Blew my mind

Is that a bit of Stardust in the sky?

I admit I wasn't ever a great fan but I grew up with his music and he would be horrified that I enjoyed his most commercially successful period the most, the time he himself was most critical of. Apart from Major Tom, it took me a while to appreciate his early work.

I was a very late developer and having a hard time getting to find out what life was about when he stayed at the hotel in Norwich that I was jobbing at, in May 1973 during the Ziggy Stardust tour. He, his wife and child together with a horde of weirdos arrived late after the first night concert in an array of cars and still in full stage costume and make up. They simply swept through reception to the rooms, jaws dropped all over the place and I was asking myself if I was in the wrong film - what was "it" that flashed past?: a she? a he? a spaceman?. I had spent the last 8 months since leaving 10 years of uniformed catholic boarding school and was struggling to come to terms with flared brush cotton trousers and cheesecloth shirts. And now?? Did I have to wear a leotard to have a chance?

To say I'm sad is wrong. I delight at the fact that he survived the 70s and made it as far as he did. Back then the chances of an early drugs death must have been very high. He has given joy to many and leaves us having given more than he took - if we all could say that?

Nogbad expresses much better than I do what Bowie meant to our generation.