Right on song: David Bowie’s childhood mate, George Underwood, enjoyed Bowie-inspired music from pupils at his old school
David Bowie’s best friend told pupils at the Bromley school they had attended together about their youthful music obsessions and haircuts gone wrong.
George Underwood visited Ravens Wood School this week for an event organised by the Heritage of London Trust, where pupils performed somgs inspired by Bowie, as part of the heritage programme linked to 4 Plaistow Grove.
The event follows the Trust’s acquisition of David Bowie’s childhood home at 4 Plaistow Grove in Bromley, which is set to be fully restored and opened to the public next year.
Plaistow Grove provided Bowie’s creative sanctuary from the age of eight to 20, between 1955 and 1967. The house is where the music star’s journey began, writing his formative songs. He returned regularly as a young adult, and it is where he wrote his breakthrough smash hit, Space Oddity.
Musical genius: Bowie wrote several of his early songs at his childhood home, including Space Oddity
At this week’s event at Ravens Wood, Underwood shared fond anecdotes from his time attending the school together with the boy then known as David Jones.
“We spent hours in the toilets at school,” Underwood said, explaining: “We were doing our hair, different hairstyles and things.
“We were quite vain, you know. Thought we were god’s gift.”
Underwood recalled a time when Bowie experimented with his look, saying: “He came into school with a really short haircut, a crew cut. He said: ‘It’s my Gerry Mulligan period’,” referring to a jazz musician
“Later on, David said to me: ‘Actually, George, I tried cutting my own hair last night and it all went wrong.’ So he had to get the local hairdresser down the road to come and trim it, tidy it up for him. It was by mistake.
“David was always kind of theatrical. We used to do lots of pretending to be people all the time. We used to do different accents. We always used to pretend we were American with an American accent – we were chatting up girls.
“He wanted to move on. He strived to get better and better at what he was doing and, of course, it was songwriting that he eventually found. He wasn’t even singing in the early days. He was playing saxophone and stuff.”
Bowie fan: the hairstyles may have changed, but George Underwood enjoyed his return to his old school
On growing up in Bromley, Underwood said the Bromley Club (now the Bromley Court Hotel) had music on seven days a week, from modern and traditional jazz to pop. “I saw Jimi Hendrix there, I saw The Who and Sonny Boy Williamson,” Underwood said.
Since announcing the acquisition of his former childhood home, the Heritage of London Trust has delivered a series of workshops, assemblies, and creative sessions in schools across Bromley.
Their goal is to “introduce hundreds of young people to David Bowie’s early ambitions and explore the values that defined his life and career: creativity, courage, resilience and change”.
Dr Nicola Stacey, director of Heritage of London Trust, following the visit to Ravens Wood, said: “The school has incredible young talent already and it’s been fabulous to have them all involved in the project from the beginning. We look forward to building on our Proud Places work both with Ravens Wood and with other schools in the coming year.”
A public fundraising campaign for essential funds to support the restoration of 4 Plaistow Grove, the curation of the story and development of the creative programme remains in progress at the website bowieshouse.org
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
