David Bowie: How to Become a Cult Figure in Only Two Years

Mickie Bloomfield is a 16-year-old shipping clerk who lives in a tower block off the Old Kent Road and who in order to ‘be great like David Bowie’ has had his ear pierced, his hair restyled and spends up to £17 for a pair of boots with four-inch platform soles. Roger Swanborough is 23, a post-graduate painting student at the Royal College of Art, and feels that by simulating Bowie he’s found an outlet for a part of his personality which has been previously submerged. Tony De Fries is 29, a rock manager, and wants his product, David Bowie, to become a ‘real star’ — which, as he points out, is not a Rod Stewart or a Cat Stevens-type star ... but a James Dean or a Marlon Brando-type star.