Scottish rocker tells how he got David Bowie started
Bassist gave Bowie boots and recorded early songs
Tags: David Bowie
We’ve all got our claims to fame, the times we served so-and-so a coffee, or waited in line for the toilet with a rock god. But one Scottish rocker has a slightly more impressive story to most of us, after helping set David Bowie on the road to becoming a rock icon.
Alan Muir originaly played bass with The Beatstalkers - dubbed the Scottish Beatles - and met Bowie when his band moved to London in search of fame. Bowie, then a fledgling musician, shared a London manager with the band.
“We met him when he was just a teenager but, even then, he had a charisma you couldn’t ignore,” Muir tells The Daily Record.
The band recorded several songs written by Bowie, and let the young musician play acoustic guitar and sing backing on a few of them.
“We recorded ‘Silver Tree Tops School for Boys’, which David had written when he was just 16 or 17. We also recorded “When I’m Five’, which was a very strange little ditty and ended up as a B-side.
“David played acoustic guitar and sang abcking vocals on them.
“The last song was ‘Everything Was You’. They weren’t commercial really. He hadn’t quite honed his magic at that point but I always thought that when he presented a song there was no shyness or lack of confidence. The confidence he had was amazing, he sold the songs with his personality.”
'David Bowie Is' is currently on display the the V&A
Muir’s band kept going for a whiler, but gave up when their tour van was stolen and Alan moved into handmade boots, opening a unit at Kensington Market, and in another bizarre twist of small-worldedness was managed by none other than Queen’s Freddy Mercury. They even gave Bowie a pair of boots for free when he didn’t have the money to pay them, and Mercury even fitted them for him.
But all though he’d left the music industry for a time (he later enjoy success with punk band The Only Ones in the 1970s) Muir stayed in touch with Bowie and became friends with him.
The future Ziggy Stardust even wrote a song about Muir’s son, Frank, and Muir believes that Bowie took the album title Hunky Dory from him as he used it as a catchphrase.
“Often Frank would come with me to work and David thought he was a fantastic kid.
“He started writing a song called ‘Little Bombardier’ that mentioned Frank and got he to teach him to sing it in a Scottish accent.
“The song ended up on his first album.”
Below: Photos - Take a sneak peak at 'David Bowie Is' @ the V&A
