David Bowie - Heroes (Dutch TV show TopPop, 1977)

[highplainsdem]

[Skittles]

1. he should still be with us

[highplainsdem]

2. Yes. I wish so much that he would have taken better care of himself.

[Skittles]

3. yeah

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

Edna St. Vincent Millay:

[ProfessorGAC]

4. One Of My Favorite David Songs

It's 1a or 1b with Ashes To Ashes.
This is the studio version but without the long intro.
He looks pretty good here. Less blow?

[highplainsdem]

5. My all-time favorite. And yes, he looked very good there. Can't think of any time he looked

more beautiful. Despite the chainsmoking that probably did more than anything else to kill him. TopPop has another video of David that day, and I'll post that below.

He was still drinking and using cocaine. They'd finished working on that album in Berlin the summer of 1977, and from what Tony Visconti wrote in his book, he and David and Iggy spent some evenings at Berlin's drag clubs (which had a lot of straight customers, even families), some evenings visiting other musicians who lived there (Edgar Frose of Tangerine Dream was one), and some evenings they'd stay in and Tony would cook dinner. Not too quiet a lifestyle, but nothing like David's coke-fueled insanity in LA when he tried living on a diet of milk and green peppers, and exorcised his indoor pool because he believed it was a portal to hell.

Sometime during that summer both David and Iggy wanted Tony to give them haircuts. Mad idea. I'm sure David's hair had been professionally cut and styled before the TopPop appearance. Tony wrote that Iggy had wanted a buzz cut, but Tony only had a scissors and so it turned out looking like a mohawk. I haven't seen any 1977 photos of Iggy where he seemed to have a mohawk, and it's likely he had a hairstylist salvage whatever Tony had left of his hair asap. I have no idea if alcohol or cocaine had anything to do with them thinking that Tony cutting their hair was a good idea.

Here's that TopPop video of Bowie's visit to their studio:

[highplainsdem]

6. I found a half-hour interview David did in Amsterdam the day before the TopPop appearance: