Angie and David Bowie: The Prettiest Star

a social smoker. I was the only smoker. That was my reason for choosing Zin nicotine vouches because I still enjoy nicotine and now I can enjoy it around friends again. To find your reason at Zin dot com, at z y n dot com. Everybody has something that they would give anything for, and unfortunately there's people out there who will exploit that. There's nothing that can stand between the two,

nothing at all. I'm Stephanie Beatrice. Twin Flames premieres on February on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or you can listen one week early and add free right now by subscribing to Wondering Plus an Apple Podcasts or the Wondering app. What is it really gonna take to heal ourselves, our communities and our planet? Being an alignment in anything that you do is so absolutely necessary because it really will shape the foundation of how you show up in the world.

Listen to the Real Hell with Alicia Silverstone on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. About a Girl is the production of I Heart Radio and Double Elvis. You know about David Bowie, artist, alien chameleon phenomenon, the man who fell to Earth and pioneered glam rock and who never stopped changing throughout all

the years. But this is not about David Bowie. This is about Angie Bowie, self described architect of lifestyles, whose wild spirit and radical style inspired the interstellar gender bending experimentations that would propel her husband to superstardom. This story is about a girl. The first time she ever saw his face, it was in a polaroid on the wall of an A and R man from Mercury Records. She was screwing at the time. She was hoping they and

our man might give her a job. She'd met him by screwing his boss, and she really needed a job, preferably with an American company, because her father had cut her off and she was in London with only a student visa. Instead, he took her to dinner at the Roundhouse, where the pretty young man from the Polaroid was on stage playing guitar. The a and our man was scouting David Bowie, as the guitarist called himself, and she could see why David had potential. His songs weren't bad, and

he was very pretty. There was something odd about his eyes, though, that made you look at him longer than you looked at other pretty young men. It made you want to study him. She realized that she'd heard his voice before on the radio, at least every other day, a song called Space Odd about a nast not getting lost in space. It was a summer of Mansion sixte and the world was preparing to send men to the moon. The timing couldn't have been better. She saw him again at King

Crimson's party at Speakeasy. David worked his way through the room, and Angie noticed something else. Everyone stood up to talk to him when he approached, rather than let him crouch down. They looked at him like he was important, Andie began to look at him that way too. He was born Davy Jones, he told her, But that was sadly taken.

Angie laughed. She doubted that anyone could confuse with this man with the other Davy Jones, the imitation mopp hop and singer from the Monkeys, a man who probably had never had an impure or original thought in his life. That Davy was a mother and father's wet dream of the kind of man their daughter would bring home, the kind that would bring flowers and help with the dishes. After she could understand why he would change his name. By the end of the night, Angie knew that she

was done fucking me a and Armor. She took David home instead. They were casual at first. They had sex and talked and fought. She tested him by throwing herself down the stairs at the hostel where she lived. He only stepped over her on his way out and told her to call him if she was still alive in the morning. Cold she thought was something like approval. Then one night he was sick and asked her to look after him. Sitting on his bed, he played her his tapes.

It was the first time she'd really listened to his music, not just catching it in bits and pieces, but hearing it entire, and she realized he wasn't just writing the fastile pop love songs she was used to. David's lyrics were cryptic, apocalyptic, critical mystical. They were science fiction, and she believed in all sorts of things, including the efficiency of shagging your way to the top. But she believed in aliens light people. She called them radiant beings who

either inhabited the most brilliant or the most inspired of humans. David, she decided, was one of them. It wasn't such a strange thing to believe in London in nineteen sixty nine, when men first walked on the moon and the odd eyed boy she was falling for was writing songs about astronauts and starman. He could be her meal ticket, he could be the love of her life. Angie was fine with either one. Things fell into place quickly after that,

Andie found a flat for the two of them. It was in an old Victorian mansion called Hadden Hall, which they would share with a wide assortment of other colorful characters, artists, and musicians. Angie was his first listener when he was composing his interlocutor on the subjects that fascinated him mythology and theater, gender in mine when he met with record execs, and she was by his side, narrow eyed, playing the

bad cop. When his father died. She put up with sleeping in a room with his mother for weeks while King moored in the cramped family home. At the end of that time, she offered him a deal. They'd stayed together as a couple and worked to make him a pop star, and it would be her turn. His fame would propel her to a career as an actress. He thought about it, Is it all right? Yeah, but I'm not in love with you. I can deal with that,

She told him, I can deal with anything. It was true that she needed British citizenship, and so marrying a brit was useful, but that wasn't the only reason she accepted his proposal. And it was true that she was against marriage, at least the traditional kind, but this wouldn't be a traditional marriage, and she liked it that way.

She especially liked it they'd still funk up at the It was better not to be tied down, to sleep with any man or woman he fancied without expectations, and still have someone to go home to at the end of the day. She wouldn't have expected David to be faithful anyway. Men never were, and she made a game of trying to sleep with anyone he had his eye on before he got to them or after, and she

fell pregnant. She wasn't sure how she felt about becoming a mother, but luckily, when their son was born, who they called Zilly, David turned out to be a much better parent than she could ever dream of being, and she was happy to let him take the lead. David was still struggling to get the world to notice his music, and that was why he was going to wear a dress on the cover of his next album, The Man Who Sold the World, posing on a Victorian fainting couch

at Hadden Hall. It turned heads, but it didn't sell, only cemented David's image as an enigmatic oddball. As far as Angie was concerned, though, that was a valuable bonus. They'd taken another creative step forward. Iggy or Ziggy, David asked her one afternoon after putting their son down for a n app What Angie asked, looking up from the

magazine she was reading, David sat next to her. For my stage name, Iggy's taken, Angie said, aware of her husband's fascination with iggy pop, but her interest was piqued. As their sun slept, He began to tell her a story of an alien from Mars. It was golden. It was July nineteen seventy two. Angie was watching Makeup Artist's Prime, her husband for prime time television, not that he wasn't ready. His hair red, his face white. He wore a sparkly

jumped suit. His bandmates looked apart too. They weren't David Bowie and his backing band. They were Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Once they were ready, they began to perform, and once they got to star Man, the single released three months earlier, something special happened. As he sung the line, he looked straight into the camera as if he was speaking directly to everyone watching at home. Oh,

that was good. Angie couldn't even see what people at home we're seeing, and she knew that it was good. And of course she enjoyed seeing the costumes she'd helped sell on the other members of the band. Creating their extraterrestrial look had been Angie's task, while David had gotten to work writing. From the time that he had begun,

Angie knew this album was going to be special. The songs were the best he'd yet written, and the concept of performing at all as an alien rock star was extraordinary. David Bowie was well on his way to becoming the hottest thing in music. Angie thought with satisfaction that he never would have thought of this on his own. Certainly he had been interested in gender and science fiction and the art of mine before she met him. But it had been her who had put it all together to

make something new, something glamorous, larger than life. This was the stuff that rock stars were made of. In fact, it was their comment on rock start in itself. This was art. Early in the performance, he put his arm around his guitarist mcronson. It was a simple act, but a calculated one. A few months earlier, David had given an interview to the magazine Melody Maker and told the reporter he considered himself gay, said he always had been. It had been Angie's idea, what did gay mean anyway?

Telling the papers he was gay was a way of sticking it to the squares, the straits, and at the same time telling out the old, closeted means who ran so much of the music industry and thought they knew what was best for David's career. In the declaration that Bowie was gay despite having a wife and child, just made him that much more intriguing to the fans. He quickly found himself accumulating they were young and old men, women,

gay straight. The fluidity and mystery of David himself was a part of what made his music resonate in the way that it did. Anyone who had ever felt like an outcast in life could see a little bit of themselves and him, and the world always seemed to make a lot of outcasts. The year after the Ziggy star Dust album came a loud Insane on It was a

song that David said he'd written about her. It wasn't exactly a traditional love song, but still it was called the Prettiest Star and the lyrics described how they would rise together. It was impossible not to be moved by it. Furthermore, it confirmed Angie's perception of herself as a driving creative force, but David to think bigger and bigger. But she was starting to realize the great risk she'd taken and turning her husband into the primary creative project. If they separated,

he'd walk away with the whole endeavor. It was him, it was, she thought. Nearly time to move on to the second part of their agreement, making her a star as well. It was her turn. She tried, she modeled, she even tried acting. None of it got very far, Andie could help David reach his full potential. Maybe that had to be enough, but it meant being tied to him indefinitely. So he was two years old, now talking

and showing signs of his own unique personality. They took him on a tour with them to Japan, where he rode with him on the bullet train to Hiroshima and napped while his father tried on the spectacular kabuki outfits made by a Japanese designer. It was nice to feel like a real family, Angie thought. In the next couple of years, David's fame continued to soar. There were tours of America, and it wasn't just the music. People were drawn too. It was the spectacle of getting to see

him alive for the duration of the show. You really forgot that beneath all of the costumes and makeup and set dressing was just an ordinary group of men. You really felt like you were witnessing the musical talents of a raghead group of aliens in the Ziggy start Ust era. David always ended the show with the song five years, Ziggy's warning that the Earth only had five years left. Sometimes it was hard not to feel like that was so these days, Angie thought. You never know, You had

to live every day like it was the last. By the mid nineties seventies, Angie Bowie wasn't sure of a lot of things. She wasn't sure where David stood. She wasn't sure where she it, whether their marriage had a shot of lasting. How much longer David could keep being z or his Ziggy goes to America persona a ladd insane and if not, what would he do and where would he take his career next. The more success he had,

the more he was trapped being anything by himself. Not that much earlier, it seemed like nothing could bring them down. David and his band were on top of the world, and it was fucking with his head. The shifting personas buying for space with the real David, and the fine line between genuine success and an exaggerated projection of it. A lot of the phenomenon part of it had been cooked up by the publicity team Limousine's fancy hotels and

pursuing photographers. Mobs of fans followed them wherever they went in the pantomime of something that could only be compared to Beatlemania. Not that there weren't fans there most definitely were, but it wasn't anything like the public wanted to think your place. The reasoning was that of Dave and Bowie was perceived to be a huge star. Others would wonder

what kind of rock they had been living under. Did buy his records and buy tickets to his concerts to see what all the fuss was about, And while it had worked to a degree, David Star was bona fide, There was no question about that. There was also one reality that they had to contend with. Due to their lifestyle of excess, the expense of the grand theatrical shows, and general mismanagement, they were broke. It was one more reason for him to escape into drugs, music, another persona affairs,

or some new obsession. David Jones, whomever he had been, it was more and more remote. As the seventies wayne to a close. The relationship that Angie had with David became less like a partnership and more like bad roommates who argued vigorously. If they acknowledged each other at all, and they were both seeing other people while they always had, they'd stopped fighting about it or carrying much at all about what the other was up to. They made their

own plans, they'd quit trying to make it work. David was too strong out on different drugs most of the time to have an actual conversation about anything. When the time finally came to divorce, the primary question was what to do about their son, and it was obvious who the better parent would be. Their son was nine now,

and he plainly preferred his father to his mother. Beyond that, and she told herself that maybe the responsibility of taking care of him would force David to get his act together. And when the divorce was finalized in nineteen eight, David got full custody, and you got half a million pounds and a non disclosure agreement. I'm going to live with you, Zoe asked his father as they discussed it all in the living room. David gave him a weak smile. This

was the right choice. Andy was sure whatever shape David was in, she had to acknowledge that she felt like a proper mother. Angie swallowed suddenly feeling like an intruder. By now, she managed before shutting the door. She didn't look back. Warning this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Zen nicotine products are only for adults twenty one plus who currently use tobacco over nicotine. Zen nicotine

pouches a fresh way to enjoy nicotine. Nicotine pouches are smoked free and spit free and are made with food grade ingredients. Simply opened the child resistant lid and placed the pouch between your upper lip and gum for up to one hour of real nicotine satisfaction. Zen is available in ten varieties in two strengths, three milligrams for fresh nicotine satisfaction and six milligrams for even more nicotine enjoyment. Simple and discreet, you can enjoy Zinn anywhere, anytime. Find

your freedom, find your satisfaction, Find your Zen. Visit Zin dot com. That's z y n dot com to learn more and to find Zen nicotine pouches near you. Hello, I'm Stacy Wilson Hunt, your host for Inventing Anna, the official podcast from Shonda Rhimes and the creators at Shonda Land. Inventing Anna tells the story of a young woman who charmed her way into the pocketbooks of New York's elite. Was she gonna take off with that twenty million dollars from the banks or was she going to pour it

into this foundation? You know, people look at Anna and see what they want to see. On this podcast, you'll get v i P access to the real people who inspire the television series and to the actors and creatives like show runners Shaunda Himes, who brought them to life. We were working on the show while the trial was going on. I remember doing a dramatic reading of Todd's opening statement for the writer's room. Who is the fake Heiress? Anna Delvi join us as we unraveled the stories behind

the story. Everything's true until it's not, basically in Anna's world. Listen to Inventing Anna, the official podcast every Wednesday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Long Shot season two, you payback. Legendary women's soccer coach Anson Lawrence told me there are players he has paid to coach. Oh what a finish by Jess McDonald, and players he'd coach for free McDonald and oh my goodness, but that he would pay to

coach Jessica McDonald. She's had some very difficult moments in her life, but there's something inside the great athletes that is why they're great. On payback, The Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News, An Observer, McClatchy Studios, and I Heart Radio share her story. I ran away from home when I was seventeen years old. My recollections are mostly trying to find her. Thank God for sports. That was my escape, and then I find out I'm pregnant with my son. An incredible journey to

the pinnacle of sports. I was making thirt k I couldn't aford childcare. McDonald first start for the US women's national team. How about that payback? Available now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, the whole stadium sharing equal pay. That's a movement.

The next decade seemed to drive quickly through her, and she tried to move on with her life, but that didn't exactly keep her away from interviews with anyone who wanted to ask her what it was like to be married to David Bowie. Once her gag order expired. She had also kept his name and though many accused her of trying to capitalize on her ex husband's fame, that wasn't it. She'd helped create David Bowie. She'd worked for

her name. She kept it even after she met someone else, a musician who had similarly fashioned a more memorable stage name, Drew Blood from the much more boring in average Andrew lip Ka, and she did her best to start over with him, settling Intucsaw in Arizona. Even as she got older, after she had another child, a daughter named Stasha, she

found herself thinking about the life she'd left behind. Throughout a series of reinventions, David Starr never really waned, with his music and image omni present, he was never far from her thoughts. She didn't regret things necessarily, but she still felt a void. Sometimes she thought of her son and hoped that whatever he and David were up to, they were well. Often she was asked why she didn't fight harder to hold on to any sort of custody

of Zoe. And while she understood where this question came from, she was never going to be one of those women who used her child to get back at her ex. Even if she and David hadn't worked as a couple. That didn't mean she had to drag Zoe into it. Doing that, she reasoned, would have left Zoe with scars for life. She read that David got married again, and

this time it seemed like true love. In the newspaper, she saw a picture of David and his new wife, a famous motto next to their son, who wasn't a child anymore. Goodness, he was a man now twenty one years old, just about the age that David had been when he and Angie had first met all those years ago. Time really went so fast. Angie hadn't seen her son and close to ten years. Their brief thoughts of contact with each other were unproductive, and now he did not

seem to want a relationship with her. That's just the way it is, Angie thought. No one's fault, not that it mattered anymore. After all, as old as Angie sometimes felt, she knew that she still had a lot of life left to live. David was awfu living his He had a new family and was still making music, still filling stadiums.

As her ex husband moved definitively into rock and roll legend territory, Angie hardly felt like she had an identity of her own, and there was a part of her that still felt like the nineteen year old she'd been when she first met David, dreaming about her space and beings of light. Her relationship Withdrew faded away and she met someone else, deciding this time, maybe it would work better with someone outside the limelight. His name was Michael.

He was an engineer, and that was perfect. She was forging a new career as a writer, too, parlaying a juicy memoir into more thoughtful studies on gender and sexuality. Maybe the future would turn out to be bright after all. It was the cold January day, and as Angie watched the snowfall outside, she had a good feeling about the year ahead. It had been a bumpy road lately. She hadn't seen David or her son, who now went by Duncan and was an acclaimed film director. In over thirty

five years. She still thought of them occasionally, and if they were happy, she was happy for them. She still went by Angie Bowie and was still criticized as an opportunist for it, Andie saw what people wrote about her on the internet. She couldn't imagine these people, whomever they were saying. Some of these things they said to her face after all this time, though she was used to it and could easily shrug it off. These random internet

trolls didn't really know her. They thought they understood the relationship that she and David had because they liked his music, they identified within, but there was a lot more to it than they would ever know. She kept the name because it was her name, as simple as that. She'd fell in love again too, and like go of David a long time ago, It's not like she had time

to be living in the past anyway. She'd recently been selected as a contestant on the TV show Celebrity Big Brother, where a group of public personalities lived in a house together. Each week one would be a victim, and she had done it because she thought it might be interesting, and so far it was nothing like she'd ever been a part of in her life. And sure she didn't mind being back in the public eye, that was part of it. Just as she watched the snow, she heard a knock

at the door, Angie. She heard the producer's voice, do you have a moment? Angie walked to her door and opened it. Of course, they moved into the hall into a very quiet spot, maybe one of the only places in the house where there were no cameras, where no one else would hear them. David Bowie passed away today. The producer said, if you need to leave the house, we understand. Angie's head was spinning. No, I think I'll stay, she replied. After a moment that seemed like an eternity.

The producer gave her a pitying look. We thought you ought to know, he said, let us know if you need anything. He walked off, leaving Angie alone in the hallway. David Bowie dead. Once in generation or so, people came around that were so larger than life that you forgot that they could die, that we all would die. Even though they hadn't spoken in over thirty five years, Angie had always taken comfort in knowing that he was out there somewhere. Suddenly, all of their fights didn't matter anymore.

They had had a lot of wonderful memories together. They'd made a child. A week later, she left the Big Brother House. She just couldn't do it anymore, she told everyone else. The competition, which had seemed so exciting just a week earlier, had lost all of its luster. For days, her ex husband's face was all that was on the news on Facebook. His music was all she heard on the radio. She didn't hate it. One night and she found herself listening to it too. Lying in bed, she

couldn't sleep. She searched for one specific song on her phone and she pushed play. Sometime later, she fell asleep, drifting off to the voice of her ex husband from all those years. Oh. David Bowie was to the nineteen seventies what the Beatles were to the nineteen sixties. He encouraged generations of people to dream wildly, showing them it was okay to be different, to be yourself or whomever

you wanted to be. But this isn't about them. This is about Angie Barnett, who inspired David Bowie to be different, to be himself or whomever he wanted to be, who believed he could touch the stars before he reached out to them himself. This is about a Girl About a Girl comes to you from Double Elvis and He's executive produced by Jake Brennan and Brady Sadler. It was created Britain and narrated by me Ellen or Wells, with additional

writing and editing by s I Rose and Ball. Scott Janovitz is the show's producer and mixer and provides music and editorial support. Audio editing by Matt Daney. If you like the show, please subscribe to About a Girl on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review. For more great shows from Double Elvis, visit

double Elvis dot com. That's Double Elvis dot com. Progressive presents forest metaphors about bundling your homon, auto and sports. Three goals is a hat trick, and when you bundle your home and auto with Progressive you get a hat trick of great savings and around the clock protection. So

you might be thinking, wait, that's two things. A hat trick is three, But in this metaphor, great savings counts as two goals, and so does around the clock protection, so it's like four goals and that's more than three. It's basic math. Forest meta wars presented by Progressive Bundle and Protect Today, Progressive centralty in Trance Company and ifially gets discount of the little inn al states or situations. Hey girl, Hey guys, we're black at it. Again on

the Black Effect Podcast Network. This is Tam Bam in a j for We Talk Back Podcast. Y'all tune in every Thursday. Yep. I heard radio app is number one for podcasts, but look, don't take our word for it. Fine, We Talk Back podcast on the Black Effect Podcast Network. I heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. So speak now and never hold your piece. Introducing hashtag Matter,

a brand new eight episode scripted podcast. Yeah. A little over twelve months ago, an eighteen year old African American young man named Niles Hayes was driving a family friends luxury vehicle when he was stopped for routine traffic violation. Things escalate quickly, Beautiful to Nora, we have a night shooting list. Officers down within hours at the police stop. Footage of the entire altercation gets posted online and it goes viral. I'm Colleen Sanders, and we're here live from

the Los Angeles Valley. A lot of challenges. You've got the whole p D outside of my building ready to light the entire block any no more outcomes couldn't happen in different choices. I guess what I am struggling. You struggle with it because you live in a different reality than Weekdow. Listen to hashtag matter on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.