Fact #194889
When:
Short story:
David Bowie plays at The Borough Assembly Hall in Aylesbury, England, UK, Europe.Full article:
David Stopps (Director, Friars Aylesbury Ltd, Director at PPL and Co-Managing Director at Friars Management Ltd) : David Bowie came up to me backstage at the Borough Assembly Hall in Aylesbury Market Square and asked “You don’t have a high stool I could use do you?” I looked around but couldn’t find anything so I went home to 110 High Street (now the El Halal restaurant) and brought our kitchen high stool up to the venue. That’s the same stool you can see in the photo below which was taken that night by legendary photographer Michael Putland.
We first put Bowie on at Friars on 25 September 1971, just three months earlier, when he gave us the world premiere of Hunky Dory. When the HD album finally came out in December 1971 it went straight to No 1 in the local Aylesbury album chart but didn’t even make the top 75 in the UK national chart.
So for this second Friars Bowie gig we were all excited to hear him play Hunky Dory. He did play some of HD including Changes, Song for Bob Dylan, Life on Mars, Andy Warhol and Queen Bitch but most of the set was a brand new suite of songs that we had never heard before, which turned out to be the world premiere of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars album. A young Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor were in the audience who subsequently asked David to produce their first album which unfortunately he was unable to do.
29th January 1972 turned out to be one of the most historic gigs in contemporary music history and anyone who was there will never forget it.
There were so many high points but the biggest moment for me was when Bowie played ‘Rock’n’roll Suicide for the first time. When he was singing ‘Give me your hands’ he reached down to the audience and held the hand of the fan below. The late Michael Putland was there to capture the moment and we are so grateful to him.
(Source : David Stopps Facebook page comment)
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We first put Bowie on at Friars on 25 September 1971, just three months earlier, when he gave us the world premiere of Hunky Dory. When the HD album finally came out in December 1971 it went straight to No 1 in the local Aylesbury album chart but didn’t even make the top 75 in the UK national chart.
So for this second Friars Bowie gig we were all excited to hear him play Hunky Dory. He did play some of HD including Changes, Song for Bob Dylan, Life on Mars, Andy Warhol and Queen Bitch but most of the set was a brand new suite of songs that we had never heard before, which turned out to be the world premiere of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars album. A young Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor were in the audience who subsequently asked David to produce their first album which unfortunately he was unable to do.
29th January 1972 turned out to be one of the most historic gigs in contemporary music history and anyone who was there will never forget it.
There were so many high points but the biggest moment for me was when Bowie played ‘Rock’n’roll Suicide for the first time. When he was singing ‘Give me your hands’ he reached down to the audience and held the hand of the fan below. The late Michael Putland was there to capture the moment and we are so grateful to him.
(Source : David Stopps Facebook page comment)