Best photo of David Bowie that you will ever see: First night in the USA, 1971





As readers of this blog most probably know by now, I’m a massive, massive Bowie head and have been for over 35 years. Although I tend to think I’ve seen and heard about 99.9% of everything relating to the man’s life and career, I’ve been finding that the .1% of the stuff I’ve never come across before is almost always pure gold and that there is also a seemingly bottomless pit of it. Maybe I should revise my total down to 95%? (Let’s hope the real number is actually closer to 50%).

Like I was saying, there is still a lot to discover, such as this, my new top favorite photograph ever taken of David Bowie. What’s more, he’s probably never seen it himself, either.

The photograph above was taken on the evening of Bowie’s first arrival in the United States. It’s on the Flickr account of Michael Olberman, a writer who covered pop music at the time. His brother happened to work for Bowie’s then record label, Mercury Records. This would have been in Jan-Feb of 1971, when Bowie was in America promoting The Man Who Sold the World (Apparently that’s a card or something that he’s holding and not a joint). Here’s the caption Michael wrote:

This was David Bowie’s first night (ever) in the United States. I am the one waving in the photo. David was great. He went to dinner with me, my brother and my parents. This photo was taken in my parent’s living room in Silver Spring, MD. Later that night he came to my house and spent the evening. Incredible memories for me. David, if you flickr—hello again!

Click here to see a larger version of the photo.

Below, Bowie sings “Space Oddity” in a German TV appearance from 1969 and wadda ya know, I’ve never seen this clip before either!

