Lost David Bowie Footage Uncovered

David Bowie circa 1973

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

A rare videotape of David Bowie performing on Top of the Pops in 1973 has surfaced and will be shown on a BBC Christmas special tonight. Bowie's performance of his hit "The Jean Genie" had been considered lost to history, part of an ongoing policy of television networks "wiping" old shows to reuse videotape, which was very expensive at the time. 

Cameraman John Henshall, who kept a copy of the performance for himself, mentioned it recently during a radio appearance. When excited Bowie fans let him know the rarity of his tape, he loaned it to a British Film Institute event and made it available to the BBC.

"I just couldn't believe that I was the only one with it," said Henshall. "I just thought you wouldn't be mad enough to wipe a tape like that."

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter