Its a miracle event that has made 2013 special for me already and snapped me out of my post Christmas gloom...David Bowie has a new single out and its great AND theres an album out soon. I loved Bowies "LOW" period most of all and this sounds like it was made for me.

ANYWAY the greatest few days of my photographic career so far were in 1995 when I was commissioned to photograph David Bowie in Los Angeles for a British rock magazine. If someone told me this story I would think it a bit exaggerated and boastful, but you know what, it happened and I am only telling it as it was. About 3 days before I flew to LA for the shoot I got a phone call at home and when I answered it the person on the line said "Hi Barry this is David Bowie" !!! I was on the verge of shouting down the phone for whoever it was to @$@%&*** off because I thought it was one of the guys from the magazine winding me up- BUT it WAS him, the man himself! He was calling to ask what my idea was for the shoot- this had NEVER happened before and has never happened since. I thought it was amazing he was taking the time to ring and discuss this with me , a VERY small fish in the photography world (an even smaller fish now). I had had an idea which might refer to the Surrealist film Un Chien Andalou which I remembered Bowie had used instead of a support act on one of his tours. It has that gruesomely famous eyeball slitting scene in it and the album Bowie was promoting at the time of the shoot made references to Orlan the self mutilating artist and other extreme cosmetic alterations, so it seemed apt. I knew I would get EXACTLY 30 minutes so I needed to go in with a clear goal, and do you know what he loved the idea. Come the day of the shoot at the Chateau Marmont hotel in LA I had hired lights, was allowed in to set up a seamless backdrop and put lights up in his hotel suite and David Bowie came out to meet me with his hair half done and held in place with a magnificent coronet of hair grips. His long time assistant also came over to whisper in my ear...I thought it was going to be the usual "You've got 5 minutes to shoot" but instead she told me that David was aware of my work and felt in safe hands. WHAT? The shoot was short and sharp, very friendly, and we chatted about Lucien Freud's painting of Leigh Bowery which I had seen the week before in London. Exactly 30 minutes was what I got...turns out the photographer before me was also from a Brit magazine though he and his assistant had been in LA for a week scouting locations, and had finally decided to ask David to hold a bunch of daffodils in the hotel garden while they shot (it took a WEEK on expenses to come up with THAT?)...apparently when Bowie questioned this the photographer got very high and mighty and said something like "dont you realise we have come a long way to do this shoot young man" ??? TO DAVID BOWIE!!! It doesnt end there. After the shoot while waiting at the entrance to the hotel's underground car park for a car to come and pick up the hired lights, a limo pulled out and sitting in the back seat was Iggy Pop who gave me a massive enthusiastic wave unprompted...on our first date I had taken my wife to see Iggy in London in 1977 ! It doesnt end there...out of the gloom in the car park came a young man who started to try to explain to the car park attendant that he wanted him to look after his bass guitar while he went off for a few days into the desert. He was struggling to make himself understood and kept looking over to me in good humoured frustration and we shared an eye roll or two and a few shrugs of the shoulders...it was Keanu Reeves! "Bus come and knock me down now for it cant get any better" I thought. I headed for the airport straight after that on a cloud of dreamy amazement at what had happened, and came back to the UK in business class having been upgraded by some mysterious benefactor! I landed in the UK early morning Saturday, went and got my rugby kit and played a match for Mitcham RFC first XV the same afternoon and we won. How many people can say all that? Heres a picture from the shoot- wanna buy a print?