The small piece of Glasgow that David Bowie kept in his bathroom
They do say that certain cities never leave you – but in the case of David Bowie, he couldn’t help but keep a piece of Scotland’s greatest metropolis close to his heart.
That might seem quite a figurative way of putting things, but don’t be fooled. The allusion is genuinely real in this instance is genuinely real in this instance because, when the Starman came to visit and play a show in 1997, he left with a pretty unique souvenir. No, it wasn’t your standard tin of shortbread or Highland cow cuddly toy: it was an actual star.
It was a befitting gift for the man with a famous penchant for outer space, of course, and an almost ethereal sign from the Glaswegian universe that it wanted him to stay within its walls forever. In that sense, there was no better place than the message to be delivered down from on high than in the city’s greatest venue: the Barrowland Ballroom.
Obviously, the Barrowland is seen as somewhat of a cultural mecca for all kinds of artists, big and small. The allure of the place is a certain magical spell, but not least because of the folklore that Bowie whipped up around his stop there on the Earthling tour in 1997. As legend has it, while he and his band were rehearsing, one of the venue’s famed stars from its ceiling happened to fall.
Yet the true serendipity of the moment was that it managed to take its tumble to Earth straight into the Starman’s orbit, as he caught the object and, with the element of poetry not lost on him, decided to pocket it for his own safekeeping. It goes without saying that the Barrowland staff were more than happy to let this small act of thievery slide for once.
After all, it was Bowie: how could you argue with him? In his real fashion of seizing the moment, the show he went on to perform that night was one of the most iconic and memorable that he ever brought to Glasgow across the scores of his career. Maybe it was that little pocketful of stardust that helped to fuel the electric energy.
But it was the mark of the man that the power of the Scottish city never left his grasp, either. Sure, it was no New York or south London or Berlin, yet the enthral of the Barrowland and the events of that night clearly captured something special in Bowie’s imagination, so much so that he wanted to keep the memento forever.
As such, the Barrowland star took up residence in the bathroom of his Paris apartment, sitting pride of place beside the bog. It was a humorous end to what was truly an ethereal turn of events – and one that the Starman, for all the rest of his life, was not bound to forget in a hurry.
Even if you don’t believe in any sort of higher power, sometimes stories like those make you believe that there must be something existing in the universe to make things happen in the way that they do. Come to think of it, that sense of magic has kind of been missing in our lives over the past ten years. Maybe the spirit was just Bowie himself.
