The remarkable home movie that captured David Bowie before he was famous
There’s something endlessly fascinating about seeing famous people before they become famous.
Not the carefully managed publicity photographs or early television appearances that inevitably get recycled in documentaries, but genuine, accidental moments when they’re still just another face in the crowd, completely unaware that history is about to catch up with them. This tiny piece of home movie footage of a young David Bowie is one of those moments.
For a few fleeting seconds, the future Ziggy Stardust glances at the camera, smiles almost apologetically, and carries on walking down Denmark Street like any other hopeful young musician trying to make something happen.
At the time, of course, he wasn’t David Bowie. He was still Davie Jones.
The remarkable footage first appeared on YouTube courtesy of Joe Salama, whose late father unknowingly captured the future rock legend while filming during a trip through London’s West End.
“This exceptional cine footage was taken by my late father on a trip up to the West End of London, totally unaware that David Bowie was the young dude that smiles graciously at the camera,” he said. “Even when I showed him what he had filmed he was none the wiser and couldn’t remember why he focussed on this particular chap. The face fleetingly seen behind Bowie is that of my mother.”
At first, the film was believed to date from around 1968, but Bowie researchers quickly realised something didn’t add up.
One of the most impressive bits of detective work came from the excellent Mrs Tsk Tumblr, which compared Bowie’s hairstyle, clothing and even a hand-drawn caricature he had produced for a Davie Jones & The Lower Third promotional flyer. In the drawing, Bowie wears the same distinctive rounded collar visible in the footage. Combined with the surrounding buildings and the route he appears to be taking, the evidence pointed not to 1968 at all, but to the spring of 1965.
That date makes the clip significantly more interesting.
In 1965, Bowie wasn’t yet the glamorous shape-shifter who would redefine popular music every few years. He was 20 years old, fronting Davie Jones & The Lower Third and trying desperately to establish himself in London’s fiercely competitive music scene. Success still seemed a long way off. His first singles had gone nowhere, record companies remained unconvinced, and he was still searching for the musical identity that would eventually make him one of the defining artists of the 20th century.
Also, the location only adds to the romance. The footage was shot on Denmark Street, London’s legendary Tin Pan Alley, where countless British musicians passed through in search of recording studios, publishers and rehearsal rooms.
Just a short walk away stood Central Sound Studio, where Bowie recorded demos with The Lower Third in May 1965. Next door was the famous La Gioconda café, one of the capital’s great unofficial meeting places for musicians, artists and aspiring stars. It’s widely believed that’s exactly where Bowie was heading after flashing that brief smile towards the unknown cameraman.
La Gioconda occupies an almost mythical place in Bowie’s early story. It was there that he spent countless hours talking music, meeting fellow musicians and absorbing the creative energy that seemed to flow constantly through Denmark Street during the mid-1960s. The café also became associated with the mercurial rock ‘n’ roll singer Vince Taylor, whose increasingly unhinged stage persona would later help inspire Bowie’s creation of Ziggy Stardust.
Looking back now, it’s remarkable how many important threads in Bowie’s career seem to converge on one ordinary London street, and that’s really what makes this little film so compelling.
It’s only a few seconds long, yet we’re watching somebody standing on the threshold of one of the most extraordinary careers in popular music without anyone around him having the slightest idea. The people walking past him have no reason to look twice. The man behind the camera certainly doesn’t. He’s simply filming a busy London street on an ordinary day, unknowingly preserving one of the earliest moving images of a future icon.
There are plenty of photographs of David Bowie in 1965, but moving footage from this period remains remarkably scarce. That alone makes this tiny home movie an important historical document, capturing him not as a performer or celebrity but simply as another ambitious young London musician trying to make his mark.