Travel: Paris to London

David Bowie departed Paris for London on 4 May 1973.

He was accompanied by his wife Angie, plus Geoff MacCormack, Cherry Vanilla, NME reporter Charles Shaar Murray, the Melody Maker’s Roy Hollingworth, and photographer Barry Wentzell.

At Paris’s Gare du Nord they found they had missed the 12.30pm train to Calais. Instead they took another train to Boulogne, from where they boarded a hovercraft to Dover and finally a train to London’s Charing Cross station. Bowie was mobbed by fans upon his arrival in the English capital.

I’m sick of being Gulliver. You know, after America, Moscow, Siberia, Japan. I just want to bloody well go home to Beckenham, and watch the telly. I’ve got to work harder this year than I’ve ever worked in my life. You know that? We’re going to do a 79-date tour of America this year in about as many days. I might die. But I have to do it.

I’ve gone through a lot of changes. It’s all happened on my way back from Japan. You see, Roy, I’ve seen life, and I think I know who’s controlling this damned world. And after what I’ve seen of the state of this world, I’ve never been so damned scared in my life.