David Bowie

David Bowie enters these entries as both a concert headliner and a figure just beyond the narrator’s reach. Across May 8–10, 1978, plans to see him move through Bianca Jagger: she provides tickets, brings the narrator backstage, and arranges a lunch that is postponed, while the diary never confirms that it takes place.

The concert and its audience

On May 8, tickets to Bowie’s concert at Madison Square Garden were scarce: only two had arrived, and everyone wanted to go. Bianca Jagger had called with two tickets for the narrator, who gave another pair to Catherine Guinness, eager to attend. The distinction between the tickets and their recipients places Bowie at the center of a small scramble for access before he even appears onstage.

The narrator went to the concert with a party that included Halston and Stevie Rubell, traveling in limousines after waiting for Bianca Jagger to get dressed. The music was so loud that Dr. Giller shouted in the narrator’s ear, an episode the diary associated with feeling deafened. After the performance, the group went backstage for drinks. Bianca Jagger was in Bowie’s dressing room; when she came out, she said that they would have lunch with him at Quo Vadis at one o’clock the following day. Bowie then went onstage again, shifting the scene from private access back to public performance.

A lunch repeatedly deferred

The next day, the narrator called Bianca Jagger and initially could not tell whether she was present; the man who answered gave an evasive-sounding response. Bianca later called back to say that Bowie was busy and could not have lunch that day, proposing the following day instead. The exchange briefly reassured the narrator that Bianca Jagger was not angry, but it left the meeting dependent on arrangements made through her rather than on any direct contact with Bowie.

On May 10, the diary recorded that Bianca Jagger had been out with Bowie the previous night. This places the two together on the evening when the narrator had been told Bowie was unavailable for lunch, but the entry does not explain the apparent mismatch or say whether the rescheduled meal occurred. The account preserves the uncertainty instead of resolving it.

A figure seen through access

Bowie’s presence in these entries is defined by the contrast between spectacle and proximity. At Madison Square Garden he is heard from the audience, encountered backstage, and glimpsed through the threshold of his dressing room; the proposed lunch suggests a more intimate meeting, yet remains only a plan in the recorded sequence. The diary’s emphasis falls less on Bowie’s personality or performance than on the changing terms of access to him, mediated by Bianca Jagger and unsettled by delays.