Live: Fairfield Halls, Croydon

David Bowie performed at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls on 16 February 1969.

This was the second 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 Birmingham (15 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.

Bowie returned to the Fairfield Halls during the Ziggy Stardust Tour on 24 June 1973.