Bowie’s Mystery Guest is often misnamed as Ossie Clark, the famous London designer. Although Clark and Bowie’s Mystery Guest don’t look alike, I wanted to find an indisputable reference to place Clark either at the party, or not.
Sadly, Clark died in 1996, so a first-hand testimonial will forever remain elusive. However, Clark was a diarist and I was keen to see if The Ossie Clark Diaries could help.
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Was Ossie Clark at Ziggy’s Last Supper?
Strap in, this gets complicated. Clark’s published diaries have no entry for the 3rd of July 1973. Chronologically, the nearest we get is June 1973, which simply says:
Tangier.
However, an undated entry for March 1973 say this:
Brookie’s 40th B’day ball at The Cafe Royal – Lou Reed and David Bowie.
Interesting, eh? Brookie was the name for Lord David Brooks, the 8th Earl of Warwick who was born on the 15th May 1934, which would make his 40th the 15th May 1974. Incidentally, Clark has a diary entry for the 15th May 1974:
Lord David Brooks’s Ball 8.15, Cafe Royal. So many people very stoned and drunk. Catherine Tennant, Mick and Bianca, Robert Fraser, Mark Palmer, Ahmet and Prince Rupert.
Clark’s diaries for 1974 are much more detailed than for 1973. The reason for this is that Clark didn’t begin his diaries until 1974 and the earlier entries were actually written in note form around 1988. The fifteen year gap between the event and the page may explain why Clark’s recollection requires further investigation.
Did Ossie Clark mean May 1973?
Did Clark accidentally write March in his diary instead of May? Have the typesetters of the published diaries made a printing error? Did Brookie have a 39th birthday bash on the 15th May 1973 which was attended by Lou Reed and David Bowie?
According to David Bowie: A Chronology by Kevin Cann, Bowie arrived in Aberdeen on the 15th May 1973, ready to play a gig at Aberdeen Music Hall on the 16th. The famous Mick Rock photo of Bowie and Ronno eating on the train is well known, but here we can see Bowie on the platform at King’s Cross on the 15th May 1973. In daylight. Bowie certainly wasn’t at the Cafe Royal that night.
As for Lou Reed, he was somewhere between Princeton New Jersey and Montreal in Quebec, traveling to play the next gig of the Transformer tour in Canada. He wasn’t at the Cafe Royal either.
If Clark and Brookie were at the Cafe Royal, it was without Bowie and Reed.
Did Bowie and Reed party at the Cafe Royal twice in 1973?
Let’s trust Clark for a moment. Let’s imagine there was a 40th birthday party for someone who wasn’t 40 on a day which wasn’t his birthday. Where were Bowie and Reed?
Throughout all of March 1973, Bowie and Reed were gigging (separately) around the USA. At the end of that month, Bowie left the USA on a boat, heading for Japan.
With the excepiton of Ziggy’s Last Supper, I cannot find any evidence of Bowie and Reed being together at the Cafe Royal in 1973.
So what does Ossie Clark mean?
The only logical conclusions are is that there is an error in the published diaries or Clark is mis-remembering. Given that we know he wrote the entires in 1988, one must conclude it’s the latter. It actually doesn’t matter to our mystery when Brookie’s 40th birthday took place. Personally, I think it is more likely that Clark’s diary entry for the 15th May 1974 is the real date for the very simple reason that it was forty years to the day since Lord Brooke was born. Simples!
What’s interesting is that Clark has mentioned the Cafe Royal and Bowie and Reed and 1973. That all points to Ziggy’s Last Supper and the only sensible conclusion was that perhaps Clark was there.
Is Ossie Clark Bowie’s Mystery Guest?
I still don’t believe that he is. However, his diaries have given me a lot to work through. I’ll let you know.
