All language subtitles for Beside Bowie The Mick Ronson Story

DAVID: Around '69 or '70,

Tony Visconti and I
were on the lookout
for a guitarist

to record with us
on my new songs.

My then drummer,
John Cambridge,

started pushing hard
for a guitarist
called Mick Ronson

that he'd worked with
a couple of years before.

Tony and I were only
too keen to hear him

so John traveled up
to the North of England
to talk to him,

and I think
he put forward
the plan to Mick

while Mick was marking
out the white lines
of a rugby pitch.

Anyway, Mick said
he'd give it a go
and he came down to London.

* The Jean Genie
Lives on his back

* The Jean Genie
Loves chimney stacks

* He's outrageous
He screams and he bawls

* Jean Genie...

DAVID: Interestingly,
in performance Mick
played a lot more raw

and spontaneously
than the work
he did on record,

the energy and grit
cut through the room

and he immediately
established himself
as a very impactful player.

I'd like to introduce you
to the guitar player
from The Spiders from Mars.

Mick Ronson!

* All the young dudes

Young dudes!

* Carry the news

Where are you?

* Boogaloo dudes

Stand up!

* Carry the news

* Teenage wasteland

* It's only teenage wasteland *

BOB: We had opportunities
in the 60's

of self-expression that
had never arrived
to any general before ours.

MARY: Simultaneously,
with that there was a whole
bunch of people in America,

like Allen Ginsberg,
that whole movement
on the West Coast,

who were doing pretty much
the same thing.

It was revolutionary
but in an absolutely
totally, non-violent way.

And the music that we
had, we always said
we had the best sex,

the best drugs
and the best music.

BOB: And it all seems
to be cool to get stoned
or take a trip,

in fact, not only is it cool,
it's kind of encouraged

that this is the way you
arrive at creative expression.

MARY: And that
was the setting that moved
out into the suburbs in 1969.

I lived in Dagenham
and I met David,

and a couple of days later
he moved in,

and when he came, he
just had one small rucksack
and a Gibson 12-string.

He spent his
entire time composing.

All the songs that
were on his second album

were written when
he was living

at 24 Foxgrove Road, my flat.

So David moved in
and, yes,

he staged a very
elegant seduction,
very soon afterwards,

but we never observed
lodger/landlady conventions.

We founded a folk club
at the Three Tuns pub
in Dagenham High Street.

It became an arts lab
which was a movement
at the time

that started in Drury Lane
in London.

The Arts Laboratory
in Drury Lane was kind
of the template, really,

the sort of mixed media
idea of merging

you know, music,
dance, poetry, expression.

MARY: And it became
absolutely, totally magnetic

for the entire youth
movement of South London.

I used to do David's
mother's hair, in Beckenham
High Street, Evelyn Paget's.

And she used to talk to me
about her son, David.

It was Mrs. Jones.

It wasn't until she mentioned
Space Oddity that my ears
kind of pricked up,

I said, "Space Oddity?
Are we talking
about David Bowie?"

"Yes," she said,
"I'm his mum."

That's how I met his mother
and then she brought
Angie into the shop.

MARY: I came back after being
away for a couple of days

and there was a notebook
by the bed that said,

the sort of beginnings
of a song, Beautiful Angie.

Angie Bowie was a very loud,
American, young girl

who was definitely bisexual,

and was the main force,

strength behind
David Bowie through
to the Hammersmith Odeon.

* Soon you'll grow
So take a chance

* With a couple of kooks

* Hung up on romancing

SUZI:
The first time I saw David

he was walking down
Beckenham High Street
wearing a dress,

and he's with this girl
who looks a bit like a bloke.

She had like, a man's
suit on and heavy shoes
and short hair.

DANA: I've always
lived in my parents'
marvelous basement flat

and David used to come
round a lot, 'cause I had
that big place,

the Fun Palace
as Lionel Bart
used to call it.

So... And Angie called
it The Bunker.

MARY: As soon
as Angie came on the scene,
they started flat hunting.

And so she found this place
just up the road,

rather pretentiously known
as Haddon Hall.

It was this fabulous place
with this huge, stained glass
window, 20 feet high.

The whole length of the hall,
not one window,

the whole wall
stained glass, like a church.

That huge hall,

was absolutely full,
it was an atrium,

trees, shrubs,
it was glorious.

But you have to understand
there were 18 cats

and the cats made themselves
right at home.

So if you can appreciate
that it took us two weeks

and probably
ten gallons of bleach.

KEVIN: He was creating
this kind of weird,

post sort of hippy,
proto-punk, almost thing,

yeah, it was a weird setup
in Haddon Hall.

BOB: It was kind of like
the London equivalent
of Andy Warhol's The Factory,

if you want
to put it like that.

Kind of that's what David
might have had in his mind
that it could... become.

To me it was always like a set,
it was like a stage set.

MARY: Mick Ronson
appeared on the scene
roundabout that time.

MICK: It all started
with the drummer

that used to play
in this group
that I played with,

when I was living
in Hull at that time.

I was working as a gardener.

I was kind of pushing
a lawn mower round
the school gardens, you know,

around the rose bushes
and everything.

And he was the drummer
for a short while
in this group

that I played with
called The Rats.

There were a few Rats
around in the UK

but these particular Rats
were the Rats from Hull,

led by a buy
called Benny Marshall

and he had various line ups,

including John Cambridge
and including Mick Ronson.

I remember seeing The Rats
and thinking,
"What an amazing guitarist!"

I didn't meet him at the time,
I just saw the band,

but they were fantastic,
The Rats, really, really good.

There was a lot
of popular bands around

but The Rats, I think,
was probably, you know,
the most popular.

But of course,
they would be, wouldn't they?

TONY: Mick had already
played for a producer
called Gus Dudgeon,

so we heard about Mick.

And it was John Cambridge
who mentioned that,

"Mick was in my band,
The Rats."

MICK: He played
with another group
called Julia's Eyes.

They used to back
David Bowie on some gigs,
I think, for a short while.

He said, "You've got to meet
this guy, David Bowie,"
you know, I said,

"You should come
down to London."
You know...

TONY: But then it came
as a complete surprise
that he was a gardener

and he wasn't
playing music anymore.

So I came down to London

and we were sitting
round his house.

DAVID: I started playing
some of my songs
on a 12-string

and he plugged in his Gibson.

And even though
he was playing
at a very low volume,

the energy and grit
cut through the room

and he immediately
established himself
as a very well defined player.

TONY: We had a John Peel
show in two days to do

and it was just going
to be John Cambridge,
myself and David.

David was going
to be on acoustic guitar,

but there was some
electric guitar
needed for the songs.

I mean, we were, you know,
sitting around playing
guitar, and like,

sort of cross-legged
on the floor and everything,
you know.

And I picked up the guitar
and was just playing along.

TONY: When he played
his first few notes

and just was getting
his tone out of his amplifier

David and I looked
at each other and we went
silently, "Wow!" like that.

And he said,
"I've got a radio show to...

"To play this evening.

"Will you come and play?"
You know.

So I said,
"Yeah, alright then."

So with a couple
of hours of rehearsal
Mick joined us.

MICK: I didn't really know
what was going on,

so I kind of stood
on his left side,
so I could watch his hands

and watch where
he was playing, you know.

And so I didn't know
any of the numbers really,

so I kind of just watched
him and kinda played
through everything.

DAVID: He picked up
chord sequences really fast

and he was then able
to improvise around them
pretty much immediately.

The radio show sounded
pretty good considering how
little rehearsal there'd been.

JOHN: Are you going
to be doing gigs
with this man?

DAVID: Yes, we're going
to do some gigs,
are we, Michael?

Michael doesn't really know,
he's just come down from Hull.

And I met him
for the first time
about two days ago,

through John, the drummer,
who's worked with me once.

JOHN: I see,
but you are planning to go
on the road, as it were?

DAVID: Yes, fairly shortly.

And I guess everybody
kind of liked it

and then from then he
said, "Why don't you
just go back to Hull

"and get your things
and come back down?"

ANGIE: We got to Hull,
we got to Mrs. Ronson's house.

Ronno came
from the back of the house,

in a shirt,

pale blue stripes and white,

and starched collar
and the cuffs rolled up.

And he came in
and he didn't see us,
we were over here,

and he walked over
to his mother and he grabbed
her round the waist

and he gave her
a big kiss on both cheeks.

And he said,
"Well, Mum, I'm off now."

And she said, "No!

"David and Angie are here,

"and I think
they want to talk with you."

He said,
"I was going to meet them,"

and he came over
and he shook David's hand.

Immediately they clicked,
immediately,

and it was as though, you know,
it was always meant to be.

He loved him enough
to tell him to move in.

MICK: You kind of walk
in the driveway and there'd
be like these two big pillars

and eight or nine steps
up to the front door,
a big front door, you know.

When you walked in,
you saw a big staircase
right in front of you,

a great, big,
winding staircase,

which sort of went up
and it had this balcony
around the top,

a very high ceiling.

And then you had
the rooms off, different
rooms off to the side.

These rooms were massive,

so it was like a mansion.

And it was real cheap too,
you know, because David
only paid £7 a month rent.

I'd never seen rooms
that big before.

I come from like...

I grew up in a terraced
house, you know,

a little, tiny, terraced house
with no electricity upstairs
and things.

We used to have a tin bath
and we used to have
to fill it up with a kettle.

ANGIE: So there they
were living in Haddon Hall.

And I used to go
down on Sunday,

there I'd see David
and Angie hanging out,

David writing his songs,
Angie finding food
for everyone.

And there
was the Spiders from Mars
in their embryonic days,

sleeping on sort of mattresses
up on the minstrels' gallery
of Haddon Hall.

And that's when I first
met Mick Ronson,

who from now onwards
I have always called Ronno.

I can't bear it when
people call him Mick

because if you
talk about a Mick,

you know,
I know about five Micks
but there's only one Ronno.

There was like a little
wine cellar downstairs,

man, it was tiny, this place.

And Tony Visconti
went down there
and he kind of, you know,

threw all the rubbish out
and he put some sort of,
like foam on the walls

and egg cartons
and things like that,
sound proofing.

And this was like
a rehearsal room

and we only rehearsed in there,

I don't know,
half a dozen times.
I mean it was so...

It was like being
in a dungeon or something.

TONY: Towards the end
of the Space Oddity album

he was also present
at the mixes.

So in those days
you didn't have
computer automation

and tape was quite noisy.

So I definitely remember
Mick and David Bowie and myself
and John Cambridge

all on our knees
in front of the console,

pushing the volumes
up and down
and hitting the buttons

that were the on
and off buttons
for the tracks and all that

because tape was just
abysmal in those days.

Yeah,
it was a fun memory.

So Mick really
joined into the spirit
of finishing that album

although he just played
on that one track,
Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud.

MICK: We called
the band, Hype.

We did one or two live things

and I was dressed
in a gangster suit.

Tony Visconti was dressed
as Batman or something
with a cape.

TONY: Ironically,
they made costumes for myself,
John Cambridge and Mick.

And when it came
to a costume for David
we ran out of money,

so David got the short end.

MICK: I remember we played
this gig at The Roundhouse

and I can't smoke grass
or anything.

I remember this guy,
he said, "Oh, hey, have
a puff of this joint,"

and I thought,
"Yeah, all right then,
just two tokes or something."

Oh man!
I was so stoned, you know.

I mean, I don't even remember
going on and playing
and getting off again.

TONY: What I didn't realize
was that Mick was a trained
pianist

and he studied violin
when he was a kid,

so he had these
two other major instruments
under his belt.

And then he noticed
that I had scored
an arrangement

for something on
The Man Who Sold The World.

So Mick was like,
looking over my shoulder
and he said,

"Can you teach me
how you score?" because he
could read and write music

but he didn't know
the rules of scoring music,

when you write
for a bunch of musicians.

You have to write
all the parts
underneath each other

and they have to all
line up visually

and then you have
to take it off
the score paper

and write out
the individual parts.

That I showed him how to do.

ANGIE: I watched him
working with Tony Visconti
one night.

And I said, "You want
to write the parts,
don't you?"

And he said, "Yes,"
and I said,

"Well, there's no shows,
there's no gigs for a while.

"Why don't you go
study music in Hull?

"Then you'll never, ever,

"have to watch someone else
write the parts for you,

"'cause you have symphonies
and orchestras in your mind."
And it was like,

two weeks' later
he was gone.

And Mick came back
and he could
orchestrate anything,

write parts for anything
and he wasn't gone a year.

I'd heard the rumors
that he was way more involved

in The Man Who Sold The World
than David was.

* We passed upon the stair

* We spoke of was and when

TONY: In the recording studio
when we were making
The Man Who Sold The World

Mick was also looking
over my shoulder all the time

and asking me
why I did certain things,

and he'd be interested
in the differences,
all the choices you had,

you could have the settings
this way or that way
or that way.

He was much more
than a lead guitarist,
much more,

and I knew he could be.

TONY: We had done
The Man Who Sold The World.

It was a rather
obscure-sounding album
at the time,

it sounded like nothing else.

The record company
didn't believe in us,

so with that
lack of enthusiasm
David Bowie felt that

he needed to get a manager
to really, launch him.

I started, basically,
a record production company.

My expertise
was making record deals.

And Lawrence Myers
had asked me
if I would come in

to help him
and his sort of new partner,

by the name of Tony Defries,
in developing artists.

TONY: Mick, and by this
time Woody Woodmansey,
they went back to Hull.

They were getting fed up
'cause they weren't
getting enough money,

they were hungry,
it was...

Yeah. There was a lot
of things going on
that were niggling them.

David was booked to play
somewhere around Birmingham.

He was driving up in his Jag.

Woody and Mick
were crammed into a taxi
with all the equipment.

They got up to the M1
where you turn off
to Birmingham

or you carry on up North
and they said to the driver,

"Carry on up North,
we're going home."

So David arrived at the gig
without a band
and had to do it solo.

So I went back to Hull.

We kind of got The Rats
back together

and we went out and played
some gigs, you know.

I think this went on
for about five months,

and my father
kept saying to me,
"Why don't you get a job?"

Well, I didn't want
to do that, I mean,

I didn't want to stay
in the same town
as I grew up in, you know.

I wanted to live,
I kind of wanted to do
something with my life.

I always wanted
to do something with my life.

It wasn't that Ronno
and The Rats had become like,
overwhelming successes,

and plus he
was in Hull.

It wasn't the gateway
to stardom, was it, you know?

With no disrespect to Hull,

it's not really been noted
for producing

a massive amount
of great musicians,

except for Mick
and the Spiders.

I mean, you're not going
to be in Italy and they go,
"Oh, yes, Hull.

"you have Hull...
the wonderful..."
It ain't gonna happen.

MICK: And then David
called me up and he said,

"I've met this new
manager, Tony Defries.
You've got to come tomorrow."

I was a little
depressed anyway,

so I was like poom,
I was straight on the train.

I was straight back
to London, you know,

and went straight
to some, small demo studio.

And I was hearing new songs
and David was all excited.

He was all bubbly
and things were going on,

and Tony Defries
was making plans,

you know like,
"We're gonna do this, this
and this and this and this."

So, it was kinda like
really exciting, you know?

Tony then lost interest,
to a certain extent,

because a man
joined the team
called Don Hunter.

And Don Hunter
was the personal manager
of Stevie Wonder.

LAWRENCE:
Don said, "You know,
he wants to leave Motown,"

so he...

He brought him in.

JON: And he had
met Lawrence Myers
and Tony Defries,

and he had worked
a way to try
and get them interested,

in breaking
Stevie Wonder's contract.

LAWRENCE:
He was under age
and he was blind,

and he had no advice
and he was going to be 21.

And we arranged
that we were going
to take over management

on the 21st birthday.

Well, that developed
into a tragedy because...

someone kidnapped
Stevie Wonder's mother.

And Stevie was incognito,

and there was some
big pressure going on.

And Tony was saying,
"No, no, we'll go..."
I said, "Do whatever you want.

"I'm going home,
it's over."

And he came back to the UK,

without signing Stevie Wonder.

And then about
three months later,

huge Billboard,

full page ad
in Billboard magazine,
"Motown is the place for me,"

Stevie Wonder.

Defries comes back
from America, disillusioned,

not been able
to sign Stevie Wonder,

"David's got a hit,
he's my artist! Right."

JON: And it was only
at that time,

that he turned
all his attention
to David Bowie.

I was an old hippy, basically,

and we started Friars
in June '69.

Basically we were doing
it for the music,

we weren't doing it
to make money.

We organized for Country Club
and we organized Friars

and we organized
certain other things.

We first put David
on in September '71.

You know, we thought,
"Well, we'll give it a go."

It didn't sell out,
we had a 700 capacity.

I think we had about
450, 500 people in,
something like that.

And I remember
he turned up in the afternoon,

and he was wearing
these big Oxford Bags,
you know, and very long hair.

And then, you know,
in that evening
it was just an amazing gig,

it was a really
magic moment in time.

I remember
meeting Mick that day
for the first time.

So yeah, we did this gig
and he came out and he
played most of Hunky Dory.

And I think that
was the sort of world
debut of Hunky Dory,

because it hadn't
been released at that point.

RICK: I first met Bowie
through Gus Dudgeon.

Gus was producing him
and I played on

in Memory Of A Free Festival
and a couple of other things.

And David called me directly
and said he wanted me to come

to his house in Beckenham,
he lived in Beckenham then.

I was living in a tiny,
little two-up, two-down
in Harrow.

And his hallway
you could fit
my entire house in.

And I just remember going...

And we went in and there
were the lads from Hull,

as I lovingly called them
initially, Woody and Trevor,

and it was the first time
I'd met Mick.

And David said,
"Some of these pieces I want
to be very piano-driven."

JOE: I've heard it
referred to as a folk record,
that's complete nonsense.

It's acoustic glam
is what it is.

RICK: We ended up
in Trident Studios

and that was really
the first time that I got
to know Mick really well.

TONY: Lo and behold, Mick did
all these beautiful string
arrangements for David Bowie.

It's pretty obvious
that he took charge
of that record

and became the producer
with Ken Scott.

I've got some...

secretive tapes of the sessions
with Rick Wakeman,

and you can hear Ronson
all the way through it,
"No, you're doing it wrong."

And I instinctively
would know what Mick
was gonna play

and I think
if he were around today
and you asked him,

I'd hazard a guess he would
say he would instinctively
know what I was going to play.

He came up
with the string arrangement.

It was his first ever
string arrangement,
the one on Life on Mars,

incredible!

How do you come up
with something that good?

You've got to remember
this is...

They were living
in Haddon Hall,
they had no money,

they had nothing,
you know what I mean.

So everything
was done on the cheap.

To pull off a string
arrangement like that
that sounded like

it could have been
on a Sinatra record,

produced by some bigwig
in New York was phenomenal,

it was a fantastic
sounding record.

And when you get
as far as there,

you would expect
them to go back to...

But David does
a weird thing.

Which is a, for those
who understand
is a chord of A flat,

but instead
of an A flat in the base,
it's an E flat in the base,

but then he does
a thing of...

moving the chromatic scale.

I mean it works brilliantly
but it's bizarre.

So you go...

Which is what
I always call cinematic.

He thought, um...

I'm convinced David
thought in pictures,

'cause all of his songs...
you could...

Virtually all of his songs
you could make a film out of.

Mad lyrics about Micky Mouse
and cows and Norfolk Broads,
and like,

okay, again,
I just accepted them like,
as this is this guy's art,

it's a bit off kilter,
it's not Cum on Feel the Noize.

They were reasonably
successful.

They were not
unbelievably successful

but he was unbelievably
successful,

because he had now
gone into his various persona.

CHERRY: We were in rehearsal
for Pork,

and Lee Childers who,

was the stage manager of Pork
and a rock photographer,
knew of David Bowie.

TONY:
There was a little article
about him in Rolling Stone,

as the man in the dress.

So he definitely was on my
radar and on Cherry's
and Lee's radar

as the guy who was married
and had a kid but wore
a dress.

CHERRY: We said, "We've
got to go see him," you know,

and we were all pumped up
because we were Warhol people

and we had just hit the town
with a lot of publicity

and we kind
of walked in there
all full of confidence

and introduced
ourselves to Angie.

So she went,
"Oh, David will be delighted,"
blah, blah, blah, you know,

we all said we were Pork,
Warhol members of the cast
and everything.

* Andy Warhol looks a scream

* Hang him on my wall

TONY: He was very taken
with The Factory,

with the whole idea of Warhol,
about what he perceived
to be The Factory.

We went
to Andy Warhol's apartment
when David met him.

He came in the room,
he put on the tape
of Hunky Dory,

and then left.

And then came back
after it was all finished.

So

I don't know,
it was a pretty...

It was a pretty strange
thing to do, you know,

I mean, you put somebody's
tape on and then you leave.

KEVIN: David wanted
him to love this record

that he'd made
about him called Andy Warhol

and Warhol
didn't like it at all.

So I just sat there
and enjoyed my wine,

cheese and crackers
and everything else, yeah.

MICK: The next thing
was the Ziggy Stardust thing

which really
got into this heavier,
more electric music.

DAVID: I think
Mick's involvement
was absolutely crucial.

He had the rock experience.

He had the sort of rock
live experience, if you like,

with The Rats
and the other bands
he'd been in.

What he basically did
is he rocked David up.

He brought it all together

and under the umbrella sound
of the electric guitar,

and that's what
Ziggy Stardust was to me,

it was much more
of a rock album.

It was never like, um,

David Bowie upfront
and you guys
are all back there.

I mean, half the time
Mick was up with David
which was great to see.

* If we can sparkle
He may land tonight

* Don't tell your papa
He'll get us locked up... *

That magic moment
that everybody talks about,

June the 6th, June the 12th,
1972, Top of the Pops.

He was singing the chorus
of Star Man with Bowie

and Bowie threw his arm
round him and the whole world
supposedly shifted on its axis.

MICK ROCK: I mean it's such
a simple thing, he was just
putting his arm round a mate,

but people got
very excited about it

with the homosexual overtone.

And the other moment,
of course, was...

Was what is commonly known
as the guitar fellatio shot.

I remember going
to the side of stage

as I sometimes would,
to get a different
kind of look,

and there was David
right noshing away
on Mick's guitar.

He said that Mick
was swinging his guitar
around in a certain way

that he had to go down
to keep biting it.

Bingo, you know,
a sex act on stage.

But the problem
was, they couldn't
get it in the paper.

There was no room
in The Melody Maker.

But what they did
was to buy a page.

And it got seen
in key places in America.

We played one or two gigs
and I remember one gig we...

we played...

David wore a dress
and I wore a dress.

No, no one ever wanted
to put him in a dress.
That's bollocks.

Absolute bollocks.
David wouldn't have shared
anything with anyone.

DAVID: Mick
was a self-contained man.

He didn't seem
to need much
to keep him going.

His cigarettes, his guitar
and a sturdy pair of shoes
and he was ready to go.

A less needy person
you couldn't find.

ANGIE:
I just talked him into it,
I just said, "Oh please,

"you've got eye lashes
like a cow, put mascara
on them and stop fussing!"

"Oh, when you say it
like that, it's different.

"Oh, that's... Is that
alright?" I said, Yes,
now I can see your eyes.

"Is that too bad?
I didn't ask you
to wear lipstick."

He put lipstick on
the next time.

He went "I'm not scared!"

Angela was the real
outrageous one, you know,

she was always into
the way things looked
and she was, you know...

I love Angie.

She gets a little crazy,
you know, I mean,
she's like...

She's almost over...
Too enthusiastic
about everything.

It's like...

And bouncing down the road
and doing all this,

and I'm thinking, "Mmm."

It was important,
we had to make it theater,

we had to make it
touring theater,
rock and roll,

that excitement.

Angela was watching
Star Trek one day

and said, "Wow,
you should have
boots like these."

And the Ziggy Stardust
thing came.

It was after we went to see
the movie Clockwork Orange.

JOE: I got to know Mick
a bit but I've seen...

Really got to know
Woody Woodmansey

and I got to know Trevor
when we worked together
in The Cybernauts.

The stories that
they were telling us about,
"I'm not fucking wearing that,"

and all that kind of stuff
were hilarious.

DAVID: These guys all came
from Hull, you know,

we're going to play
in a rock and roll band, they
liked the songs and all that.

And I said,
"Yeah, it's great.

"Do you want to see
what we're gonna wear?"

"Oh, yeah."

"No way.

"Not bloody likely,
I'm not putting that on!"

I said, "No, believe me,
you'll look great,
it'll really suit you."

"Yeah, right!"

And so I don't know how
I did it, I managed
to talk them into doing it.

And a couple of nights later

we'd done a couple of shows
and all these girls
were all over them.

And suddenly
the dressing room procedure
was really different.

It's, "Right,
who's got the blush?"

"Hey, Trevor,
have you finished
with that mascara?"

I remember
this place we played.

It was this pub,

and the women
in this pub were...
Talk about a rough crowd.

And we had to...

And I remember
we had to leave the stage
really quickly,

because people
were coming up
with their stiletto heels,

and people were just...

They just wanted to beat
the living shit out of us.

When he announced
his bisexuality
to the Melody Maker,

I think it was quite
a shock, you know?

It wasn't a thing that
you said, to the public.

You know,
bisexuality was a thing
that you kinda kept private.

The gay community
really wasn't out
of the closet in the UK.

In my experience
David was never
what I would call gay,

I never saw a gay side to him.

Not that I would have
cared one way or the other.

He was always pretty
heterosexual around me.

It was more about,
I think, narcissism
and having attention...

I don't think it was an issue
with him, his sexuality
was very fluid.

He did like
the gay scene though.

I think he liked the sombrero,
he liked the flamboyance
of the queens

and the clothes
and the outrageousness
and the style.

JON: The Sombrero
was a coffee bar
in Kensington High Street.

They had two nights a week
which was gay night.

I got invited down one night
and I met up with David
and Angie and I met Freddie.

And Mick Ronson
was there,

and Mick went to go
to the toilet and he
came back and he said,

"Oh," he says, "I don't know
who's gay and who's not gay,"

he says, "I walk
into the men's room"
and he said, "look."

He said, "Everybody
was women and men

"and everybody in each one,
nobody really knew
who was where."

KEVIN: Freddie Burretti
was somebody who David met

in the Sombrero
nightclub in 1971.

MICK: Freddie
was a very kind of striking
looking young man.

KEVIN: They got on famously.

David was attracted
to Freddie, there's no
doubt about it.

David wanted
to make Freddie a star.

So they put this thing together
called Arnold Corns which...

was... Freddie was supposed
to be singing.

And I think
Freddie tried to sing,

and David sang
along with it, too.

So on the Arnold Corns tapes,

what you were actually
hearing, was David.

And Freddie was supposed
to be the singer, but Freddie
was not a singer.

Freddie is a clothes designer.

KEVIN: Freddie didn't have
a musical bone in his body

but he helped create
these wonderful outfits.

I mean, David wanted
to get this guy
involved in many ways

so that then this guy
could then start making
all his clothes for him.

* Freak out in
A moonage daydream
Oh, yeah *

KEVIN: People don't realize
quite what a chance
he was taking,

particularly after
The Man Who Sold
The World cover,

where he was wearing a dress.

BOB: Wearing a dress in Texas
in 1969 if you were a man

was, you know...
You were bound
to provoke a reaction,

and that's what David did.

JON: David had gone
to do a radio interview

and he'd been wearing
the dress in the studio,

and had been talking
about wearing the dress.

And somebody had
turned up, with a shotgun,

and had decided
to start blasting out.

And David got very worried.

You know, this vision of him
dragging this dress up

and running off
down the street.

It did cause a few problems
because people would call you
names and all this, you know.

I mean, people would
kind of come down on you
for it, basically, you know.

I mean, I wasn't
bisexual or anything

but they figured like,
"Well David Bowie's bisexual,

"then what's this guy doing
playing with David Bowie?"

You know, "He must
be gay as well."

We'd get the bus home
from town,

and I remember
a bunch of girls
or whoever was on the bus

and they'd be going like,
"Oh, that's your brother
who's...

"you know,
that poof drummer!"

You know, they couldn't even
get it right, you know?

I was just thinking,
"Yeah, okay!"

ANGIE: I said,
"You have to understand

"lots and lots of lots
of straight people support
the gay community,

"not because they're gay,
you understand?

"It's a question
of freedom of choice.

"No one is expecting you
to be gay!"

I think Mick kind of played
the innocent boy from Hull
a little bit, too.

He knew that was charming,
I don't think he was as scared
as everybody thinks he was.

MICK: If it bothered me,
it bothered me maybe
for three or four days.

What did bother me was,

I gave my mother
and father a car,
it was a white mini.

Somebody came along
with black paint

and threw black paint
all over the white mini.

It doesn't matter what
people think about me,

but what mattered to me
was what people did
to my parents.

IAN: Mick was never
really that way,
I mean he was always Mick,

you know, he'd do the blonde
hair, he'd do whatever he had
to do on stage

but he was always Mick.

JOE: I'd been a fan
of Mott The Hoople

since two years
before they became known.

So I was the only
kid in school

bouncing up and down
in the playground when
Dudes got released

and became a hit,
going, "I told you so."

IAN: David had been
working on that song
with The Spiders,

but they'd run it
into the ground.

So, I guess we came
along at the right time,

and he offered it us
at Defries's place
off of Regents Street.

KEVIN: The bass player
of Mott the Hoople
phoned David and said,

"I'm out of a job.
You haven't got a job,
have you?"

And he said,
"Why, what's happened?"

"Well, the band's broke up.
We broke up."
"You're joking!

"Right, don't break up!
I've got some great songs.
I'll write you something."

And David sat cross-legged
on the floor and played
All the Young Dudes,

and it was like...

It wasn't just Mott,
it was Mott and Bowie!

A, I can sing it, B,

you know, it's huge.
Why is he giving it us?

So we never argued
and we just went in
and it was David,

two nights, two evenings,

and that was Dudes.

And that song
is a song of a generation.

* All the young dudes

Hey, dudes!

* Carry the news

Where are you?

* Boogaloo dudes

* Carry the news

MICK: I've always
got on with Ian.

We've always been
really good friends.

We worked together
periodically, you know.

Ronson did
a string arrangement for
the All the Young Dud album

on a song called Sea Diver.

He wrote this whole arrangement
and we got in there.
I was having kittens.

Fortunately the guy
totally got on with Mick,
loved Mick.

And Mick...

This was the first time
I was... You know,
Mick was classically trained.

And Mick got on
with a baton and arranged,
did the whole thing.

And of course
after the event I said,
"How much do I owe you?"

and he said, "Twenty quid."

I'd never actually,
up until then,

come across a guitar player
that actually had his own sound

that didn't sound
like everybody else.

And that was the first
thing that really struck
me about Mick,

that he had his own
identifiable way of playing.

He played
with a wah wah
pedal half open

so he got this tone
that nobody else had.

And I used to press
the wah wah pedal on
and just set it,

set on the tone,

and just leave it,
leave it like that.

And I used to get
this very kind of honking,

tone out of the...
out of the amp.

It was very middle...
very middle sound.

So that was how
a lot of that came about
with the guitar sound.

The rest of it was basically
just plugging in.

And just plug the guitar in
and turn it up, you know,
and it's...

And away you go.
Things like Jean Genie

comes from basically
the Muddy Waters,

and the Anna Mann,
John Lee Hooker,
that kind of riffing.

I've thought for many, many,
many, many years,

he deserves much more
credit than he ever
received for that,

for being a real
individualistic type of player.

CHERRY:
You know Bowie's history
so you know he had

a whole mishmash of influences
which young artists do.

He wasn't really rock yet.

TONY:
When did everything change?
When he met Mick.

The sound changed.

Everything began to change
when he met Mick.

You look at that picture
that I have,

of the two of them
on the train eating lunch,

and they look so exotic.

There's that little look
between them and they've
got pats of butter

and peas and probably
boiled potatoes,

and they look like
they've just fucking landed.

Look at the state
of those two.

But they also look like
they're really like...
There's a lot of this

sweet, conspiratorial thing.

We had two albums,
two albums out,

and David decided,
"I wanna go
and live in America.

"I wanna really
break America,

"I wanna go and live there,
stay there as long
as I need to,"

and I thought it was a very
good career decision.

Tony said, "We'll open
an office in New York."

And then I proposed
he go to New York,

set up his own company,
which proved to be MainMan.

I spoke to David about it.

I said, "This is what
Tony wants to do.
Is that what you wanna do?"

He said, "Yeah, yes,
I really wanna
go live in America,"

thanked me very much
and off they went.

They all came to New York
in the beginning of September
for about a week.

That was when
the signing at RCA.

LAWRENCE:
I was quite close to RCA,

so I spoke to RCA
and played the material

and did all the things
you normally do
to pitch an artist.

Tony said to me,
"Is there a point at which you
would give up your interest?"

So I said, "Look,
if I get 500,000 pounds
in the next three years,

"you're free."
And I thought...

Five hundred thousand pounds,
you know.

There's not that much
money in the world.

And 18 months later,

they sent me a check.

They were very smart.
You know, they got rid
of me.

We came back to England
and we started working
on the Transformer album.

JOE: I knew who Lou Reed
was, I hated
the Velvet Underground,

I thought they were shite.

* How it came
From Miami FLA

* Hitchhiked her way
Across the USA

* Plucked her eyebrows
On the way

* Shaved her legs
And then he... *

And then I heard
Walk on the Wild Side.

And I didn't know
Bowie had done it,

but the only reason
I heard it,

is because somebody at Radio 1
deemed it accessible
enough to play,

because Bowie and Ronson
had produced it.

So that moved him
into the mainstream,

which he would
never have achieved
without Bowie's help.

MICK:
Lou was great to work with.

That was a very good
experience really.

I mean, just a really
great album to work on.

The thing with Ronno is
I could very rarely
understand a word he said.

He had a Hull accent,
he'd have to repeat
things five times.

Mick probably found it
difficult to understand
what Lou was saying,

Lou found it difficult
to understand what
Mick was saying,

and somehow they met
in the middle with music.

ANGIE: Lou Reed
was like amazed
at Mick Ronson's credits.

* Valium would have
Helped that day

* She said, Hey, babe
Take a walk on the wild side *

MICK: You know,
Lou was so laid back,

you know, he'd kinda
walk into the studio
and go "Hey," you know,

sit down in the chair,
put his guitar on,

b'lam, b'lam, b'lam,
be all out of tune, you know.

And he'd be "I'm ready"
and this guitar's like...

Way out of tune, you know,
way out of tune.

And I'd kind of wander off
and I'd say, you know,
tune it up a bit,

and Lou used to look at me
like you know, "Yeah, okay."

He didn't really care
whether it was in tune or
if it was out of tune really.

When I first got there
I ate a hash cookie.

And it took about
a month to recover.

You know,
no one had told me,
I didn't know.

MICK: Lou used to say
some funny things like,

"Can you make it a little
bit more gray" to me.

I mean then to me
it was like, "What the hell's
he talking about," you know.

I guess he was just
trying to explain things
in, you know,

a more artistic way
or something, you know.

That kinda was going
over my head a bit.

JOE:
What Ronson's contribution
was to the Transformer record

was quite possibly
more than David's.

KEVIN: David was still not
that conversant

with controls
and studio desks.

He certainly needed
Michael around to help
with the arrangements.

JOE: Mick would have been
the more hands-on guy,
getting the sounds sorted,

getting the arrangements done,
extending this chorus,

putting a right-up
guitar solo on this song,

bringing in the echo stuff.

Ain't that beautiful? Wow.

JOE: I think he would
have had more to do
with that than David.

Boy, Ronson's good. Wow.

Isn't that amazing,
just like that?

See, I think sometimes
with a really good arrangement
in parts you don't need a vocal.

That album,

was the flowering
of Mick Ronson.

Tony began making
trips to New York City.

CHERRY: We had been
meeting with Tony Defries

and going with him
up to the record companies
and so forth and advising.

TONY: So every time
he came to New York City
he would call me up.

I'd have dinner with him,

I was a great listener.
Tony really was a great
talker,

and I was a great listener.

CHERRY: I knew
a lot of DJs in New York.

TONY: We got along
very well, Tony and I.

We just began
to build this relationship.

Also Tony needed errands done.
It was as simple as that.

"Zee, could you..."
He called me Zee
because we were both Tonys.

"Could you go to RCA
and pick up records?

"Can you do this,
can you do that?"

CHERRY: So when
he was ready to bring
Bowie to New York in '72

he hired us.

He made Tony Zanetta
president of MainMan
and tour manager.

TONY: There was no
organization at all,

because I was selfish
or self-centered.

I went to the desk
and said,

give me the keys,
blah, blah, blah.
I started organizing,

so I could get to my room,
thank you very much.

So I kind of became
the road manager

without even knowing
what a road manager was.

DANA: Everyone that
was to do with MainMan,

they were all a bit kind
of bonkers and mad.

That's what Defries
attracted to the company.

These people were taken
and put in positions that
they'd never had before.

This was kind of exciting.
I mean Ronno had never seen
anything like that either.

To go on the first
American tour, they decided
they needed a pianist.

Enter Mike Garson.

MIKE: Tony Defries called me
and he told me about Bowie.

But I was a jazz musician.
I said, "Who?"
When they called me up.

It's like nothing.

But within minutes
of hearing him play
I knew he had it.

Mick Ronson was the one
who auditioned me,

so that's the guy who
really I owe the respect to.

He was a great guitar player,
a great string arranger.

When I auditioned
he showed me the chords
and showed C.

And I went C and E minor.

And that was the audition.
He said, "You got it."

So as the... that's where
David's singing...

So little by little,
I started playing.

I did... Let me see.

TONY: So that first tour,

it started in September,
it ended in December.

In three months
we did only 17 dates.

The Ziggy thing really
kicked off in Cleveland, Ohio.

Cleveland, Ohio
is a great city
for rock'n'roll.

The first day when
we went to Cleveland
we went by bus.

We thought that
was the thing to do,
we rented this bus.

We were staying
at the Plaza Hotel

because again
that was part
of Tony's philosophy,

to be a star
you had to act like a star.

Where does a star stay?
Not the Holiday Inn,
the Plaza Hotel.

There's a fountain
right there next to the bus,

the Plaza, in front
of the fountain.

And this bag-lady comes along.

She goes
to the fountain,

she pulls down her pants,
hikes up her skirt,

squats down and takes
a big shit in the fountain.

And that
was the Ziggy Stardust tour!

We were off to Cleveland
right after that.

I said to Tony Defries,
"Tony, what does
a road manager do?"

He said, "Oh, Zee,
just make sure
they find Cleveland!"

We got there.

The spirits were great.
The band was great.

The playing was great.
David was in rare form.

TONY: We traveled
all across the country.

We sat for two weeks
in Phoenix 'cause we didn't
have another date to go to,

till the next date
was in Miami.

That's not exactly
a great booking strategy.

The way he put it together,

could have ended up
in complete disaster.

Because to go to America
with a few gigs
under your belt,

thinking we'll just add dates

was not what
America was all about.

For two months in America
we played about ten gigs.

So we'd play a gig
and maybe have like ten days
off and we'd play another gig.

And I think the performance,

the fact that people,
however small the audience was,

word of mouth
is the strongest marketing
you could ever achieve.

And the performances
were great.

So, it spread.

CHERRY: The ordinary people
in New York and LA,

they got it,
they were excited about it

because we had also
had Mark Bolan,

who was wearing feather boas
and makeup and everything.

So the door was a little open
for something like David.

They were all decked out,

each in a different
like worked out design,
red hair, silver hair.

CHERRY:
Suzi Fussey did the hair

and they knew they were
getting great hairdos
like nobody else had.

It was very professional.

Mick Ronson and David
on stage together
were very, very compelling.

You know, it's like
the Rolling Stones.

It wouldn't be the Rolling
Stones unless you have
Keith Richards and Mick Jagger.

You know...

or The Who with like,
Pete Townsend, Roger Daltrey.

You know, uh...

Or the Beatles without
Lennon and McCartney.

Usually, a lot
of these things...

When these groups happen
it's usually in pairs.

TONY: So David studied
mime and theatrical

and he was kind
of up here and very effete.

Mick was kind of the opposite.

You know, he had these
kind of like... these...

These kind of Fame kind
of movements or something,
you know what I mean?

And I'm like right,
I'm like a bricklayer,
so it's like...

I think I was more like a man
and he was more like a woman,
you know.

And the costumes
were beautiful.

Beautiful fabrics,
beautifully tailored.

So I think it didn't
take them too many shows
dressed up in their outfits

to embrace it, and they
were smart enough to know,
I think...

But yes, at the beginning
I'm sure there was more
reluctance than I ever saw.

TONY: Woody and Trevor
were a little bit more,
"Oh, my God!"

Not quite
as adventurous as Mick.

We were all going to this
nightclub and we were getting
you know...

Everybody's like
turning around and looking,

and David takes his
male back-up singer
and starts dancing slow,

just to get everybody
really wound up and looking.

But I think he used the whole
gay world in that kind of way
to get attention.

* I'm an alligator

* I'm a mama-papa
Coming for you *

MICK: We would play
the Nashville Coliseum,
the Chicago Dome.

You know, I remember
these places were not
sold out or anything.

Some of these places only
had like, maybe 200 people in,
500 people in some of them.

But it created this whole
press thing because it looked
so good in the English press.

KEVIN: David sold out
the Radio City Music Hall.

These images wired
straight over with copy,
front pages of the NME

and Melody Maker
and Disc and Music Echo
or whatever.

David's a big star in America.

MICK: They were all going mad.
There was queues around
the block and everything.

I mean...

It's amazing
what the press
can do, you know.

A lot of show-business,
a lot of the music industry
is smoke and mirrors.

And Defries realized that
early on, you've got
to act the part,

so they were spending
money they didn't have,
they were spending RCA money.

TONY: We spent about
400-and-some thousand dollars.

We grossed $100,000!

But by December,
David was on the cover
of Rolling Stone magazine.

And then you knew,

that this thing
was gonna break right open.

TONY: And also there
was a DJ in Cleveland
that was very pro Bowie.

We went to Cleveland,
we played 3,000 seats.

We went back to Cleveland
in December and played
two nights

on the other side
of that music hall
that sat 10,000 people.

So we went from 3,000 people
to 20,000 people
in three months.

With Aladdin Sane
we was spending
some time in America then.

Well, everybody says
he was Ziggy Stardust
in America.

And I suppose he was,
'cause there's a lot
of references

to American people,
American cities,

things that happened to Bowie
while he was touring.

When you listen to Ziggy,
there is no records
that sounded like that,

or Aladdin Sane,
records didn't sound like that.

That was Mick.

DAVID: He was actually
brilliant at divining
what I meant

when I would describe
in words what I wanted

as the shape of the solo
in certain songs.

The one on Time
is a perfect example
for instance.

One thing he adored
doing while recording

was building up
layered tracks,

so that there would
be a great wedge of sound
in certain areas of songs

and from there he could
fly off into his sinewy lines
and riffs in a heartbeat.

MIKE: The singing
of David on Time

and Mick's playing
and his ability
not to be a show off,

the bottom line is, who
laid out the arrangements,
who was doing all the stuff,

who was giving me
the chalks in the studio,

who was putting
the earphones on,

who was saying,
"That's a B Minor chord, Mike"?
This was Mick Ronson.

TONY: First of all
those first tours,
nobody got paid,

none of us got paid,
but everything was petty cash.

Tony put money,
when there was money,

he put money...
He would pay your rent
if you had rent,

he'd put a certain amount
in everybody's bank account

to cover their very, very
basic living expenses,

like Woody and Trevor,
Mick, they had a flat,
or anything like...

Woody had a wife
back in England,

so she'd get but not much,
75 pounds a month,
something ridiculous.

But everything was paid for.

Someone in New York,

told them how much
they were getting paid.

Exactly what happened
is I was in the airplane,
sitting next to Woody,

and he said,
"What are you earning?"

And I said,
"To tell you the truth,

"I'm embarrassed
'cause it's way lower
than you guys,

"but I'm the new man
on the block. I'm very
happy with $800 a week."

And Mike thinks they're
all making a fortune,
'cause this is like...

You know, he hasn't
been involved in this kind of...

what to him
was big deal rock and roll.

MIKE:
And his face turned white,

and I think they
were getting 30 pounds.

ANGIE:
When Ronno turned around
and then went to see Defries,

Defries turned around,
did not tell David,

except maybe five
or six hours later

that it was actually just
a request for more money.

He said they'd come
and been difficult.

MIKE: Defries
was pissed off 'cause they
went to him complaining.

TONY: So that started
the beginning of the end
of the Spiders.

They went to see Dennis Katz,
who had been the A&R guy at RCA,

who was now in private
law practice,
he's a music attorney.

To see... So they wanted
Denis to represent them,
get them a real salary.

Well, this was treason

to Defries and to Bowie,
treason.

IAN: I mean
the whole Bowie thing,
you know, disgusting.

I think he
was on 40 quid a week
throughout the whole thing.

It didn't matter whether
you made a record
or you did TV,

you did interviews, whatever,
no, no, the whole thing,
40 quid a week.

SUZI: When I look back
that was really unfair.

Mick should have been
making a lot of money.

Or a point ,
a half a point or something.
But he didn't get anything.

Defries and David
took Mick to the side,

till I'd kind
of calmed him down,

'cause first of all
he's the key player
and very needed.

So I don't know
exactly what went on,

other than, "Okay,
Mick, do this tour
and let's keep going."

Basically it was gonna
be that Mick would then
become a MainMan artist.

MICK: I think the last tour
we played of England
went for six weeks

and we was playing
two shows a night.

And the very last gig
at Hammersmith Odeon,

yeah, it was pretty memorable
because it was the last show

that we was gonna
do in that form.

ANGIE: Cherry Vanilla
and I would come in
through the crowd.

They took
a lot of photographs,
I signed a lot of autographs.

DAVID: Angie!
Darling, I've come
to say good luck.

ANGIE:
I went backstage,
I had this little,

you know, going back stage
to wish David good luck
turned into this,

horrible episode.

You see how they pick
on me and just you know
make me feel terrible.

DAVID: You're just a girl.
What do you know
about make

Exactly, that's what
I say all the time.

'Cause I went to see the boys,
the boys looked great!

They were in a good mood,
they made me laugh,
we had a good...

you know...

I said, "I'll be there!
You know that.

"I'll be there,
shouting you on,
cheering you on."

They said,
"Yes, yes, good."

And then, they went on
and it was such a brilliant
show.

Of all the shows
on the tour,

this particular show
will remain with us
the longest because...

...not only is it
the last show of the tour,

it's the last show
that we'll ever do.

Thank you.

MICK:
I think Woody and Trevor
were really confused,

because the band didn't
know anything about this,
until the encore.

And then David said
this is the very last show
we were going to play.

The people went, "What?"

It was like the wind
was knocked out of everyone's
lungs, they all went...

I couldn't believe it.
I did the same thing.
I was like...

Well, that's a turn-up
for the books.

I was like, "Oh great,
now we're out of work again!"

I thought,
"Oh great, here we go!"

I was very emotionally
hurt by this whole thing.

It was almost like
we were all a little bit
of Ziggy Stardusts,

and when it ended,
it ended for all of us,
you know.

But you know,
David was still David Bowie,

Tony Defries still had
millions of dollars

and the rest of us
were standing there

like with our thumbs
up our asses, now,
what am I supposed to...

You know, last week,
I had my own airline tickets
and charge cards to everyone.

Now I dunno.
Where's my rent coming?

It was very difficult.
Your whole identity
was wrapped up in this.

MICK: We played Japan
before we played England,

and it was in Japan
that the decision was made,

that the whole
Ziggy thing should stop.

I remember David
calling my room
and he said,

"Mick, can you come up...
can you come up here?"

And he was sitting in bed,

and Tony was sitting
on the side of the bed.

And I sat in the chair
on the other side of the bed

and then we talked
about this thing.

He said, "Look, Mick,
you know, we think that
we want to do this."

SUZI: The only people
that really didn't know
were Trevor and Woody.

And I think
that was so cruel.

I had sprayed Trevor's
fucking those things,

those big side jobbies
silver every night.

These were my kids,
you know what I mean?
I adored them.

I don't... I never had
brothers that age.

They were like my brothers,
I adored them.

Records are bits of plastic,
you know, they...

they don't...
It's not world peace,
it's just ent...

It's great entertainment,
but it's entertainment.

So if he decided
to retire Ziggy, so what?

It was almost like,
when the Beatles broke up.

The Beatles were much bigger
than they were... than they
were together.

The singers,
they were so popular,

it would have been kind
of silly to go out and play
Ziggy

again and again and again
and again and again.

'Cause you're not
moving anywhere,
you're not developing anything,

you're not growing,
you're not doing anything,

you're just kind
of repeating yourself.

It's lasted for so many
years, that period,

the reason why
it's lasted so many years

is because people
can only remember it,
they can't see it again.

And, uh...

They kind of didn't want it
to break up at the time...

because it seemed like
we was on such a roll.

We were doing so well,
but yet we
hadn't played Europe,

we never went back
to the United States again.

Ronno continued on
and Defries was going
to manage him.

MICK: And then,
we went to France

and we started
recording Pin Ups.

And we were in this,
what you would call
almost like a castle.

And there was a chef
and he'd stay there,
so we were just doing music.

And no one went too far away,

you go to your room,
come down the next day,
start playing.

MICK: So it wasn't like,
we ended the last show
of Ziggy,

and then waited for a year
before doing anything.
It was pretty instant.

MIKE: The Pin Ups sessions
were a lot of fun.

On a few tunes
we hooked the piano up,

the grand piano
to a Leslie speaker,
Hammond Leslie.

And then we'd get this sound,
yeah, whirling, exactly.

That was fun.

And it was so light
and it was so easy

'cause it wasn't his music,
he had nothing to prove.

And I think things began
to suddenly spark between
Suzi and Mick at that point.

Up till then Suzi had
been like a big sister
or little sister,

they were very close.

We saw Mick and Suzi
sneaking off.

And I believe
that was the beginning.

It was really romantic,
it was a beautiful villa.

It was just outside of Rome,
it was lovely.

And one thing
led to another,

and by the time we left Italy
Mick and I were, boyfriend
and girlfriend.

* I laughed
And shook his hand

MICK: I think Pin Ups
was a great album, I think
we played real good.

Lulu came out to Paris,

and recorded
Man Who Sold the World.

And we recorded it
right there and then

at the same sessions,
at the same time.

Mike Garson played piano,

Mick Ronson and David,
myself, everybody was singing.

And yeah, they had a party
and we were up the whole night.

It was fun.
It was a lot of fun.

When we finished Pin Ups,
you know, Tony Defries said,

he suggested, he said,
"Why don't you make
your own album?"

After the shock ending
of David,

David took
a couple of years off.

Well Mick should have
done the same thing,
or at least taken a year.

You know, to figure out
what he was going to do.

But the MainMan machine
was in full motion,

and they said,
"Now it's your turn, Mick,
out there, off you go."

So he put together Slaughter,
put together that tour,
that show.

You know,
Mick had the costumes
and it was the big band

and we had the backing
singers and whatever,

but you know,
he was still sounding
a lot like David

because he
was half of David's sound.

The criticism was,
it was like a Bowie concert
without David.

CHERRY: I see a few
celebrities in the audience.

SUZI: The audience
seemed to like it,

but you could tell
it wasn't really
doing that well.

CHERRY: When he did
that show at the Rainbow,
that Defries had him do,

and it was supposed
to be his big rock star
coming out thing,

Mick was extremely nervous.

He wasn't ready
to take over that stage
at the Rainbow yet.

He needed some warm-up gigs.

SUZI: Mick suddenly
had to shoulder
all the responsibility.

He didn't have
a Mick Ronson on the side

doing what Mick
had done for David,
it was just Mick.

So it wasn't as strong.

TONY: As brilliant
as Mick was,

he's not really a front man.

We all were kind
of in our megalomaniac
MainMan phase

of we can do no wrong,
'cause look what we did.

Look what we did,
we created a star.
Mick's next.

CHERRY: Tony Defries
only knew how to make
one kind of artist.

That was a rock star
in the image of David Bowie.

That's the way I feel,
and he tried to do
that do Mick

and I thought
that was wrong.

KEVIN: What he didn't realize
is Mick needed David,
to really make that work.

SUZI: It was very
difficult for him, I think.

So he did a lot of drinking.
And that was... It kind
of went, slid down a bit.

IAN: He just wasn't made
to be a frontman, Mick.

I mean Defries said,
"You're gonna be the next
Bowie." Mick said, "Fine."

But that
was as far as it went.

Your first solo album, Mick,

were you disappointed
with the response to Slaughter?

Well, not disappointed
because I think Slaughter,
as an album did pretty well,

for somebody's
first solo album.

CHERRY: Mick would have
probably had a better career

going into orchestrating,
arranging,

making movie soundtracks,

you know, and eventually
make his own songs,
albums, whatever,

but Defries pushed him
right into, "You're the next
rock star,"

and I don't think
he was ready for that.

What he didn't realize
is Mick needed David
to really make that work.

He was uncomfortable
if he was the central focus.

I don't know what sessions
were which really.

The Diamond Dogs sessions,
I don't know
what they included.

It was just kind of went
in the studio now and again.

It wasn't really to put
an album together or anything,

it was just
to record some tracks.

Because I was at a lot
of those sessions

I only remember
me and David there.

That's when it started
to drift apart a bit.

He'd moved on
from Mick too quickly

and in so doing,
had prevented Mick

from getting
the true acknowledgment,

for what he'd put into
the creation of the sound.

With both Tony Defries
in a business sense and David,

I think that they have
a bit of an attitude that
everybody is replaceable.

I was interested
in the things I was doing

and David was getting
into what he was doing.

He got rid of the whole band.
They had a pretty short
career with him.

I'd gotten a call

from a dearly departed friend
named Michael Kamen.

He had done the music
for the Joffrey Ballet,
and David was there

and they got chattin'
and then David said,
"I need a guitarist

"because I'm getting ready
to go do a tour,

"and Mick Ronson's left
the band. Do you know anybody
that might fit the bill?"

And Michael gave him my name.

I went and did an interview
and I got the gig.

MIKE: He was a young kid
who had a good...

like Keith Richards
kind of sensibility

with a little
Mick Ronson there.

Diamond Dogs,
to me essentially
is a Spiders album.

They just didn't play on it.

'Cause I know that Ronson
was around when those songs

got played on the 1984
show for example,

in 1973, the album
came out a year later.

He wasn't on it,
but it still sounded like them,

and I was that
angry with Bowie,

that he's dissed the band,

'cause Ronno and Trevor
and Woody were part of it
as far as I was concerned.

EARL: And I brought that up.
I said, "Are you expecting
me to sound like...

"Are you expecting me
to be Mick Ronson?"

I mean, I was very
forward about it.

"No. I like the way
you play. You do..."

The Diamond Dogs show
cost a lot of money.

It cost a lot of money
to put together, it cost
a lot of money to tour.

It was the big, clumsy set.
I mean,

David decides he's not
using that set anymore.

And that's it.

He's had it
with the Diamond Dogs set.

But Defries was not
happy about this.

I mean, it cost like
$250-300,000, which
sounds like nothing now,

it was millions then.

That was definitely friction.

ANGIE: And David was already
doing drugs because
he couldn't handle it.

SUZI: His drug use
was huge, I think
at one point in his life.

From like not doing
any drugs suddenly he's like...

There wasn't enough cocaine
in the universe.

DANA: It did actually
get in the way
of all sorts of things

and just trying
to deal with him became
more and more difficult.

This is not good. This
was during the Diamond Dogs
ce jour in New York.

I mean,
Mick was gone by then.

Mick did a lot of work.
Mick wasn't just a guitarist.

He arranged strings,
he arranged songs.

You don't see credits
for that, you don't
see production credits.

As far as I'm concerned
Mick Ronson produced
some of those records.

I don't care
whose name's on there.

I don't give a shit.
It was Mick.

And he didn't get his due,
he didn't get credited.

And he buggered out.

Hello.

Having contributed so much
to the outstanding quality
of David Bowie's earlier LPs,

then producing what I think
was a vastly underrated
solo album,

my guest tonight has just
joined Mott the Hoople.

You know, of course,
that I'm talking
of Mick Ronson.

MICK: I always
got on with Ian, yeah.
He's a good bloke, you know.

We've always been
really good friends.

IAN: And he was like
the logical replacement
for Bender.

I remember Buff
came round to Wembley
the following morning

and he said, "Is he in?"
I said, "Yeah, he's in."

I'm looking forward
to recording new material
and fresh material, work,

and feeling more
of a part of Mott the Hoople,
rather than...

another guitar player
just coming in and just
learning the set numbers.

IAN: So then,
the first thing we were doing
was a European tour.

We were doing that
but there was obviously
a bit of friction,

which I... I mean,
Mick is the nicest guy
in the world.

couldn't understand
the friction between him
and the rest of the band.

JOE: From within the camp,
it didn't work.

It worked with Ian,
Ian was fine with it,
but Buffin wasn't keen.

IAN: Mick had a problem
in that he was still
managed by Defries.

Mick was still on RCA,
we were on Columbia.

And so if RCA sent him
a limo, he would go
in the RCA limo.

JOE: They're still traveling
around in a transit van,

which I guess for moral
would have been a little
bit of a downer.

IAN: And we were tired,
and little things would
become big things.

So we just figured
the writing was on the wall.

That's it,
knock it on the head.

TONY: Tony and David
had a very, very
close relationship.

They would speak
on the phone
daily for hours,

everything was plotted out,
everything was probably
overthought.

LAWRENCE: And what Tony did
was to put himself in between
David and anybody else.

David's pretty capable
but that's what he depended
on Tony Defries for.

Tony Defries took
all that out of his hands.

LAWRENCE: Dana says...
Dana Gillespie,

we all had secretaries,
we all... everyone had staff.

We all went to New York,
it was wonderful.

TONY: And the communication
began to break down.

It totally broke down
during the Diamond Dogs tour.

SUZI: When David
and Defries broke up,
it was a standoff.

Defries owned David
for another ten years.

I mean David did not win.

KEVIN: It was all
starting to crumble.

Tony Defries was in America,
Mick Ronson was in London,
Suzi was in London,

and nobody
was looking after them.

When I was with Mick
I thought Mick was a pop star.

I thought we had
tons of money!

You know, I thought we
were living in this gorgeous
place in Hyde Park Gate,

nine rooms and we had
our own clothing designer
staying with us.

I mean my only role-model
was David and Angie.

I thought
we had tons of money,
I thought Mick...

I didn't know what Mick
was only on 50 quid a week.

Mick was a school gardener,
I was a hairdresser
from Beckenham.

We had no clue
about royalties

or how much money
you could make or how much
money there was around.

Mick and I didn't know.
We had no clue.

IAN: And Mick's just going,

"We've gotta form a band,
we've gotta go in now."

'Cause Mick
was a very intuitive guy.

I mean,
he sensed the drama

and that can usually lead
to something good musically,

and so we formed a band,
we went in and we did
my first solo album.

I said to Mick one night,
you know "Let's go down
the Village,"

I knew this guy Paul Colby,
owns a place.

We went to the Bitter End
and we're sitting in there
having a drink late afternoon.

Bob Dylan walks
in with Bob Norris.

Dylan sits down
at the next table to us

and plays the entire
Desire album
to Bobby Norris.

And Mick got drunk.

And he got thrown out,
three times.

Paul Colby threw him out.

And the last time Mick said,

"If you throw me out
one more time I'm coming back
in through that fucking window."

So Colby let him stay,

and stay he did.
And then he rang me,
I went home

and about three
or four days later
Mick rang me and said,

"Here, I'm playing
with Bob Dylan!"

Now Mick had never
liked Bob Dylan.

This is what really jars me
about this whole thing

is Mick had never
liked Bob Dylan.

Mick used to think
he sounded like Yogi Bear,

I mean, he certainly
wasn't a fan,

and I wasn't either,
we were glam rockers.

I actually was very fortunate
to spend a little bit
of time with him

in the summer of '77
in Woodstock,

because he got a bit involved
there with the Bearsville
record label.

I'm gonna scout out
a few groups to produce,

for another couple
of months or so.

I've got a lot of tunes out
I've got to finish off,

and I've been
in the middle of getting
a record deal for myself...

And I have to say
that at the time

Mick was feeling a bit low

because he'd begun
to feel himself that

he'd been washed
to the side slightly

in the wave of everything
that had gone through,

and the slipstream
had sort of veered him off.

And I think at that stage
he was beginning to feel

that he hadn't been given
quite the credit that he
felt he deserved really.

SUZI: And then things got
tough for us after that.

We didn't have any money.

I got pregnant
and I was in Woodstock.

And Mick had a band,
that's why he put
a band together.

But it was nothing,
wasn't going anywhere really.

We just lived from pay check
to pay check really.

IAN: Money just genuinely
didn't interest him

and it caused him
a lot of grief.

But he just wasn't interested.
He was only interested
in the music

and various aspects of it.

I mean, to him
if he could find
a Mexican heavy metal band,

you know, to do in East LA,
he was there,

'cause it was different,
it was interesting.

I had a band called Rich Kids,
and we'd just signed to EMI

and we were looking
for a record producer.

And we tried out
a bloke at EMI
and it wasn't quite working.

And we had
an office in Marylebone

and the phone rang one day
and nobody else was there
and I answered the phone.

And this bloke went,
"Hi, is Pete Walmsley
there please?"

And I went, "No, he's not here
at the moment. He's popped out."

I said, "who's that?"
He said, "Mick".

I said, "That's not
Mick Ronson, is it?"
'cause I knew he knew him.

And he said, "Yeah,
it is actually. Who's that?"

I said, "It's Glen Matlock,"
and he said, "Ooh,
I've heard about you."

I said, "Look, we're looking
for a producer for this band

"that we've just signed to EMI,
are you interested?"

He went,
"Yeah, all right then."

And I said, "We're rehearsing
in a couple of days' time,"

and he said,
"Well I'll come down."
We were rehearsing in Putney.

And I went,
"Oh, and bring your guitar."

And he went, "All right,"
and he did.

And he came down to rehearsal,
and we knocked through
a number or two

and then we
went down the pub
and we got on famously.

SUZI: He was touring
and traveling
and looking for work.

Literally he worked
from job to job to job, just
to pick up the pay check.

BOB: John Mellencamp
was quite willing
to give Mick credit

for the work that Mick did
on Jack and Diane,

the way that Mick
took that song,

created just
an incredible riff,
a structure to the song,

that John Mellencamp
ever since has lent back
and gone, "Wow!"

Jack and Diane had been
the song that had been
drifting around for ages.

Mick gets hold of it.
It's an American number one.

SUZI: And then Mick
went off and did
Lisa Dalbello.

* Maybe I'm wrong
Maybe I'm right

* Maybe I'm some
Kind of lunatic *

But, that was the time
he was meant to be
producing Tina Turner.

IAN: And this is typical Mick.

He said, "You've got a corn
on your toe," to Tina,

and Tina's a pretty big
artist and all the rest of it,

and she just starts laughing,
and Mick goes, "I've got
corn on mine as well."

You know, so now
they're comparing
corns on their toes.

And Tina loves him,
just loves him.

She wants Mick, she wants
him to do the record,

and Mick worked his way
through that one and wound up
not doing the record, you know.

He was in touch with David
quite a lot I believe,

right through
that Morrissey period
he was in touch with David.

EARL: I hadn't
seen for Mick for a while.

And I was even surprised
that he would even show up,

and I'd just had
this guitar painted

and he's flinging it around

and he's putting dings in it
and stuff like that.

I'm standing on the side
thinking oh my god, you know,

and I think Mick
saw my face and...

We were laughing
about it later on.
You know, but...

Yeah, I was going,
"What the hell is he
doing to my guitar?"

SUZI: He went back
to working with Ian,

which, you know,
Ian was great,
he always used to pay us.

Towards the back end
of his life, you know,
the whole thing

with Morrissey, you know.

He got his own deal with Epic,

things were looking
really good.

Somebody said, "Oh,
your brother's Mick Ronson?"
I said, "Yeah" and they went,

"Morrissey's really
been trying to get in touch,
want to find out where he is."

MARK NEVIN:
Morrissey called me
one day and said,

"Who should we get
to produce the next album?"

And I had said,
"Why don't we get
Mick Ronson?"

And I put word out
to a few different people

and the phone rang
and I picked it up.

"Is that Mark?"
I said, "Yes."
"My name's Michael Ronson."

And I was like...

You know,
trying not to look
as excited as I was.

He said, "I hear
you wanna talk to me
about producing Morrissey".

So a few days went by
and Mick called and said...

I said, "Oh, Morrissey said
can you come to my house
on Friday?"

He said, "Oh, I can't on Friday.
I'm babysitting for my sister."

At the time Morrissey
was the hottest thing
in the world.

I thought, "Do you think
she could get somebody
else to babysit?"

He said, "Let me see
what I can do."

And so from there,
then we got all
the connections happening

and he ended up doing
the Morrissey album,
Your Arsenal.

Morrissey was the last
big check that Mick got,

that enabled him
to, live as he liked.

Live in comfort,
eat what he wanted,

the house was as warm
as you wanna be,

but without Morrissey
that would have been difficult.

MAGGI: My friend
who was a radiographer,

said to me,
"Your brother don't look well"

and I said, "No, he's not,"
you know.

"He's in a lot of pain
and he's not well."

So he said,
"What are they giving him?"

I said, "Well,
this blood test" you know.

And he went,
"Do you want me
to do an x"

So I said, "That'd be great!"

So anyway, we took him in,
we had no forms or anything.

It just so happened that
he just took this x-ray,

and then he came out
and he went,

he said, "Do you know what?"
he said, "I think he needs to...

"I think I'd like to get
a radiologist to see him."

JOE: When we saw him
at the Freddie Mercury gig

he'd been working
on Your Arsenal for Morrissey,

and he was tired,
you know, he was...

First thing he did when
he got to Wembley was lay down
and go to sleep on a couch.

But then once he got
his energy back
he was up and about

and finally got to play on
the song he should have always
played on, which was Heroes.

ROGER: Yeah, the concert
was kind of my baby actually

and one of the first people
I spoke to was David Bowie,

and David said,
"Yes, of course I'll come.

"Can I suggest we use Mick?"

I said,
"Oh, that'd be wonderful,
you know,

"especially as you wanted
to do Heroes,

"and that would
fit in perfectly."

And Mick, he said,
"Do you realize
he's really unwell?"

He asked the radiologist
that was there, if she would
actually do a scan on him,

and she was kind enough
to say yes, she's a lovely
lady called Jo Wright.

And she did
this scan on him,

and then she took me
aside, into an office.

Meanwhile, you know, this
is all sort of... So we got
there at nine o'clock,

so time was going on
and it was probably
about 10 or 10:30 then.

Michael's still walking around
looking a bit gray and in pain.

And so she took me aside
in the office and said,

you know,
"I've just done
his scan," she said,

and "I can see
three tumors on his liver."

JOE: We were celebrating
the death of Freddie Mercury

and everybody was
having a great time.

Roger Taylor, John Deacon,
David Bowie,

Mick Ronson, Ian Hunter,
Brian May, me and Phil.
It's like this is amazing.

The most exciting
three minutes
of my musical career.

You know, that really
was a nice little part
of the show I thought,

with David and Mick,

and there was a sort
of completion there
that was lovely.

And he was on great form,
you wouldn't have known that,

this was a man
who was terminally ill.

And then I got a phone call
at the weekend from Mr. Morgan,

saying to me, you know,
"I've got some really
bad news for you.

"This is called
carcinoma of the liver

"and your brother's
got three months to live,
or thereabouts."

I was like, "What?"

You know, I just, you
know... Unbeliev...
I just...unbelievable.

That was the longest
drive of my life,

going to that hospital
'cause I knew what
they were gonna tell him.

He just rang me up
out the blue, said,
"Here, I've got this and..."

Typical Mick, you know.
"Here, I've got cancer."

"What?"
"Yeah, and it's inoperable."

He didn't live just
three months, he lived
for 20 months after that.

Maggie was great with him.
I mean she was.

She adored her brother,
she really did,

and she was there a lot
looking after him.

He loved his sister,
he adored his sister.
He was...

His sister
was everything to him.

IAN: I remember
I came for two weeks
to Hasker Street,

and we went out and he was...
It went, it disappeared
for two weeks.

This is what it's like.

The last night we went
down Roger Taylor's house,
it came back.

I think that was when we had,

the big dinner,
round the kitchen table,

the most we ever had
round that table, that night.

And then to think just
a few short days later,
you know,

uh, no Mick.

You know, we'd had
our ups and downs,
Mick and I.

But as soon as I knew...

And he was...

There wasn't a second
that we weren't
together really.

As soon as I knew.

And then he started
doing Heaven and Hull.

JOE: I got a call
from Ian, he says,
"Mick's looking for you.

"He wants you
to sing on the album,"

and of course I'm like,
okay, how soon do you
want me to say yes? Yes!

Everybody helped out,
and with a will,
not because they had to,

you know, just
'cause they wanted to.

And we did the vocal
on Don't Look Down
and he produced me,

and he dragged me
through the coals. "No!
You're doing it wrong.

"Do it again.
You can do better than that!"

I'm like, "This is great!"

Everybody pulled together
to get that record out,
finish it.

So we're not getting
the beginning part or anything.

Yeah, well if we're getting
the first two parts.

I made the thing into
four verses you see,

two sung, one solo verse
and then a sung verse.

SUZI: He went and played
on a Bowie track.

They're bringing you
in as the solo
and then just keep--

MICK: I don't know
where that is.

Right where you're coming in.

DAVID: It was the first
real time that we'd worked
together in almost 20 years.

We sort of kept track
of each other through
the years though.

Every time I go on tour
Mick turns up somewhere
along the line,

and comes and guests
on the show.

And I asked him if he would
come for old time's sake
and welcome a song,

and he said he'd
be delighted to do that,

and he came along,
played his usual
breath-taking solo.

SUZI: I think
it's pretty obvious
when we... you know,

having to ask people
for money to support Mick,

was an awful thing
to have to do.

I mean it was humiliating
to say, "Look, you know,

"Mick's got no money
and he's really ill and he's
got nowhere to live.

"We've got a house for him
but we haven't got any money."

IAN: And he was great.
I mean, there'd
be one hour a day

when he would feel good,
with the morphine
and everything,

and he would ring everybody.
"How you doing?"

Not like how he was doing,
"How are you doing?" You know.

He took one course of chemo,

and said, "This is going
to kill me faster
than the other thing."

So he started
alternative healing.

And that's when he
started working with Morrissey,

during that period,
that's when he started
working with Morrissey.

And I think he knew
that his time was close,

and I think that he confided
in Morrissey a lot. I think
he did.

IAN: And then as he
was getting worse
and getting worse

I was ringing him and I
thought I should maybe
come over a bit, you know.

So in the end he's like,
"Why don't you come over?"

So I came over
and that was when
he went, you know.

I was downstairs
making a cup of tea,
she was upstairs with him,

and that was that,
you know.

DAVID: The band,
The Spiders From Mars,

got me the kind of fame
that I had in the early 70s,

and the lead guitarist
for that band was Mick Ronson,

and unfortunately...

Tragically,
he succumbed to cancer
three or four days ago.

And in his passing
I want to say that,

of all the early
70s guitar players,

Mick was probably one
of the most influential
and profound

and I miss him a lot.

And now I have to introduce
you to two people to come up
and accept this award.

That's his wife, Suzi,
and his only daughter, Lisa.

To this day, when I meet
people who have met him,

they usually don't talk
about his guitar solos
or his production skills.

They talk about
what a decent, funny,
down to earth person he was.

And for everybody else
that listens to his music,

or has been influenced
by him in any way,
you know Mick rocks.

I think what people miss
is me being there.

You know. 'Cause there
was some electricity there,

there was something
about this thing,

when two people get together,

there's some invisible...

energy, there's something
that's kind of magic.

You don't... you can't
put your finger on it,
you can't say what it is,

but it's something there.

You can't describe it
or anything. It just is.

And it either is right
or it's wrong, you know.

It just happened,
that it was right.

INTERVIEWER: Is there
a way you could play something
that would be commemorable

to your relationship
and your time and your
experience with Mick?

Well I've never played
a tribute to him
or written a piece for him.

And I would love to have
the privilege to do
it in this space

and since you knew him
and I knew him,

and he really
was my ally on that tour,

I'll try to just sit here
and create something, okay?

Thank you.

JON: Do you think we would,

have had the David Bowie
that we knew...

Yeah.
without Mick Ronson?

No.
No.

Would Bowie have been Bowie
without Mick Ronson?

No, I don't think
he would have done.

Not the same David.

It might, I think you
would have had David,

but it wouldn't have
been the same David.

Mick was absolutely
fundamental to the way
it developed at that time.

I have to say I think
Mick's early work with David,

was essential to it,
and it's some
of my favorite stuff.

It's utterly brilliant.

I have to say I think
David's genius would have
shone through anyway.

I think there was nothing
that was gonna stop that.

He was like a beacon.

But I think Mick
was the perfect...

The perfect sort
of complement in those days.

Mick and the other spiders,

brought him into that rock,
made him a rock star.

Not a theater star,
not a cabaret star,
but a rock star.

I know that he had
a big influence,
musically, on David.

There's absolutely no doubt
the icing on the cake

when it came
to the musicianship
was Ronson.

What he did
is he made things
easier for David.

You need to have
somebody to come in
and put the decoration on.

Ronno was the right man
at the right time.

Mick's contribution
was
very important.

His body was built,
he was gorgeous and glorious,

successful with women
and could play the guitar
like a virtuoso.

What more could you want?

He was one of the...

loveliest people I've ever met.

He was such a lovely guy,
kind, very gentle.

He was very humble.

He was a fantastic arranger.

And... 'Cause I spent
a lot of time with...
at the time with David

and he used to say,
"When I found Mick Ronson,
I found my Jeff Beck."

You know he said, "I thought
I've got my Jeff Beck here!"

He did have
a very distinct way,

of being melodic
but ferocious at the same time.

Not too many
guitarists can do that.

I don't think Mick knew
how good he was.

You know, I think if Mick had
realized how good he was...

I think he thought that if he
kicked up a fuss and left,

they'd just get somebody else.

I don't think he realized
what a talented person he was.

I remember talking to him,

and you know, just about me
being in Pistols and then
the Rich Kids thing,

and he was going,
"You gotta get it right.
You only get one chance."

I didn't think much of it
at the time, but looking back,
you know, that's what he meant.

In creating the legend
that is David Bowie,

Mick was a major, major part.

DAVID: It seems amazing really
that Ziggy and the Spiders

were only together
for about 18 months,

but there's no doubt in my
mind, that the collaboration
of Woody, Trevor and Ronno,

made for one of
the best trios of its time.

DAVID: These guys all came
from Hull, you know,

we're going to play
in a rock and roll band, they
liked the songs and all that.

And I said,
"Yeah, it's great.

"Do you want to see
what we're gonna wear?"

MICK: I think I
was more like a man and he
was more like a woman.

MAGGI: He was definitely
Mr. Godlike creature
with his shirt off

and his brown body
and his blond hair.

CHERRY: All the females
on the tour wanted
to have sex with Mick.

DANA: He was so marvelous
to tease, 'cause he
was so good looking.

ANGIE:
Take that shirt off!
That's a surfer boy.

We're gonna get America!

MICK: People came to see
me as much as they
were coming to see him.

IAN: If you looked at David,
he was like from another
planet,

and then you looked at Mick,
who was like God's gift
to women, you know,

I mean, it was like
a lethal combination.

DANA: He was a simple man
from Hull who adored music.

EARL: I still
rate Mick Ronson

as one of the most
influential rock and roll
guitar players in history.

MAGGIE: He was everything
to me, he was not only my
big brother,

he was like my hero, too.

IAN: I saw him
write an arrangement
on a Players cigarette packet.

ANGIE: There was so much
wonderful stuff about him.

I ironed all the boy's
shirts because of Ronno.

TONY: Mick kind
of didn't even know
who Morrissey was.

MICK: I got so stoned.

I've never been that
stoned... I don't think

I've ever been that stoned
in all my life, you know.

LOU: The thing with Ronno
is I could very rarely
understand a word he said.

He had a Hull accent.
He'd have to repeat
things five times.

TONY: And that
was the Ziggy Stardust tour.

We were off to Cleveland
right after that.

RICK: He knew how to elevate
David that bit more,

and by doing that
he elevated himself
a little bit.

JON: I said, "Oh, well,
anyway, great things
come out of Hull"

and he said, "Yeah,
only two good things
that came out of Hull,

"was fish and my sister."

MICK: They just
wanted to beat
the living shit out of us.

IAN: This was the story
of Ronson's life.

JOE: Great, brilliant.
This is rock and roll.
I'm all for it.

The equipment
helps a little bit.

I mean I think more
often than not...

it's in your own
personality,

it's in your own make-up,
it's in your own fingers,
you know.

DAVID: Most recently
we lost a great friend,
Mick Ronson.

He was the lead guitar player
with my first successful band,

Ziggy Stardust
and the Spiders.

I was fortunate enough
to know Mick,

right until
the end of his life.

And in the last year
of that life

I've gotten back
very closely with him.

If Mick had lived on
he would have become
a major producer and arranger,

and of course he would
have remained one of
rock's great guitar players.