An extract from the book, which has appeared in The Sunday Times, details how Suzi then travelled to the couple's mansion Haddon Hall, where she was introduced to David, later that evening, where she met David for the first time. He was sitting in the mansion’s huge midnight-blue livingroom, “flicking through a magazine, wearing a soft velvet shirt with rolled-up sleeves and fitted trousers”.
Conversation was minimal to begin with – “He was a quiet person. Angie was great for him, as she just filled in all of the gaps,” Ronson says – but then, on one visit, “he showed me the photograph of a model in a magazine with this short, red spiky hair and said to me, ‘Can you do that?’” Yes, she said immediately, even though she wasn’t entirely sure. After two evenings’ work, the result was brilliant-red hair that stood up like a brush. “Angie screamed and David danced round the room, posing, shaking his head, loving it.”
“David wasn’t anybody at that particular point, but they were so interesting. They talked about people I had never heard of,” she says. “I didn’t know what life was like until I met those two. I was just a suburban kid from Beckenham. It was hard to keep up with their conversations – I would just listen most of the time, and laugh when they said something I thought was funny.”
Ronson adored Marc Bolan, of T Rex. When the Bowies brought him up in conversation she thought she finally had a chance to gain some credibility. “I said I loved him, the way he looked. I went on and on. When I finished the conversation there was silence. What I didn’t realise was that even though David and Marc were friends, they were also fierce competitors at that time. David did not love it that I was so enamoured of Marc Bolan. That shut me up again for another six months,” she says, laughing.
As time went on, Bowie became more interested in Ronson – to the point, she says matter-of-factly, that eventually they slept together. “He slept with everybody. It was just like marking his territory. I wasn’t in love with David. I was curious. He was an attractive bloke.
You can read the full article on The Irish Times.
Me and Mr Jones: My Life with David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars, by Suzi Ronson, is published by Faber & Faber on Thursday, April 4th; Suzi Ronson is due to appear at Belfast Book Festival on Sunday, June 9th
