How I Met David Bowie
And Our Crazy Times Together...
When I first laid eyes on the man who would eventually become David Bowie, it was in the late spring of 1965 in London. I found myself in the destroyed splendor of Vince Taylor’s Belgravia apartment.
Vince’s somewhat fragile psyche had succumbed earlier that year to a frightful combination of psychedelic drugs, speed, and alcohol, which, allied to nervous exhaustion, had sent him into a form of holy madness.
He claimed to have become Mateus, the son of God, and during a showcase concert at the Bilboquet Theatre in Paris, he destroyed everything on stage, and the ensuing confusion got us banned from ever playing there again.
Vince’s brother-in-law (Joe Barbera of the famous Hanna-Barbera animation studio) planned to sponsor us on a lucrative tour of America; however, those hopes were quickly dashed. With perverse genius, Vince somehow managed to convince his brother-in-law that we were responsible for what had happened, and amazingly, he also somehow managed to convey the impression that nothing was wrong with him and that he was perfectly sane.
Vince obtained a significant amount of money and went to London, presumably to establish a new record label, but really to become a crazy yet beautiful prophet, splendidly arrayed in white robes and surrounded by a bevy of adoring young girls and one lad named Davy Jones.