The moment David Bowie embarrassed himself in front of Andy Warhol: “The meeting was kind of tense”
Icons are positioned as such that when they achieve their God-like status it is easy to forget their journey to achieve it. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were two scruffy songwriters knocking around village fetes, Debbie Harry was serving drinks hoping to get a whiff of fame and Bruce Springsteen slummed it in bar bands for years before he blew up. It may seem difficult to accept now, but there was a time when David Bowie was just another unknown singer searching for fame in New York.
While the acclaimed Starman is well-known across the entire universe these days, for some years, the singer struggled to make an impact in his native Britain, let alone do the unthinkable and ‘crack America’. That said, during these comparative wilderness years, Bowie took himself to the Big Apple, found the foundations of Ziggy Stardust on the filthy streets of New York City, and returned with two new friends in Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.
Leaving for New York and returning with three new compatriots (two real people and one all-encompassing new persona) was impressive. One man, however, did not find himself on the singer’s Christmas card list; Andy Warhol.
David Bowie was an early adopter of Lou Reed’s band, the Velvet Underground, and the group Andy Warhol seemingly produced through his arthouse, The Factory. In fact, it has been claimed that it was Bowie, way back in the late 1960s, who had given the band their first British cover as he sang ‘Waiting For The Man’ to a somewhat bemused audience, who had no idea who the song was by. When Bowie met the actor Tony Zanetta in London, he became instantly obsessed with the actor, not least of all because Zanetta was in the capital to play Andy Warhol in the stage production of his play Pork.
Bowie and Zanetta grew close friends, and the actor agreed to show Bowie around New York when he arrived in 1971. Still somewhat far from his incarnation as Ziggy Stardust and miles away from being considered a superstar, Bowie arrived at the seedy arthouse haunts of New York like a dewy-eyed fan, both bewildered and beguiled by what he saw. He may have been signing his new record contract with RCA, but Bowie’s star was far from gleaming. He was firmly set in the doldrums of terra firma.
Zanetta spoke to Bedford and Bowery about the singer’s time in New York and how close they became during this time. The actor claims that it didn’t take long for Bowie to request a meeting with the great Warhol himself rather than just the man who played him. “We all marched over to The Factory,” the actor remembers of the curious meeting. “The meeting was kind of tense because Warhol was not a great talker, you had to talk and entertain Andy, and David really wasn’t a great talker either. Nobody was really taking this conversation and running with it.”
It’s easy to imagine the scene and how tense it must have been. Bowie, clearly a fan but with his own disposition for remaining mystical face to face with a bonafide emperor of the art world, seemingly struggled to engage with anyone brought before him. Awkwardness is one thing but, soon enough, things went from bad to worse as Bowie uncharacteristically embarrassed himself: “So they were circling each other and then David gave him a copy of Hunky Dory on which was his ode to Andy Warhol, the song ‘Andy Warhol’.”
The track isn’t one of Bowie’s best, starting of course with his uncanny impression of Warhol and a comedic expression that shows off Bowie’s acting skills, the song soon descends into a folk-pop track about the mercurial pop artist that is certainly tinged with apprehension and darkness. The lyrics highlight a distrust of the artist: “Andy Warhol looks a scream, hang him on my wall / Andy Warhol silver screen, can’t tell them apart at all,” all of which may have contributed to the artist’s reaction. Warhol was rarely too impressed by his own work, let alone anybody else’s. Now, some kid from Britain had written a song about him which even included a vague impression of his deadpan delivery.
“Warhol didn’t say anything but absolutely hated it,” Zanetta remembers of the tense crossing of paths, “Which didn’t help the meeting. Remember, David Bowie was not a big star. He was just some guy off the street as far as Andy Warhol was concerned.” Things did eventually soften a little and, as one may imagine, around fashion. “They found a common ground in David’s shoes. David was wearing yellow Mary Janes and Andy had been a shoe illustrator, which David knew so they began talking about shoes. Otherwise, it was not the greatest meeting [laughs].
“He also met Lou Reed that week and Iggy Pop that week,” recalls the actor. “So it was a big, big, big week. And it was the beginning of the whole next phase of his life and career and as it turns out all of our lives and careers.” Zanetta would become Bowie’s tour manager across his next two US jaunts and counted him as a good friend until his death.
Sadly, the possibility of two of the 20th century’s most creative and purposeful minds ended with the drop of a record needle as Bowie and Warhol quickly ascertained they were never going to be great friends. But Bowie certainly made off the better of the two from their meeting. Bowie could count two lifelong partners in Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, who he met on the trip and the seedlings of his upcoming creation Ziggy Stardust, who he lifted from the underbelly of NYC. But we’re sure that both Bowie and Warhol were left cringing whenever they reminisced about their brief and awkward meeting.
