This is kind of nuts: in March of 1982, Angela Bowie, the former Mrs. David, appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test, reciting poetry, while Mick Karn (RIP 2011), the brilliant bass player from the glam/New Romantic band Japan, vamped on bass. Karn was predictably amazing, but Bowie’s poetry was savaged in the UK press. Getting a drubbing from the notoriously drub-happy British media doesn’t necessarily mean something was actually bad, and I’ve attended readings of far worse poetry than Angie Bowie’s. However, it must be conceded that it seems doubtful she would have been invited onto that program to recite poetry in the first place had she been just anyone not called “Bowie.”
Though they’d not performed together before this appearance, Karn and Bowie were no strangers—coincidentally, both originally hailed from Cyprus, but they met in the late ‘70s. Karn related the story of how they met, and how their odd TV pairing came about, in a 1984 interview conducted around the release of Karn’s collaborative album with Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy, under the name Dali’s Car:
B: You did the “Whistle Test” with Angie Bowie. How did that come about? It was so funny, we just couldn’t stop laughing! The expressions on your face were just brilliant!
M: Oh! I’d love to see that again! That was weird – Angie and I have known each other for years.
B: How did you first meet – where and when?
M: Must’ve been 1978, just round a friend’s house, we used to keep strange company in those days. The friend happened to be a friend of Angie’s and she stayed about 2 weeks, we were staying there as well. An opportunity not to stay at home with your parents, we’d always jump to in those days. So we met her there. Then she went away for 3-4 years and when she came back we met up again. We’d been on the “Whistle Test” the week before as Japan, I think, and Angie was in the audience watching. After we’d finished we spoke to Mike Appleton, the producer, and he jokingly said, “You know it’d be great to get both of you on the show next week to do something together” and we thought, “That’s a stupid idea! There’s nothing we can do together, she doesn’t play an instrument and I can’t sing!” So we came up with this idea of playing along to her poetry, which he seemed to like. The expressions are probably because we didn’t have time to rehearse beforehand – I had some bass lines in mind – she had some poetry in mind and it was our first time to do it together – live on the show, which was very nerve-racking. So I think the expressions were looking at one another trying to know when one of us was going to finish…’cos she’d finish the poem and I didn’t know that it was over, so I carried on playing! (Everyone laughs)
