David Bowie's "tour madam" is looking back on the time she had to fend off the mother of a 16-year-old girl David Bowie brought to his hotel room.
Suzi Ronson started out as the rockstar's hair stylist, known for giving him his classic "Ziggy Stardust" cut. However, she picked up another role while heading out on the road with him. The "less glamorous" position involved her keeping an eye on the groupies following the band, which ended with a serious warning to Bowie after an instance with a teenager.
In her new book, Me and Mr. Jones: My Life With David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars, Ronson describes what it was really like hitting the road with the "Space Oddity" singer.
While at a bar in Birmingham after a performance, Ronson spotted a giggly blonde that caught Bowie's attention. After flashing a smile at the fan, Bowie "welcomes her into his circle and slides his arm around her shoulder."
"I didn't know she was 16, and I was the one that brought her back to the hotel," Ronson details. "She didn't look 16. She looked 20. She was a gorgeous-looking girl with long messy hair, full makeup. She was dying to meet David."
However, their trip back to his hotel was cut short when a middle-aged woman with "a red face and a determined attitude" ran into the bar looking for her daughter. After being notified that Bowie was hanging with an underage fan, Ronson raced to his room. As she began to bang on his door, Bowie replied, "F- off, Suzi," as her mother continued to search throughout the bar.
"I said, 'That girl's mother's here, she's 16. David, she's got to go,'" Ronson said to Fox News Digital. "Then the girl goes, 'Oh, trust her to come and spoil all my fun.'"
While the fan was resistant to leave, Bowie eventually asked her to vacate the room. As the mother was relieved to have located her, the girl cried on her way out, exclaiming that she was in love with Bowie. As she cried off her makeup, Ronson began to realize how young she truly was.
Ronson maintains that it was her fault that the girl went up to Bowie's room, stating that neither of them realized she was just 16. She remembers a lot of underage girls coming to the concerts alone, as young as 14 and 15.
"As I escort them out of the hotel, the mother now directs her anger towards her daughter, who once again bursts into floods of tears," Ronson writes in her memoir. "I wearily return to the bar for a much-needed drink. It's hard to tell with girls, and even though I could see she was really young after she cried her makeup off, at the gig she looked amazing and could easily have passed for 20. I might have to start asking for proof of age before they get on the bus, I think to myself."
Ronson continues to share that while many young ladies were invited back into hotel rooms after concerts, they did not always sleep with them. While Bowie did have his fair share of affairs, he would often just have a drink and talk with his guests.
In the memoir, Ronson continues to spill about Bowie's sexuality. She claims that she never found him attractive, stating that she "liked blokes that looked like blokes" and was not attracted to his gender-fluid aesthetic. The book also explores Bowie's bisexuality.
"He never acted like a gay man. ... I hadn't met a gay man before, but David never used to act like that. He'd horse around with his friends at the house. There was a lot of innuendo, but David never came across as a gay man to me. He didn't. But he must have had dalliances in the past to be able to say that. And he certainly did once or twice."
David Bowie shared a song with his first wife, Angela Barnett. After they dissolved their open marriage after 10 years, the singer married a model, Iman, in 1992. They share a daughter and were married until his 2016 death.
Me and Mr. Jones: My Life With David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars is out now.
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