Angie Bowie’s interview with Mark Paytress for the current MOJO magazine’s David Bowie cover story delivers insight galore into the trauma and transformation of 1974, the year Bowie made his extraordinary Diamond Dogs and Young Americans albums.
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The singer’s then-wife (they married on March 19, 1970) had already helped nurture the environment that birthed 1971’s Hunky Dory album and encouraged the outrageousness of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust makeover. Although their relationship became strained during 1974, resulting in an eventual separation, they did not divorce until 1980.
A self-described “entertainer, actor, and director”, an “influencer” before it became a profession, and nowadays a prolific writer residing in Tucson, Arizona, Angie reflects on Bowie’s creative mindset as 1974 dawned, as the apocalyptic visions of Diamond Dogs were taking shape, visions that had haunted him since the ’60s.
“Well, wouldn’t you be pessimistic?” she demands of MOJO. “When I met him they were already talking about global warming. We already knew that fossil fuels were going to kill us if we didn’t find alternatives.”
World destruction and societal breakdown weren’t the only things troubling Bowie in 1974. As Angie recalls, “He was exhausted and he was pissed off.”
The successes of the Ziggy period, and the connections Bowie had established, brought insight and knowledge into the music business, much of it disillusioning. Bowie’s manager from 1970 to 1975, Tony Defries, had fought his client’s corner with agents and labels, but their relationship was souring.
“David knew that he had bought his freedom from [previous manager] Ken Pitt at an enormous price and that price was Tony Defries,” asserts Angie. “It doesn’t mean that Tony wasn’t effective. At that time we needed a contract breaker, and Tony did it. I’m not knocking any of that. It was what Tony grew into that David wouldn’t accept. I would love for this to be esoteric and philosophical and oh so fabulous. But the truth is it’s bottom line… For David it was all about wanting to get what was owed him. It wasn’t right. He was carrying all those people and there were a lot of people.”
Bowie’s touring exploits of 1974 were prodigious, with expensive sets and a revolving door of musicians. Defries was the man charged with securing the backing, plus the financial and logistical organisation.
“David and I primed him,” recalls Angie. “We prepped him. We told him what to sell and he went and sold it. But David was out on the road doing his best and working every night and exhausted, he certainly didn’t need to be worrying about who’s paying the musicians, who is paying the stage crew. Tony dealt with that.”
Bowie’s musical transformations over 1974 were as striking as the change in his image from glam alien to slick Chicago gangster. Soul and R&B influences – explored in depth in the latest issue of MOJO – were imprinting on the songs in progress for his Young Americans album. The change in style was evident over subsequent legs of the tour, but as ever, Bowie was not playing it exactly straight.
“I think it was a bit tongue in cheek,” Angie agrees. “It was like he was the pretty British boy who comes and sings soul. He knew it was not that weird. David morphed into that wonderful soul sound.”
You can read more of Angie’s reflections on Bowie in 1974 in the latest issue of MOJO magazine, alongside those of Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick, Ava Cherry, Mike Garson, Geoff MacCormack, May Pang and more.
Angie Bowie Barnett (https://angiebowie.net) is author of the following titles, plus others in collaboration with the artist Rick Hunt:
A music-enhanced, audio version of Fancy Footwork is due in March 2025.
Photograph: Alamy