Description
How did David Bowie end up sleeping at Stockport station on the evening of Monday 27th April 1970?
Bowie had been booked to play at the infamous Poco A Poco nightclub and casino in Heaton Chapel by five teenagers from Stockport School, also known as Mile End.
Bill Frost, Steve Hibbert, Keith Martin, Mike McCormack and David ‘Taff’ Maynard were members of Stockport Schools’ Students’ Union and about to finish sixth-form, so they wanted to put on a final gig to remember with the £500 funds they had in the SU kitty.
As Chair of the Students’ Union, 17-year-old Bill Frost decided to book David Bowie as the headline act as he’d recently had his first Top Ten chart hit ‘Space Oddity’, which peaked at number five in November 1969.
Bowie was initially booked to play with his backing band The Hype for a fee of £250. Bill was in an Economics lesson at Mile End when the school secretary came in to say David Bowie’s agent was on the phone. Bill was told that Bowie’s drummer ‘Woody’ Woodmansey had injured his finger and couldn’t play, so it was decided that Bowie would play a solo acoustic set instead for a reduced fee of £200.
The other artists on the bill that night were Barclay James Harvest, High Tide and local band The Purple Gang. Tickets were sold for “ten bob” or 50p in today’s money.
Bowie arrived at the Poco A Poco carrying his guitar, wearing a floor-length RAF trench coat, his shoulder-length hair a shock of blonde curls. The first thing he said was that he was hungry, so was directed over the road to Cowley’s bakery on the corner of Denby Lane where he bought a meat pie and custard tart. To wash it down, 18-year-old Mike McCormack brought him a pint of Whitbread Trophy from the downstairs bar.
As they didn’t know how many tickets had actually been sold, the friends were worried that not enough people would turn up for the gig to be a success. To spread the word among female students, they enlisted the help of their friend Roz Wood, who attended Fylde Lodge High School for Girls (now Priestnall School) in Heaton Mersey. It seems Bowie had plenty of female fans as the concert drew a crowd of over 700 people who were queuing down Manchester Road and over the railway bridge to get in.
Before the gig, Bowie asked The Purple Gang if they would be his backing band for the night but they declined as they didn’t know his songs. For his performance, Bowie sat on a bar stool at the front of the main stage and played most of the songs from his album ‘David Bowie’ as well as ‘The Port of Amsterdam’ and ‘Space Oddity’ twice.
During the evening Bowie was overheard asking members of Barclay James Harvest if anyone had a spare bed for the night but nobody could help. After his performance, he made his way to the station to find that he had missed the last train to London. He decided to camp out on a bench on the platform until the next morning.
While this was just another regular gig for the up and coming superstar, for the Stockport teenagers it was a night that they’d never forget. Now in their seventies, they still come together every year to celebrate it.
