Episode Ep 608 March 11, 2024 37 min 48s

Suzi Ronson - Bowie’s stylist - knows why rock and roll is all about hair

From Word In Your Ear Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold

Suzi Ronson was working in a hairdressers in Beckenham in 1970 when a Mrs Jones dropped in for a shampoo and set talking gaily about her son, “an artistic boy who plays guitar and piano”. The same son who’d had a hit with Space Oddity and occasionally drifted down the High Road in a dress. Within weeks she’d become the first rock stylist, transforming Bowie’s hair, image and stage clothes and launching him in the direction of Ziggy Stardust and an international audience. She was a key part of his entourage that toured the UK, America and Japan and she talks about later life married to Spiders’ guitarist Mick Ronson, the role he played in Bowie’s success and the trials of his solo career in its aftermath. Both this podcast and her memoir (Me And Mr Jones: My Life With David Bowie and the Spiders From Mars) look at Bowie’s early career from a wholly new and original angle - in fact someone should base a film on it. A few highlights ...

… Haddon Hall and its exotic inhabitants.

… Schwarzkopf Red Hair Dye and other trade secrets.

.. how it feels to see an audience with the haircut you invented.

… expeditions to Liberty’s and Mr Fish with Angie Bowie.

… the Spiders’ northern sensibilities adjusting to the brave new world.

… how Tony Defries made Bowie mysterious and unreachable.

… why Lou Reed was a revelation.

… America’s Southern states reacting to the 1972 tour.

... and the magnetism of Bob Dylan and why Mick Ronson ended the Rolling Thunder tour with an invoice not a wage packet.

Order Suzi’s book here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Me-Mr-Jones-Suzi-Ronson/dp/057137185X

Suzi’s the special guest on the Lust For Life tour reading extracts from the book …