On 31 May, the following email arrived. Subject: “Iggy was my boss and I lived to tell the tale.” It read “...As it happens Angelica is my wife. So you have found me good and proper!
I'll talk. It's been long enough. Kevin.”
Obviously one of the benefits of doing a biography like this is that you get to go to new places. Yesterday I went to NW10 and spent a blissful summer morning in the garden with Kevin, wife Angelica and their new baby. Kevin was MD for Bowie’s Live Aid appearance and Absolute Beginners, was called in to play guitar on Blah Blah Blah at Mountain Studios in Montreux and thereafter headed Iggy’s band. Here are a couple of tasters...
Iggy had very recently straightened up, after a few fairly torrid years. How did he seem to you?
He just struck me as a very polite bloke. Within half an hour of meeting we were just me and him in a rowing boat on Lake Geneva and he was pointing out to me where Lord Byron lived and things like that, we were just chatting. Very relaxed. My impression was, Wow, all these stories about him being such a wild animal, he’s actually a really cultured and intelligent bloke. Very nice… almost military bearing in a way, you know?
You were struck by the fact he seemed quite clean-living?
I thought he was... very together. He had that college boy black haircut and he was also exercising, he had a ballet tutor in New York, he used to fling his legs up at every shelf in the near vicinity to stretch, and he was eating well, it just seemed to me this is not a degenerate scene, this is going to be really great.
Were you aware the context was that he’d run himself into the ground?
I think what Bowie said to me was, What’s happening is, Iggy hasn’t got a record deal, we’ve written some songs, we’ve got a little list of how to make this record with you and Erdal and us, and we’re just gonna do it, and I’m gonna then sell it to a [record company] we’re gonna get him a deal. That was the vibe.
You’re a good person to talk to about Bowie, because you worked on his own projects, plus this Iggy record. Overall, what do you think Bowie’s motivation was ? Pure selflessness?
I think it was. I really think it was, yes. His association with Iggy always reflected well on him, there’s no doubt about that, but I think he was helping his friend, I really do, that’s the impression I got. Out of respect for Iggy as an artist, he realised he was in a position to really help him and I think that’s what he was doing.
[Without giving away too much, Kevin was very insightful on several aspects of Bowie as a musician and a man. One of the most enduring images of the recording is of Bowie with a clip board and a ‘to do’ list, keeping the sessions on-time and under-budget...]