David Bowie’s first encounter with Elvis Presley came with a harsh life lesson: there are few things more embarrassing than seeing one of your all-time idols for the first time and making a spectacle of yourself in the process. Of course, in hindsight, it’s hard to imagine an eccentric performer like Bowie being embarrassed about his over-the-top appearance.
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But when you’re in the presence of the King of Rock and Roll, your standards are subject to change.
David Bowie’s First Encounter With Elvis Presley
The early 1970s were a formative time for both David Bowie and Elvis Presley. The King of Rock and Roll was enjoying the dizzying heights of his triumphant comeback following a few years of record-low album sales and general discontentment in his career. Meanwhile, Bowie was creating the red-haired, jumpsuit-clad alien persona known as Ziggy Stardust. The two musicians were opposite sides of the same rock and roll coin.
Like so many other musicians and music lovers of the time, Bowie was a massive fan of Presley. So, when the opportunity arose for the British rocker to catch the King at Madison Square Garden in the early 1970s, he jumped at the chance and splurged on good seats. Ironically, if Bowie had opted for cheaper seats in the back, he might not have considered his first in-person encounter with Presley to be so embarrassing.
“I came over [to New York City] for a long weekend,” Bowie later recalled in an interview, per Bowie on Bowie: Interviews and Encounters. “I remember coming straight from the airport and walking into Madison Square Garden very late, I was wearing all my clobber from the Ziggy period, and I had great seats near the front. The whole place just turned to look at me.”
“I felt like a right c***,” Bowie continued. I had brilliant red hair, some huge padded space suit, and those red boots with big black soles—I wish I’d gone for something quiet because I must have registered with him. He was well into his set.”
The King Was A Great Inspiration To The Thin White Duke
A bashful David Bowie seems almost oxymoronic, but when one considers what Elvis Presley meant to the British musician, Bowie’s embarrassment at drawing attention away from one of his musical idols makes sense. In the same interview in Bowie on Bowie, the “Let’s Dance” singer said he always felt a connection to Presley. For one, the two musicians shared a birthday: January 8, 1935 (Presley), and 1947 (Bowie).
But even more importantly, Presley was a massive inspiration to Bowie musically speaking. “I was absolutely mesmerised by [our shared birthdays],” Bowie said. “I couldn’t believe it. He was a major hero of mine. And I was probably stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something.”
As Bowie’s star continued to rise, his management team suggested he should try to work with Presley as a producer/writer. Bowie wrote “Golden Years” with the King in mind, but after Presley turned him down, Bowie recorded it himself in 1975. The rejection wasn’t enough to dissuade Bowie from his feelings about Presley, with some even suggesting the man behind Ziggy Stardust used a Presley song to usher in his last album.
Bowie’s final album, Blackstar, released the same week as his death in January 2016, is thought to be a reference to Presley’s track “Black Star,” which includes the lines, Every man has a black star, a black star over his shoulder. And when a man sees his black star, he knows his time, his time has come.
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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