Listen to a rare early mix of David Bowie song ‘Letter to Hermoine’
Although David Bowie was known for using personas and experimenting with different identities, from Aladdin Sane to the Thin White Duke, his work always remained inextricably personal. When Bowie donned distinctive costumes and makeup to become his first alter ego Ziggy Stardust, he emerged as an icon of glam rock, finally achieving the high levels of success he’d been chasing for so many years.
Before then, Bowie had found mixed reception to his work, often receiving critical praise but low commercial sales. His self-titled first album was a source of much ridicule in Bowie’s career and failed to encapsulate the artist’s creative potential. The musician shared in Nicholas Pegg’s book The Complete David Bowie: “Musically, it’s quite bizarre. I don’t know where I was at. It seemed to have its roots all over the place, in rock and vaudeville and music hall. I didn’t know if I was Max Miller or Elvis Presley.”
When recording his next album, also called David Bowie, the artist began to incorporate the themes he later became known for, such as inventing a character (Major Tom) and space, encapsulated in the song ‘Space Oddity’. The record has divided critics, although it is widely considered one of Bowie’s weaker outputs.
A few days after Bowie recorded ‘Space Oddity’, he ran through three more tracks, ‘Janine’, ‘An Occasional Dream’ and ‘Letter to Hermione’, with the latter two directly referencing an ex-girlfriend of Bowie’s whom he was still infatuated with, Hermione Farthingale. Discussing ‘Letter to Hermione’, the musician explained to Disc and Music Echo: “I once wrote a letter I never sent to Hermione, who was a dancer with the Lindsay Kemp mime company. I thought I’d record it instead and send her the record. I think she’s in Greenwich Village now”.
Bowie also told George Tremlett for In David Bowie: Living on the Brink: “That’s me in a maudlin or romantic mood. I’d written her a letter, and then decided not to post it. ‘Letter To Hermione’ is what I wished I’d said. I was in love with her, and it took me months to get over it. She walked out on me, and I suppose that was what hurt as much as anything else, that feeling of rejection.”
The pair met when they both appeared in The Pistol Shot alongside Kemp, with Bowie walking Farthingale to the London Underground afterwards. It wasn’t long before the couple started a relationship, although it crumbled after Dennis was offered a job in Norway. As part of BBC Radio’s Golden Years – The David Bowie Story, he said: “I just fell head over heels. I think actually it was mutual; we were very much in love with each other. And as young love often does, it sort of, you know, went wrong after about a year. I wrote this song really as a way of trying to communicate with her again.”
Farthingale even responded to the songs, stating: “I think David expresses himself beautifully. But they weren’t written and handed to me, there wasn’t any ulterior motive. Obviously, they strike into the heart. They’re wonderful, wonderful love songs, whoever they’re for… To me, that’s just the David I know. Who was very personal. These weren’t works of fiction, they were just heartfelt songs.”
Listen to an early demo of the song, taken from the 2019 boxset Conversation Piece, below.
