Random David Bowie Stories From His Biggest Fans (13 items)

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  (#11) He Wasn't Afraid Of Changing A Dirty Diaper

  In 1969, Ronnie O. Servalan was only a few months old when his mother took him with her to visit a former schoolmate named Mary Finnigan; the women wanted to catch up after a few years of living in opposite ends of London. Servalan recalls:

  Mary introduced my mum to a certain David Bowie whom she was having a fling with. And, when [the two women had] gone off for a walk together, they left me in Bowie’s care and, ever the Renaissance man, he did the honours when I disgraced myself in the underwear department...
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  (#6) Black Flag's Henry Rollins Was Starstruck Upon Crossing Paths With His Hero

  It turns out "regular" people aren't the only ones who freak out when meeting their heroes or favorite celebrities - famous people do it as well. Henry Rollins, frontman for the punk rock band Black Flag, revealed this during his 2018 show, Henry Rollins: Keep Talking, Pal, when he discussed meeting Bowie for the first time at a music festival:

  [Bowie] looks fantastic, hair perfect, suit perfect. I go rigid like an officer on deck. I just stand there silent as can be because I don’t want to be the thing that makes David Bowie fly away like a rare bird.

  Rollins described the inner monologue he had with himself after spotting his hero:

  David Bowie is walking by me. I am such a fan; this is all I need. Twenty years later, I’ll be standing on a stage with cameras rolling saying, "David Bowie walked by me, and I was fine." I don’t need to meet him; I just like to be near him, fine.

  But Bowie didn't just walk by. He stopped and greeted his fellow musician. In his show, Rollins recounted how Bowie's music had saved his life, so when he had the chance to speak to his idol, he was tongue-tied. It turned out Bowie was a fan of Rollins's work, even telling him, "I read all your interviews; you’re very interesting."

  Rollins's lasting thought about this encounter? "Kill me! Because my life is never getting better than this!"
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  (#8) A Club DJ Pointed Out His Uncanny Resemblance To... David Bowie

  One night in 1989, a scruffy-looking man walked into the Ritz night club in New York City's East Village, where Russ Johnson worked as a video DJ.

  "I remember saying to him, 'Man, if you shaved your beard you'd make a pretty good David Bowie look-alike,'" Johnson told BBC News. "He kinda laughed and carried on doing what he was doing and then left."

  But that wasn't the end of the story. The next night, the club's stage manager asked Johnson to show the same scruffy-looking dude the club's sound system.

  "That's when I realized that I'd told David Bowie he would look like himself if he bothered to shave," Johnson said. "It turns out he was scouting locations to shoot a music video and he chose our club... meeting David Bowie was an experience I'll never forget, if only because it was so embarrassing!"
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  (#13) He Rejected A Fan's Offering Of A Fray Bentos Pie

  On Guy Fawkes Night in 1969, Valerie Jubb and her roommates went to a venue just outside Edinburgh, Scotland, to watch Bowie and his band perform. The band got lost en route to the gig, but Jubb and her friends were still at the bar when the band finally showed up. They got to talking and invited the group back to their flat.

  Jubb's daughter, Sara Sanderson, recounted the story to The Guardian shortly after Bowie's passing in 2016:

  Mum pulled out all the stops with a Fray Bentos pie. She says [Bowie] ate very little and none of the pie - it may have been her cooking apparently! Then they let off fireworks in the garden. Space Oddity had just been a hit that summer, I believe. She always said he was incredibly polite but distant. Got the impression he was coming to terms with impending stardom. 

  It’s one of my favourite stories and I’ve very possibly told to everyone who has spent more than five minutes in my company. It never occurred to me he would do something as mundane as dying. Sad day.
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  (#10) He Surprised A Fan With His Incredible Memory

  Redditor u/runin2astndstill said they got to meet Bowie on two separate occasions - at the Tibet Show Benefit in 2001 and at a taping of the Top of the Pops: 

  He was incredibly nice and always had a second to stop for his fans. He was constantly smiling. I also recall him having an incredible memory. One of the other people there brought up something about a bar in Berlin in the '70s and he went off on a tangent so detailed, I have no idea how anyone could recall something from over 20 years prior with that much detail.
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  (#1) For A Starman, He Was Surprisingly Down-To-Earth

  Eleanor Smith saw Bowie in concert several times. But the most memorable was when she won a contest sponsored by a beer company that gave her the opportunity to go backstage and meet Bowie after his show at the Hammersmith Apollo. Smith recalled:

  I remember being absolutely terrified and worried, too. I was worried I would meet him and he would be cold or uninterested, but he was anything but. He could obviously see I was petrified so cracked a few jokes to put me at ease, putting his arm around me and happily posing for photos. The best thing about Bowie is that, although he seems ethereal and like something from beyond the stars, he is actually very warm and down-to-earth. A true gentleman.

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