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This is Later with Lee Matthews The
Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear weekday

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Afternoons on the Drive. Susie Robson
is an author, songwriter and former hairdresser

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and stylist. At fifteen, she
enrolled in the Evelyn Paget School College of

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Hair and Beauty and went on to
become David Bowie's stylist. She's written about

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it in a memoir called Me and
Mister Jones. Susie Ronson, good to

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have you here. Well, thanks
for having me Lee. Well let's go

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back to the beginning. How did
you hook up in the first place with

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a ZIGGI startist. Well, it's
a strange story really. I was a

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typical suburban hairdresser working, you know, to roll up sets in a typical

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British salon in Beckenham, and one
of my clients happened to be David Bowie's

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mother, And when she would come
in, I would give her a shampoo

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and set and she would chat to
me about her son, David artistic.

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He was what a wonderful guitar player, He wrote beautiful songs and she seemed

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really proud of him. I didn't
pay that much attention at first, you

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know, I'd smile and nod and
carry on doing her hair. It wasn't

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until she mentioned Space Oddity I began
to realize exactly who we were talking about.

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It was David Bowie. But you
know, David wasn't famous at that

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point. He wasn't. He was
a young man playing folk music in a

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pub in Beckenham. He'd had the
hit Space Oddity, but that was it.

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I wasn't sure if he wasn't a
one hit wonder. To be honest

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with you, he had. Nothing
had happened for a couple of years.

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But that's when I met him,
and that's when I created that aircut.

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So yeah, he had already had
the iconic record out that I think he's

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known for, not only because of
the subject matter and the poetry in the

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song, but the production value.
He produced a song that nobody had ever

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heard before. Yes, exactly.
It was a great song, wasn't it.

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I mean, this was a really
wonderful song. It jumped out of

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the radio at you, Me and
missus Jones. My Life with David Bowie

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and the Spiders from Mars is Susie
Ronson's memoir. So did he just happen

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to come in and need a trim. No, no, Missus Jones.

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I saw him walking down Beckenham High
Street wearing a dress. He was with

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this girl who had these skinny black
pants on and a great fur jacket,

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and she came into the salon with
Missus Jones. Well, you know,

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I liked her immediately a she was
American. We never met any Americans in

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England at that time, at least
I hadn't. And she looked great.

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She looked so cool and comfortable.
I was fascinated by her and I did

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her hair. I did little three
bright stripes of color down the side of

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her head and she said she'd be
back. Well, she didn't come back

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until Christmas week. Christmas Week,
every salon in the world is busy because

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Christmas Week. So when she walked
out the salon, I followed her and

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I said to her, listen,
I can come to your house to do

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your hair. So off I went
to Hadden Hall and that's when I met

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David, and that very same night
I cut his hair. It was a

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complete failure. At first, all
well, so was cautiously optimistic, but

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it didn't stand up. It just
kind of flopped to one side. It

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took me a couple of times before
I got that final brilliant red color and

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that brush that stood up on his
head because he had kind of thin,

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fine hair, didn't he No,
it wasn't really thin. It was fine,

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wasn't really thin. He had a
lot of hair, but no one

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could make their hair stand up straight. We didn't have We didn't have put

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products in the days like you know
that we have today. I think we

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had dippity do that wasn't going to
I used. I used this anti dandruff

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treatment called God and the side effect
of that was it set hair like stone.

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So I used that on him,
me and Missus Jones My Life with

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David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars. So it was you that came up

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with the ziggy stardust style, Not
exactly he. I was met him.

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I was in the front room with
him and they were deciding. Angie and

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him were tossing it about should we
cut his hair short or not or whatever,

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and he came over and showed me
a photograph in a magazine of a

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girl with the short, red,
spiky hair, and he said to me,

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can you do that? As I'm
saying yes, I'm thinking to myself,

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that's a girl's hairstyle, and how
am I going to actually do it?

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So it was a bit of a
surprise that I mean, I was

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cautiously optimistic, but as I say, it took me a couple of times

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to get it completely red and completely
standing up. All the while. When

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you were doing David Bowie's hair and
coming up with this look, did you

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get any idea that you were dealing
with someone who was really on the edge,

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on the front edge of pop music
and changing the way we look at

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pop music. Well, not really, I didn't. It was only after

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hanging out with them for a little
while I realized, I mean, the

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energy around this thing, the energy
at the house, the band, the

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Spiders, Oh my god, my
husband Mick Ronson, what an incredible musician.

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And when I saw them in London, the first time I saw them

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in London at a college, That's
when I knew. I thought this is

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something else. I mean, the
crowd went crazy, I went crazy,

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and I just thought, I've got
to figure out a way to get to

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work with them. That was my
dream was to work with them. Oh,

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my friends told me I was crazy
because girls didn't go on the road

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and they were right. No girls
were on the road except you know girlfriends

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every once in a while and group
is who were at some gigs. But

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there was no one, no girls
working on the road. So I think

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I broke some ground there well,
having to get a job with them.

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Yeah, Susie Ronson, author of
Me and Mister Jones My Life with David

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Bowie and the Spiders from Mars.
And so because his his his act,

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if you will, was so it
required a lot of makeup and a lot

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of preparation from a looks stamded.
I mean he just didn't comb his hair

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and jump out on stage. You
were there exact to prep him for every

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singles performance. I imagine I was, And in a way when I realized

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after I'd done his hair and I
had this ambition to work with him,

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I did think to myself, well, where's he going to go to get

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a touch up? Where's he going
to go to get his hair trimmed?

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I mean it needed attention that hair. He certainly couldn't drop into somewhere in

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Newcastle and say can you touch up
my hair? And after the boys started

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wearing makeup and these costumes, they
needed someone to do pretty much everything for

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them. They couldn't go to the
shops, they couldn't do much. Because

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after I joined them, the acceleration
in his career was enormous. Within a

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year, we were selling out everywhere
in America and over here. We had

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I think during the time I was
with them, there was like five records

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and sold the world. Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, a Ladd Insane Pinups,

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and the Fantastic Transformer album that Mick
Ronson and David Brow produced for Lou

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Reed. That was an incredible record. So there was a lot going on

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in that time. Susie Ronson,
me and mister Jones. In My Life

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with David Boy and the Spiders from
Mars is the memoir, And I imagine

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you became kind of a confidante,
as most hairdressers do. You're sitting there,

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you're working with them, and they're
telling you all about, oh I

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have a headache today or and now. In the course of making him up,

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did you notice him becoming the character? Well, I didn't actually do

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his makeup. He had makeup artists, okay a lot of the time,

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and he did his own makeup a
lot. I mean, I might do

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a little bit here and there.
But I wasn't really his makeup artist,

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but I would be in the dressing
room with him before every show, see

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him on stage. I mean,
originally I was going to call the book

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only his hairdresser knows for sure,
but I changed that. I think the

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name I have but it's better now. Yes, I think I was really

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close to David. I was the
only one he saw because he changed his

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clothes many times, many costume changes. One I would do any guitar solo.

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I would take the clothes to the
side of the stage and while Mick

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Ronson was wailing, not ten feet
from where we're standing, David and I

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would change his costume. It was
pretty intense, as you can tell.

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It has a lot of behind the
scenes information about the life of David Bowie,

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Me and mister Jones. My Life
with David Bowie and the Spiders from

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Mars. Susie Ronson, thank you
for joining us and thanks for the memoir.

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Well, thank you so much for
having me. Thanks for listening to

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Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee
Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to

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The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five
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