Changes

The old bandstand held so many memories for me. It took pride of place in the Recreation Ground at Beckenham, where I grew up in the 1960s. Not much happened in this otherwise sleepy suburban town to the south-east of London. But I can never forget the time in 1969 when a free pop concert was organized by a ragtag bunch of musicians from the area, including my friend Lenny. He’d been talking about it in the Rat & Parrot for weeks.

“We are going to pack the Rec with fans,” he told me. “Hundreds of ‘em.” He even talked me into helping set up before the show. “There’ll be plenty of girls there,” he said, rather optimistically. I think he thought it might help encourage me to be there and bring some of the other guys from the pub. I had no idea what to expect and didn’t recognize any of the band names, but I wasn’t doing anything else so agreed to help him out.

Come the day, there was not much to do. I carried a couple of bags through from Lenny’s brother’s Austin A30, parked outside on the Croydon Road, but Lenny took his own guitar. When I was done and heading back to the car, I heard a shout from behind me.

“Hey, mate! Gissa hand.” I turned around to see some weird skinny guy wearing tight slacks and a flowery shirt. He was struggling to carry his equipment into the grounds. As I was done with Lenny, I walked over and helped him carry his things over to the bandstand.

“I’m David,’ he said, offering me his hand when we had put the things down.”

“Pete,” I said, tentatively gripping his hand.

“Listen, Pete, I need some advice,” he said. “I’ve been playin’ around with stage names and not sure what people will think.”

“What’s your real name, then?”

“Jones, but David Jones is a bit, well, plain, and I wondered about changing it to something more memorable.”

“Like what?”

“Like Ziggy or Zowie or Bowie or something like that. What do you think?”

“David Bowie?” I looked at him standing there with his hand on his hip and head cocked to one side.

“Nah,” I said. “I should stick to David Jones if I were you. David Bowie sounds a bit, well, strange.” He laughed and patted me on the back.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said, leaping up the steps to the bandstand. “And thanks. Hang around after the show if you like. We’ll be having a few drinks.”

“Yeah, see ya!” I said, walking off. I wasn’t sure I fancied a few drinks with a weird skinny guy in a flowery shirt.

This story is a work of fiction. No such encounter took place at the free concert in Beckenham Recreation Ground in 1969. The Rat & Parrot was then The Three Tuns and is now a Pizza restaurant.

The free concert in Beck Rec in 1969 featured David Bowie and The Strawbs among other acts. Bowie also regularly played at the Three Tuns pub. He was at the time living in Beckenham and though by no means a well-known pop star, had been playing various gigs for several years.

The true story of how and why Bowie chose this particular name over his real and very ordinary name David Jones is well know and can easily be researched on the web. This fictional interpretation was just intended as a bit of fun.