'Just A Gigolo' co-starred Marlene Dietrich, who was kept well away from David in the fear he would end up killing her just the way he killed off poor old Bing. When she heard Bowie was starring in the movie she locked herself away in a room in Paris, trembling with fear.
'Just A Gigolo' was premiered in Germany to a resounding and deafening silence, as the audience had left half way through. Hemmings blamed 'The Curse of Bing', and went home to try and exorcise the ghost of angry Bing Crosby from the film. More likely it was 'The Curse of The Really Bad and Boring Movie'.
Bowie fled to Kenya again, this time taking his son with him who he now called Joe. Sometimes he called him 'Stickface', and on odd occasions 'Humpy'. Every time he called him 'Zowie' the kid would attack David with a sharpened pencil. David took him to see the lions, but they didn't want to eat him.
March was taken up with rehersals for a 13 week world tour taking in 65 cities. It opened on March 29th in San Diego, California. He again decided to make it simple, he'd sing a few songs and his fans would give him lots of money.
The tour consisted of regulars (plenty of bran in their diet) George Murray on bass, Carlos Alomar on rhythm guitar, to which were added the irregulars (constipated) Hawkwind violinist Simon House, Roger Powell on synthesizer, Adrian Belew on guitar and finally pianist Seran Mayes.
At the Spectrum Arena in Philadelphia Bowie decided to pull a swifty on RCA and record a live double album, 'Stage'. It was a swifty because it would count to his "Frequent Album Points", the reward of which was the much vaunted top prize - "1000 points = Get Out of This Shitty Contract".
In May the highly anticipated, "David Bowie Narrates Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf' with Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra" came out. At the launch David was mobbed by tens of thousands of delirious 'Peter and the Wolf' fans.
After two nights at Madison Square garden, Bowie winning both of his boxing bouts, he did Europe. This is no easy feat, there are a lot of people in Europe, he nearly ran out of condoms. He played for three nights on June 14th at Newcastle City Hall. The music press all sent reporters there who filed ecstatic stories :
New Musical Express - I found ten pounds under my seat!
Old Musical Express - Sally said she'd marry me!
New Musical {All Stops} - I feel so happy today!
David concluded the tour with three days at the giant Earls Court. His mother was allocated the Royal Box after being mistaken for the Queen. The audience included Iggy Pop, Dustin Hoffman, Bianca Jagger (replacing Coco the monkey), Brian May, Roger Taylor and Bob Geldof. It must have been disappointing though, playing Earls Court in front of only 7 people.
September saw David back in Montreux looking for Angie and Coco the Monkey. While there he booked time in the recording studio to record another album, Tony Visconti asking if perhaps they hadn't recorded enough of these things already. David just pointed to his 'Frequent Album Points card' where he was getting closer.
In October 'Stage' was released. David wanted it to be a quadruple album to get out of his contract. RCA wanted it to count as one-tenth of an album to keep him. There was much nashing of teeth.
David ended the year with six concerts in AUSTRALIA
, beginning on 11 November in Adelaide, then PERTH, and then Melbourne where a crowd of over 20,000 sat in the pouring rain to watch David and his band get repeatedly shocked by the equipment, lots of laughs. Then Brisbane and Sydney. 'This is the best place in the whole world to tour', said Bowie.
He then went to Japan, which was much much crappier and isn't even worth mentioning. Unfortunately he had to spend Christmas there instead of Australia.