The Bowie Act

The man was obviously a lunatic. He sat down at the table with us both without asking. Then just sits there, looking at the stage, taking angry sips out of his pint. Me and Carol, we don’t talk much before I get up to do the set. The idea is that I’m David Bowie and she’s his girlfriend, Angie, and it just seems more realistic if we keep our gobs shut. But I’m looking at this guy, as is Carol, pretending to be Angie, and there’s a vibe about him. Then all at once he turns round, he clocks my outfit, and he can’t decide whether to look at the stage or look at us two…and he’s got no qualms about staring at us two. By the way, I am wearing a crisp white shirt open at the collar. My hair is dyed orange and slicked right back, just like Bowie in his Thin White Duke period, circa 1975.
+++“It’s you, isn’t it?” he says at last.
+++Now it’s not clear whether he means me, Keith, or me, the Thin White Duke circa 1975, but either way I say: “Yes.”
+++So the guy smiles and looks pleased. Then he looks round the venue, like he’s got a secret, and he leans across and says to me: “I used to impersonate Bowie all the time, all the bleedin’ time, mate.”
+++I should say at this point, the guy is about 10-years older, about 40. He’s got a bit of a paunch and he looks too short to pass for Bowie. What’s more, facially I’m just not convinced the resemblance is there, not in the way people have remarked upon with me. Yes, it’s always possible he’s got the voice, I think to myself, and some of the stage moves. But he doesn’t exactly carry himself like Bowie.
+++“Oh yeah. Where were you based?” I ask politely.
+++He looks at me like a maniac and says: “All over the place!”
+++By now, Carol is getting nervous, I can tell. But I pat her arm to let her know it will be okay take a sip of my orange juice. The bloke is just watching all this like he’s wired on something, and then he says: “Mind if I join you?”
+++He’s practically on top of us already, but now he pulls the chair closer and fixes us with a look and says: “I mean, I was David Bowie.”
+++“I’m sure you were excellent,” I say.
+++Carol says nothing and that is part of the act. But he still leans forward clutching his pint and says: “His spirit was in me, in here.”
+++He points at his heart and at this point I sort of knew what he was talking about. Sometimes, up on stage it is almost like the spirit of Bowie, or his personality or whatever, takes me over. I mean you have to be a good actor, really, to really become someone else like this. So I begin to consider that maybe this guy wasn’t bad in his day after all.
+++“What period did you do?” I ask.
+++He looks from me to the girlfriend and back like he’s totally confused and I have to help him out.
+++“Did you do Ziggy?” I ask. “Young Americans?”
+++There was plenty more stage personas I might have suggested. But now he looks at me with his eyes even wider and says: “I did all of them.”
+++Although this news surprises me, I don’t let it show. As Bowie, I have to be cool as a cucumber so I just nod and say: “That’s terrific, mate!”
+++We sit in silence for a few moments before curiosity gets the better of me and I am forced to ask, “Did you ever play any of the pubs round here?”
+++So then this big grin appears on his face and he’s does this weird laugh as he looks at me and Carol and he says, “You don’t understand, mate. For three years I actually was David Bowie.”
+++Then he puts his arm across my shoulder and begins to tell his tale and by this point I am most definitely interested. And although he’s a bit drunk and the deejay playing T-Rex is a bit too loud, it’s not so hard to follow him. From time to time I look at Carol just to check she’s okay, although the guy wants to tell his story from start to finish and it only seems fair to hear him out.
+++Now I know for a fact that in the mid 70s, Bowie got involved with some pretty heavy drugs and they took him to some very dark places. But this guy reckoned the great man became a devotee of the occult. He said he discovered as much when he was visiting Berlin during the following decade and as you may know that is where Bowie recorded a string of classic albums with Brian Eno. The guy said he was just an ordinary fan of the great man until one day he was stretching his legs by the Wall when he heard the voice of David Bowie in his ear, “as clear as I’m speaking to you now”. On that strange day, Bowie proceeded to give him directions through the streets of Berlin until he came to a building which he recognised from pictures as Hansa Studios. And as you may also know, that is where the great man had recorded “Heroes” and Low only five or six years previously. Now there was no other way this guy could have found the studios without a map. He said it really freaked him out and in that moment he realised he must become David Bowie. For the next three years he went on to dress like Bowie, to talk like Bowie, to move like Bowie and to pose like Bowie at all times. He changed his name by deed poll and made everyone around him address him as Dave. He stopped speaking to his family and he lost most of his friends. Eventually, he said, it all got too much and he drew a small crowd at Victoria station by appearing as Bowie and giving his desultory fans a Nazi salute. (As you may know, the great man really did this). So the guy got himself sectioned under the Mental Health Act. And then when he was in Claybury hospital he heard Bowie’s voice again and this time he could also hear the great man’s half-brother Terry. Now Terry, as you may not know, was a schizophrenic and he killed himself just before all this happened. Which makes the guy think he’s become a kind of conduit between the brothers, between the living and the dead. He wrote a letter to the great man and told him everything. And in case anyone intercepted it he made a copy of the letter and waited till they let him out and then mailed it again. He said that even though they put him in the hospital and gave him ECT, he would do it all again given half the chance. He says his three years as the great man were a spiritual experience, an awakening. “I worship Bowie,” he repeated for my benefit, with his eyes still glowing.
+++Then he sits back, takes several gulps of his pint and looks at me to see what I might have to say.
+++“Did he write back?” I ask, at length.
+++At which point, the guy pushes back his chair, staggers to his feet and chucks half a pint of beer down my shirt.
+++“Eff you!” he says.
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Needless to say, they threw him out at once. I cleaned up as best as I could and dried the shirt out on the hand-drier in the gents. Other punters came and went. They must have known I was the Bowie act but no one said anything. And by the time I got back in the auditorium, the lights were down and I was totally calm.
+++As I let the compere introduce me, Carol, aka Angie, gave me a lingering kiss on the cheek. Then I walked out under the lights, all my shock and anger giving my Bowie a real edge that evening.  The riff from Golden Years was playing. I felt the eyes of the room on me and shifted the weight on my hips, held a trembling hand before my eyes and I thought, Now we’ll see who can really pass for David Bowie. This is the real thing, mate. This is my life’s work.
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Mark Sheerin is a journalist and short fiction writer living in Brighton. He covers art for Culture24 and blogs at criticismism.com. Previous stories have appeared in Litro, Inkspill, Ink Tears and, shortly, Metazen. He would get more done if it wasn’t for music.