Live: Town Hall, Birmingham

David Bowie performed at Birmingham’s Town Hall on 15 February 1969.

The engagement was the opening night of the Tyrannosaurus Rex & Friends tour. Also on the bill was sitar player Vytas Serelis, and the compere was John Peel.

Bowie performed a 15-minute mime. He was paid £102 for his participation in the tour, which also called at Croydon (16 February), Manchester (22), Bristol (23), Liverpool (1 March), and Brighton (8). Bowie did not perform in Bristol.

Marc Bolan was now making rapid headway in his career, but I did not regret my earlier decision to manage David in preference to Marc. Watching them both perform on the same concert only confirmed by opinion. There was something shallow and crude in Marc’s performance and it gave me no reason to believe that it would ever be otherwise, but David invested his work with a couth intelligence that held great promise for the future.