David Bowie and the grand unveiling of Ziggy Stardust in front of 60 people
Everyone’s got their own “you had to be there” gig, one where the circumstances are perhaps so outrageous that nobody would believe it truly happened, or maybe that it represented a one-off opportunity to witness something that nobody else since can lay claim to. It has to be said that seeing one of the all-time greats of popular music perform to under 100 people would rank highly for most as being one of these moments, and anyone who was fortunate enough to have been at David Bowie’s first show on the Ziggy Stardust tour can certainly be afforded bragging rights for this.
Despite having played a warm-up show two weeks prior at the Friars Club in Aylesbury, Bowie officially launched his Ziggy era on February 10th, 1972, at a venue called the Toby Jug in Tolworth, Surrey. With all due respect, one might scoff at the idea that an artist of Bowie’s stature and calibre would be playing in two small towns, but the man himself admitted in a 1997 interview with Q Magazine that “Ziggy was a case of small beginnings,” adding that there would have been no more than 20 to 30 fans at most.
“They’d be down at the front, and the rest of the audience was indifferent,” he added. “It feels so special because you and the audience kid yourselves that you’re in on this big secret.” Such was the difference between the musical landscape of the ’70s and the modern age; it meant that there was far more opportunity to see rising stars in small towns that don’t get as much as a sniff of appearing on UK tours.
However, the idea of having seen an icon come to a small suburban area isn’t as unusual as the prospect of there only having been 60 people there. Bowie had already had chart success by this point, reaching number one in the UK charts with ‘Space Oddity’ in 1969, so you might think that there would have been significantly more people interested in witnessing such an event. Despite this, the residents of the Surrey town seemed indifferent to his arrival in their neighbourhood.
Alongside the Spiders from Mars, who consisted of guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder and drummer Woody Woodmansey, Bowie debuted his new Ziggy Stardust persona to this small audience, having not brought it out for the previous show in Aylesbury. However, due to the corresponding album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, not being out until four months later, there wasn’t a significant amount of buzz or interest surrounding the early appearances of this character.
Despite this, Woodmansey remembers the band giving it their all and that there were some early signs of promise despite the scant audiences. “We got changed into our stage gear in a tiny dressing room, and we could hear the punters outside drinking and chatting,” the drummer recalled in his autobiography, Spiders from Mars: My Life With Bowie. “When we went on stage, we played that little pub as if it was a stadium. I watched Bowie, Mick and Trevor up front; they were full of energy, and made sure the crowd gave them their full attention. It was a great start to the tour.”
The early days of the tour might not have been as glamorous as things would get, but the band didn’t let that affect them in the slightest. “We were optimistic,” said Woodmansey, “and we knew we’d build up momentum as time passed – but some of the early gigs were only half full. The girls usually liked it, but most of the guys didn’t: the show was so over the top and outrageous, especially in small spaces like those.”
