Alan Edwards, the public relations giant who founded The Outside Organisation, has worked alongside David Bowie and the likes of - among others - the Rolling Stones, Prince and Britney Spears throughout his career. On the occasion of the publication of his book 'I Was There: Dispatches from a Life in Rock and Roll', Edwards told NME how the late British 'Let's dance' artist handled fame in the early '80s.
At the centre of this story sits the defining relationship of Edwards' career: his close, thirty-year collaboration with David Bowie. He guides us through a series of vivid, funny, always insightful behind-the-scenes reports, whether he's playing a spontaneous game of football with Bob Marley, listening to Prince discuss the future of civilisation in a nightclub VIP area, or being used as a pawn in the power struggle between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
To launch his new book, the media legend speaks to NME and recalls his time being mentored (and terrified) by The Rolling Stones, how David Bowie went disguised in public, and Amy Winehouse's final years.
Now, he has compiled his most fascinating anecdotes into a new book: I Was There: Dispatches from a Life in Rock and Roll. From his gruelling mentorship from Mick Jagger to watching his office casually destroyed by The Who‘s Keith Moon, playing football with Bob Marley and watching David Bowie’s legacy evolve over four decades — these are just some of the memories that Edwards explores in the memoir.
“I recall how I first saw David Bowie live as a kid, back when he was doing Ziggy Stardust. I saw him in this venue with about 150 people, and it was early days but it already felt like he was from another planet. At that point I had no idea I was going to work for him for nearly four decades.
“I met with him just after he had done [Nagisa Ōshima’s 1983 war epic with Ryuichi Sakamoto] Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, so he was being treated like a movie star — but also he had just been dropped by his label because ‘Low’ and ‘Heroes’ weren’t being deemed as good commercially as stuff like Bay City Rollers!
“It was when I went on tour with him that it started to sink in how down-to-earth and charming he was. He’d turn up at our office in Tottenham Court Road and make coffee for everyone. He told me his secret to not being recognised was to wear a cloth cap and have a Greek newspaper under his arm. That way if anyone ever questioned whether it was him, they’d look closer and think, ‘Well it can’t be… he’s obviously Greek’. It was the same for interviews. We’d get the train a lot of the time, no first-class or anything, and you’d be amazed how many people would do a double take, then think: ‘Can’t be him, he’s just a guy sat with us going to Manchester’.
“An example of that in the book is how there was one time after a radio interview he had nothing better to do, so he decided to present the station’s traffic reports. He sat there telling people there were delays on the M25… and even to this day I don’t think anyone knew it was David Bowie. He was this extraordinary creative genius, but also a pure, disarming, nice gentleman.”
