qglam92

On the wall of Brett Anderson's dingy, claustrophobic Notting Hill first-floor flat hangs a poster of David Bowie. A pretty cool idea. Millions have had it before him. Anderson likes to contemplate it while he sips his tea.
But this is one of the most anomolous and challenging images from Bowie's mighty folio. Shot in grainy fag-ash monochrome, he sits side-on with head back, long hair draped back over one half of his face, filter-tip in paw, and a distant, unreadable look in his eyes. The credit says simply "Beckenham '69".
Now, 1969 was a strange old year for bowie. He had just been turned down by his fourth record company. His improbable, over-ambitious folk/mime trio Feathers were going nowhere. His relationship with self-styled actress Hermoine Farthingale was on the skids. And his grandoise-sounding Beckenham Arts Lab, where the photo was taken, was in fact just a back room of the Three Tuns boozer in Beckenham High Street. It was not a great time to be te future Thin White Duke.
But weird karma was afoot. He'd writte a song called space oddity. Neil Armstrong was four months away from sketching that crucial inaugral moonwalk. And david bowie was five months away from reaching what, in the vernacular, would be called "head-fuck stardom".
"I like to imagine" suggests Brett Anderson over yet more tea, "that he's just sitting there thinking that nobody quite knows yet. He looks very cool and inscrutable. I've always thought like that. I've always had a kind of romantic self-image, sitting in drab surroundings thinking of what i could possibly do."
What Suede could do is the most exciting moot point in rock music today. Depending on where you're standing, they could be any or all of the following...