Salesman Geoff MacCormack saw huge ch-ch-changes when childhood pal David Bowie rang him out of the blue.
Life was Hunky Dory for Geoff, who was selling ads for a construction newspaper and about to be promoted.
But in 1973 the Oh! You Pretty Things star had other plans for his mate from cub scouts and the church choir.
Geoff said: “He didn’t ask me, he just said, ‘You’re coming on tour’. There was no debate in my mind.”
Backing vocalist and occasional percussionist Geoff had snapped the enigmatic star that year as Ziggy Stardust at the then Hammersmith Odeon in London, now the Apollo.
He also took shots of him in LA and, two years later, in New Mexico, US, where Bowie was filming sci-fi film The Man Who Fell To Earth.
Geoff took dozens of candid pictures of the pop legend on the world tour. He said: “I had a vague interest in photography and he didn’t mind as they were holiday snaps.”
Geoff, right, exhibiting in Brighton, said: “Then 35 years later I thought, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got these wonderful pictures’.
Because I was his pal, this is why they were so different, he’d play up and do stuff.”
He said Bowie was terrified of flying, so his crew journeyed by boat and train, and after the US leg of the tour they sailed to Vancouver in Canada, Hawaii and Japan.
Geoff was eight when he met Bowie at school in Bromley, South London.
He said: “Rock ‘n’ roll was invading the world at the time and it was incredible.”
Geoff became a mod and Bowie, over six decades, one of rock’s greatest stars.
The world mourned Bowie’s death from liver cancer in 2016, aged 69.
Geoff, 73, most misses his pal’s sense of humour and treasures his memories of their time together.
He particularly recalls backing Bowie one night, along with the likes of Luther Vandross, and his pal crediting him for co-writing Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me.
- Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me Bowie/MacCormack 1973-76, October 17 to June 6, 2021, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery
