'...He could not have been more friendly. We sat there gushing on about astrology, reincarnation, karma, Tibet - all the mystic stuff that bewitches pre-teenage girls. We were trying way too hard to look intelligent. If he noticed, he didn't let on.
He asked if we believed in UFOs, and what we thought of his pal Marc Bolan. He told us about his failed auditions for Hair, the risque stage musical of the moment. Tashi asked about Space Oddity, his new single.
Bowie said he was "out of his gourd" and "totally flipped" over it. It was later chosen as the theme track for Apollo 11's televised moon landings....'
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Transit (Login Sevenhigh) Forum Owner 84.70.250.222
Free Festival
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June 6 2008, 1:47 PM
A SPIDER'S WEB OF NAME COINCIDENCES
DAVID BOWIE AT THE BECKENHAM FREE FESTIVAL
A small yet significant event in rock's heritage - recounted by someone who was there.
By David Bebbington
August 16, 1969
In mid-1969, David Bowie was still a long way from superstar status, despite having been in the music business for several years. He was living in Beckenham with a friend Mary Finnigan, and appearing most Sundays at The Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street.
The shows began as a way for him and Mary to make a little money and to showcase his talents, but developed into what was christened the Beckenham Arts Lab "Growth". I co-hosted these shows and played as a blues duo with my friend Ken Symonds when Bowie had other engagements.
Bowie once told me that he had spent the night in the waiting room on Stockport Station, using his guitar as a pillow after playing at a Folk Club and missing the last train home.
As a further development of the Arts Lab idea, and in the hope of raising money to fund permanent premises, it was decided to organise a free festival at Beckenham Recreation Ground on August 16, 1969. Bowie rang round his friends in the music business but didn't get many positive replies from name artists. For example, the manager of Noel Redding (who had just left the Jimi Hendrix Experience and was now leading a group called Fat Mattress) declaired "Noel Redding is a superstar and doesn't play free festivals " .
In the end Bowie played solo, and the bill also included singer-songwriters Bridget St John, Kieth Christmas and Toni Visconti. I appeared (invisibly) as a puppeteer in the Brian Cole Puppet Theatre, presenting a rather drug-influenced version of a children's puppet play. There were numerous stalls at the festival selling jewellery, ceramics, herbs and food (including hamburgers cooked in a wheelbarrow by Angela Bowie-to-be).
On the day the weather was exceptionally good - and there was no violence either, thank you. Bowie played many of the tunes which would appear on his Space Oddity album, such as the title track, 'Janine' 'Wide-Eyed Boy From Free Cloud', 'An occasional Dream' and others.........
August 2009 will be the 40th anniversary of The Beckenham Free Festival. To mark that occasion a plaque will be placed on the bandstand at Croydon Road Recreation Ground. The date will be announced in due course. An event is planned. Will keep you posted. Below is a draft of the plaque. Have you spotted the wrong date? Should read the 16th. It will be alright on the night.
Bowie's second LP, first released November 1969, closes with a song inspired by this event, called "Memory Of A Free Festival."
The lyrics of the song relate that a "sun machine" came down; that they "spoke with tall Venusians passing through," and that someone named "Peter tried to climb aboard..."
The name of David Bowie's first proper manager, pre-Kenneth Pitt and pre-1969, was Ralph Horton. A different man with the same name as this features in James Moseley's UFO memoir "Shockingly Close To The Truth."
The man most associated with making contact with Venusians was George Adamski. Mr.Adamski gave the name Orthon to the Venusian he met for the first time in November 1952.
Orthon is an anagram of the surname Horton.
In the song "Memory Of A Free Festival," the man who tried to climb aboard the Venusian (?) craft was named Peter. According to David Bebbington's article:
David Bowie himself put particular zest into his compositions, battling bravely against troublesome loudspeakers. A friend Peter Horton, from Vienna, played a guitar performance of J.S. Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. Mr Horton, who represented Austria in the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest.....
The name Peter Horton appears, as can be seen above, on the draft for the commemorative plaque to the festival.
Furthermore the back cover picture of Bowie's LP, which begins with "Space Oddity" and ends with "Memory Of A Free Festival," includes extraterrestrial imagery and was executed by a man named George (Underwood).
George + Orthon=Venusian
+ Ralph Horton
+ Ralph Horton
+ Peter Horton
+ Venusians & Peter + George
What a web of coincidences!
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The Ralph Horton flying saucer crash refers to a "flying saucer" that crashed on the farm of Ralph Horton in Fulton County, Georgia, in July 1952.
Some of Horton's neighbors saw the object fly over their property before it crashed in Horton's yard. Horton recovered the object and called both the U.S. Air Force and the Atlanta airport to see if they had any interest in it. After describing the object over the telephone, neither organization had any interest in it and they said that Horton could do what ever he liked with it, so he tossed it in the woods behind his house. The object "was a box-like contraption made of wood sticks and tin or aluminum foil with a weather balloon attached" (see photo). This fits closely with the description and photographs of the material recovered five years earlier in the Roswell UFO incident.
Ufologist James Moseley learned of the crash from the flying saucer file of the Atlanta Constitution and investigated the incident..............
...Ralph Horton became Bowie's first official manager. Horton was working then for agent Terry King, managing Lord Sutch and the Casuals; he also worked as a driver for the Moody Blues. He arranged a few shows. The first — as a support to the Moody Blues at the Bromel club in Bromley. Other shows included summer weekend engagements at the Winter Gardens in Ventnor, and support for Johnny Kidd & The Pirates on the Isle Of Wight.
They also did a series of afternoon concerts for the Marquee Inecto Show, which were broadcast by a pirate radio station, Radio London, and sponsored by the makers of Inecto shampoo. They used to sing songs by The Kinks, Chim Chim Cheree (from Mary Poppins), and Mars (from Holst's Planet suite, the theme music from the British television serial The Quartermass Experiment).
In late 1965, Horton phoned up Ken Pitt, who was then managing Manfred Mann and Crispian St. Peters, because the band had financial difficulties. Pitt would become Bowie's second manager later, but didn't have time for him then. He did suggest that Horton's client change his name, and David Jones became David Bowie in November '65.......
Transit (Login Sevenhigh) Forum Owner 77.101.166.49
22 May 1969
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July 18 2008, 7:05 AM
'...In the same month Tim [Hollier] met American songwriter AMORY KANE (who had just issued a largely overlooked 1968 LP), and they began playing gigs complete with light show, sound effects, the accompaniment of Rick Cuff and, as it happened at Wigmore Hall in May '69, whilst performing in the final number "Evolution", along with Rick and Jack the young DAVID BOWIE appeared on stage in full space suit costume and created a dance ending with his almost naked body stricken on the stage. There were rumours of the possible issue of a live album of these events but nothing emerged.......'
