How David Bowie became Pete Townshend’s first fan
David Bowie and Pete Townshend are two of the most influential figures of their generation. Each went a great way in railing against traditional social mores with their music and helped to change the world because of it. Whilst both seemed destined to hit the heights they went on to achieve, as is well-known, Townshend and his group The Who had been at the top of the game for years before Bowie first broke through at the tail end of the 1960s.
Although the status of their careers might have initially taken different paths, Bowie and Townshend knew each other right from the start. According to an account from The Who guitarist some five years after Bowie’s tragic death in early 2016, the famously self-confident ‘Starman’ singer was his first fan, and he only found this out through some strange random encounter with him.
In a radio interview in 2021, Townshend recalled the “weird story” of the first time he met David Bowie, and he told him that he loved his early demos, thus making him his first open fan. The Who guitarist recalled: “Well, this is a weird story. I was published from about 1964 onwards by a guy called David Platts who ran a company that published people like Leslie Bricusse, and Anthony Newley, and people like that. And I was one of his first second-generation songwriters. His company was called Essex.”
Townshend continued: “And one day I was walking, I lived in Ebury Street in Victoria, and a shout came across the street from a mod-looking guy with blonde hair, backcombed. This would have been probably about 1966, early ’67 – and it was David.”
“He was with his then-wife Angie, and he shouted across the road, ‘Really loved your demo of ‘Join My Gang’,’ which was a song that I’d written for one of Robert Stigwood’s artists. And I said to him, ‘How did you hear that?'”
Explaining how Bowie came across his music and became his first fan, Townshend said: “And he said: ‘Well, I work at Essex and I’ve heard all your demos.’ So what he’d done is – whenever I wrote a song, I would send a demo to Fabulous Music, which was my company hosted by Essex, and he’d been through my demos and listened to all my songs, the ones I’d recorded at home.”
He concluded: “And I didn’t know anything about him. Anyway, I asked his name and he said then his name was David Jones. That was my first meeting.”
