The Shout hitmaker has previously discussed her romance with Bowie in her autobiography, I Don’t Want To Fight and in a 2017 interview with Weekend Magazine.
I first met him in a studio in the US with Iggy Pop. Later, he walked over to me in the foyer of a hotel in Sheffield.
Than He invited me to his show that night and said: “I wanna make a hit record with you.
Which is exactly what happened. The record company wanted me to be a little pop diva but he said: “They don’t get your voice.” I loved Hunky Dory and he looked as if he hadn’t wiped his makeup off from the day before. His hair was orange, his skin was alabaster. Once we’d had something to drink we were head-to-head, nose-to-nose for the rest of the evening.
I covered Bowie songs that have never been released and I’m aware of two – Dodo [an outtake from the Diamond Dogs sessions] and Can You Hear Me [from Young Americans]. There may have been another that I can’t remember, because it was quite a difficult time. He was doing Young Americans and involved in a lot of dark things. I was a little bit frightened and kinda ran. I don’t have many regrets but there is a part of me that thinks: “What if the relationship would have continued?” I’m a very private person, and most people only know a piece of me, but Bowie got me.
After Bowie’s last gig as Ziggy Stardust, I decamped to the Hotel Café Royal along with Mick Jagger and Lou Reed.
They say if you can remember it you weren’t having fun. And I don’t remember much of it! I remember Mick being happy I was working with Bowie. I’d first met him when I was 15 and we were both on Decca. The Stones would pat me on the head, like I was a little sister, which always annoyed me because I wanted to be their equal.
“For the video, people thought he came up with the androgynous look, but that was all mine. It was very Berlin cabaret. We did other songs, too, like ‘Watch That Man,’ ‘Can You Hear Me?’ and ‘Dodo.’ ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ saved me from a certain niche in my career. If we’d have carried on, it would have been very interesting.”