Psychedelic Suburbia

David Bowie was 22 years old and still living with his parents in southeast London when, quite by chance, he met Mary Finnigan while visiting her upstairs neighbours in nearby Beckenham. Still an unrecognised talent haunting the London folk clubs, desperately seeking paid gigs, he couldn’t even dream of a future as a global rock phenomenon. Life started to take interesting turns after he moved in with Mary and her two children in the spring of 1969. With a small group of psychedelic pioneers, they launched the Beckenham Arts Lab in a local pub and organized a free music festival in the town’s park. That summer his first hit, Space Oddity, made it into the charts and became the theme song for the first moon landing. He was suddenly on a trajectory towards superstardom. Millions of words have been written about Bowie’s life, but his early days as a struggling songwriter and performer have been shrouded in hearsay. Here is the full story of his pivotal year in Beckenham, written by his friend, lover and landlady, one of the first people to encourage and support him.

Author Biography

Mary Finnigan was born in Manchester, England just before the start of World War II. Marrying an older man at eighteen, she produced two children before bolting to London, where she landed a job as a fashion writer on the Daily Mirror. Her print journalism career included feature writing at the Daily Sketch, Daily Express and freelance work at the Sunday Times. During a five-year holiday from the five-day week she met David Bowie. This book tells the story of their adventures together in Beckenham. Returning to journalism, she worked as a reporter, editor and producer at Visnews, Independent Radio News and the London Broadcasting Company. She now contributes to national newspapers, online publications and BBC radio. Mary lives in Bristol in the west of England with her partner, Chris Gilchrist. She has three adult offspring and three granddaughters.