I just want to say that you've given me more pleasure than I've had in a good few months of working, and I don't do gigs any more because I got so pissed off with working and dying a death every time I worked and it's really nice to have somebody appreciate me for a change
David Bowie, Glastonbury, 1971
Francis Whately’s latest Bowie documentary really ought to have been called The First Five Years, following the template of the director’s previous epoch-defining films, Five Years (2013) and The Last Five Years (2017). This third installment begins in 1966 and charts the years Bowie spent drifting thru a series of throwback rock n' roll groups and mod combos in search of an audience, before settling on a peculiar style of English music hall that seemed to please no one - songs like Rubber Band, Uncle Arthur and Please Mr. Gravedigger were a tad too quaint and whimsical for the average rock fan, but too weird and avant-garde for the Anthony Newley crowd. As with the previous films, Whately wisely lets the interviewees do the talking and there are some terrific anecdotes along the way from friends and collaborators such as regulars Tony Visconti, Carlos Alomar, George Underwood, Woody Woodmansey, and Rick Wakeman, plus valuable contributions from members of The Lower Third, and The Riot Squad. Bowie himself is represented by some judicious audio extracts and his comments are often touching and surprisingly honest about his formative years.
Casual viewers who assumed Bowie came fully formed with Space Oddity, might balk at the oddities heard throughout the documentary, and perhaps to spare the blushes of seasoned fans, the song selection reflects his best work at the time - The London Boys, There Is A Happy Land, When I Live My Dream, Come and Buy My Toys, Let Me Sleep Beside You. No overview of this era could get away without mention of The Laughing Gnome and it's left to Carlos Alomar to rehabilitate this irrepressible little pest of a song, cheerfully exploring the similarities between The Laughing Gnome and The Velvet Underground's I'm Waiting for the Man. And while he's not terribly convincing, it is great fun to hear the Station to Station guitarist scatting along to what is most likely the quintessential bête noire of Bowie songs.
Some of the most interesting and compelling testimony comes from two women who were particularly close to Bowie at both ends of the 60's. Kristina Amadeus (Bowie's cousin, no less) recalls family life at the Jones home at 4 Plaistow Grove and the contrary relationship Bowie had with his parents, his mother in particular, who's frequently described by those who knew her at the time as being cold and withdrawn. Interestingly Kristina plays down the mythology that has grown up around Terry Burns, Bowie's troubled half-brother who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition that served Bowie well when he re-cast Terry as a sort dark spectral presence in his life, and claimed that insanity was a hereditary family curse. Another coup for the documentary is the rare participation of Bowie's first great love Hermione Farthingale, who speaks about their year long romance with great tenderness, and reads out a letter Bowie sent her whilst touring with Lindsay Kemp's mime production Pierrot In Turquoise ("Remember that I love you, and be gooder than good, forever, David"). The couple went their separate ways when Hermione joined the cast of the MGM musical Song of Norway, sensing that Bowie's career was following a different trajectory to her own. Bowie was left broken hearted ("I didn't get over that for such a long time, it really broke me up"), but it led to Bowie writing one of his finest and most autobiographical songs, Letter to Hermione, and considering the crucial involvement of Angel Barnett in the next phase of Bowie's life, perhaps it was just as well. Some of the material showcased throughout the documentary was astonishing.
The Bowie Estate was unusually generous in supplying long lost recordings, demos and rough sketches - some of which I had only previously encountered on lo-fi boots, and the understandable absence of performance footage is made up for with a wealth of rare photographs. In one amusing aside, echoing Decca's famous rejection of The Beatles, Lower Third drummer Phil Lancaster reads the withering summation of the group's ill fated 1965 audition for the BBC penned by a clearly unimpressed talent scout. It's an incredible document. "There is no entertainment in anything they do. It's just a group and very ordinary, too, backing a singer devoid of personality". Thankfully Bowie held his nerve.
The documentary's feature length was generous but still there were a few omissions, notably the involvement of manager Ken Pitt and his attempts to revive Bowie's foundering career, which included landing Bowie some film work. Whately could hardly be criticized for skipping over Bowie's inconsequential 3-second walk on (or rather slide off) appearance in the 1969 film The Virgin Soldiers, but I thought it rather disappointing that no mention was made of Bowie's haunting turn in Michael Armstrong's interesting 1967 short The Image. Bowie later dismissed the film as "awful" but it remains Bowie's most dramatic film appearance up to The Man Who Fell To Earth.
The documentary also seemed to lurch clumsily in the final section between the recording of The Man Who Sold the World and the success of the Ziggy Stardust-era, with Hunky Dory disposed of with a quick flash of the album cover as if Whately wasn't quite sure what to do with it. And for all the scorn heaped on The Laughing Gnome, it's a pity no one made the connection between Bowie's use of the high-pitched voice for that song and the cartoon voices heard on Hunky Dory's closing song The Bewlay Brothers, arguably, Bowie's greatest song. Also, there was no mention of Peter Noone’s cover version of Oh! You Pretty Things, which didn't make its author a household name but must have offered some consolation when it climbed to a respectful 12th position in the UK charts in May 1971. I'm nip-picking of course. These minor objections do not alter the fact that Finding Fame is one of the more comprehensive Bowie documentaries to emerge since his passing and needless to say it is absolutely essential viewing. If you missed the initial BBC2 screening, the film is currently available to view on the BBC iplayer.
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