Mars, my primary school infatuation with Bowie’s seven-inch masterpiece was shortlived. A lout called Graham in the year above me who lived down the road persuaded me with an unspoken threat of imminent violence to swap it for his copy of Standing in the Road by Blackfoot Sue. I realised as soon as I got home what an aesthetically atrocious exchange it was but was far too intimidated by Graham to ask to swap it back. So, as the world mourns the passing of a musical icon and gushing newspaper and TV tributes credit him with inventing bisexuality, cross-dressing, the space age, the internet and post modernism, I feel strangely left out. Everyone except me seems to be 60 expat-parent.com
Simon Parry is a jaded, middleaged journalist and father of four. He lives in Hong Kong.
Everyone except me seems to be sprinkled with a bit of Bowie stardust
sprinkled with a bit of Bowie stardust. The Croydon Advertiser even ran an article headlined ‘I delivered David Bowie’s milk in 1969.’ And the best I can come up with is that I once bought one a single of his but swapped it with Graham the Goon a fortnight later. To tell the truth, though, I was never really that much into Bowie. I liked some of his stuff but he didn’t change my life, reshape my
adolescence and invade my subconscious in the way Paul Weller, Elvis Costello, David Byrne and Debbie Harry later would. So as Bowie’s legend grows posthumously, my best hope is that Chicory Tip will one day be re-evaluated by a later generation and recognised for their cultural influence and impact. Admittedly that would represent a stunning turnaround for a band who currently rank somewhere alongside Bay City Rollers, the Rubettes and Bucks Fizz in terms of street credibility, but there are grounds for hope. Chicory Tip were truly ahead of their time. Son of a Father was the first number one in Britain to feature the heavy use of a synthesiser – a vintage Moog, no less – and the song itself was written by Giorgio Moroder, the Godfather of Synth Rock. So the song is in some respects a portent of Are Friends Electric, Autobahn and Tainted Love. The day will surely come when the Kentbased quartet fronted by Peter Hewson (last seen running a mobile disco in Maidstone) will be seen as epoch-breaking pioneers of pop. Warming to my tone as I play the song at full blast and dance maniacally around the living room, I yell to my eldest son James: “The Human League and Daft Punk might never have existed if it hadn’t been for Chicory Tip, you know.” James seems unmoved as Hewson’s epic closing chorus rings out: “Son of my father/ Changing, rearranging into someone new/ Son of my father/ Collecting and selecting independent views/ Knowing and I’m showing that a change is due.” Surely that eclipses ‘Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.’ “Loser,” James mutters, rolling his eyes. But for all his adolescent contempt, I know one thing. When the world grieves anew and the BBC, CNN and CCTV report the passing of the Chicory Tip frontman, both Peter Hewson and me as one of his earliest disciples will be Heroes – even if it is for just one day.