She listened to it and said, 'This sounds like one of Wayne's songs.' Basically, 'Queen Age Baby' is the mother of 'Rebel Rebel.' If he had never heard 'Queen Age Baby,' he would have never written 'Rebel Rebel.'" Bowie called her up and said that he wrote this great song called 'Rebel Rebel' and plays her this demo. So I sent him all of my tapes and not long after that, Sherry is sitting at the house in Connecticut. I recorded 'Wonder Woman,' 'Mexican City,' 'Are You Boy Or Are You A Girl?,' 'Queen Age Baby,' all these incredible lyrics I had come up with. I said, 'Something's up here.' They took me into the studio to record. I was flabbergasted! When I would say anything to anyone, they would just laugh and say I was paranoid. Six months later he comes out with Pin-Ups. I told him I wanted to do a whole album of all British Invasion hits. I had just signed to MainMan at the time and had all these great ideas kicking around, and I told David I had the best idea in the world. The transgender musician Jayne County claims Bowie based this on her song, "Queen Age Baby," which was recorded a month before "Rebel Rebel." County told Seconds magazine: "After one of his shows, me and Bowie were chatting. You've got to be a bastard in this business." I went over to his house and he had all these Guy Peellaert pictures around and said, 'What do you think of this guy?' I told him I thought he was incredible. I mean, he should never have shown me anything new. David Bowie has this to say about the incident: "Mick was silly. Mick Jagger was none too happy about this. Bowie quickly got a hold of Peelaert and had him design the cover for Diamond Dogs, which was unleashed to the public prior to the album by The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger had shown Bowie artwork that Peellaert had done for the not yet released Rolling Stones album It's Only Rock And Roll. An alternate cover was released with the appendages airbrushed out. It shows Bowie as a dog in front of a banner that says "The Strangest Living Curiosities." The cover caused some controversy because the Bowie dog had clearly not been neutered. The album cover was painted by Dutch artist Guy Peellaert. That could only happen in a movie, couldn't it? McEnroe trying to struggle his way through the 'Rebel Rebel' riff." It was McEnroe, who saw himself as some sort of rock guitar player at the time. The door opens, and I say, 'Listen, if you're going to play.' and it was John McEnroe! I kid you not (laughs). So I went upstairs to show the person how to play the thing (laughs). I thought, 'Who the hell is doing this at this time of night?' On an electric guitar, over and over. It was quite late, like eleven or twelve at night, and I had some big deal thing on the next day, a TV show or something, and I heard this riff being played really badly from upstairs. One night, I was in London in a hotel trying to get some sleep. It's a real air guitar thing, isn't it? I can tell you a very funny story about that. Bowie spoke to Performing Songwriter magazine about the legendary riff: "When I was high school, that was the riff by which all of us young guitarists would prove ourselves in the local music store. "He said: "Look son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."īowie's guitarist, Mick Ronson, quit in 1973 in order to pursue a solo career, so Bowie played guitar on this song. So, I tottered briefly on my stack-heeled boots and said: "My dear man, I'm not pissing in a sink." I could also tell you that when we used to play the working men's clubs up north - very rough district - and I first went out as Ziggy Stardust, I was in the dressing room in one club and I said to the manager: "Could you show me where the lavatory is, please?"Īnd he said: "Aye, look up that corridor and you see the sink attached to the wall at the end? There you go." So, we used to go up and down Carnaby Street, this is prior to Kings Road, and go through all the dustbins around nine/ten o'clock at night and get our wardrobes together. At that time Carnaby Street, the fashion district, was going through a period of incredible wealth and rather than replace buttons on their shirts or zippers on their trousers, at the end of the day they'd just throw it all away in the dustbin. And we met each other firstly painting the wall of our then manager's office. We were nothing we were just two nothing kids with huge ambitions, and we both had the same manager at the time. We actually met very early on in the '60s before either of us were even a tad pole known. I can tell you about the time that I first met Marc Bolan who became a very, very good friend of mine. Bowie did an episode of VH1 Storytellers in 1999 where he introduced this song with this yarn:
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