“Peter met Bowie formed a dummy run gang” *
Konrads, King Bees, Manish Boys, Lower Third, Buzz, Riot Squad, Turquoise, Feathers, Zeroes, Tin Machine and no doubt others we've neglected to mention. All popular(ish) beat combos that David Bowie has been a member of, albeit fictional in the case of Zeroes. However, the very short-lived Trading Faces isn't a name you’ll come across in too many Bowie biographies.
On 8th September, 1975, Peter Sellers celebrated his 50th birthday. Naturally he had a party at his L.A. home to mark the event for which he invited along various celebrities, including several musicians. Bowie did the same for his own 50th party, albeit on a bit of a larger scale.
Anyway, there is some debate as to whether the party actually took place on Peter’s birthday or a few days before. But who cares, it happened and Terry O'Neill was there to record the event for posterity, visually at least, no known sound recordings of the impromptu gig exist.
As was frequently the case with Terry’s Bowie photographs, a tabloid centrespread including the images in our montage of David with Ron Wood and Keith Moon appeared in the UK.
Here’s a bit from Bowie by O'Neill:
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When Bowie attended Peter Sellers’ fiftieth birthday party in Los Angeles, he ran through a few blues numbers with an impromptu group called Trading Faces. Comprising: Bowie (saxophone), Bill Wyman (bass), Ron Wood (guitar), Joe Cocker (vocals), Jesse Ed Davis (guitar), Danny Kortchmar (guitar), Bobby Keys (saxophone) Nigel Olsson (drums), Keith Moon (organ, vocal, drums) and Steve Madaio (trumpet).
“When Peter celebrated his birthday, everyone who was in town came to the party. If you were anyone in Hollywood in 1975, this was the party to be at.” - Terry O’Neill
And this from Terry in 2003: “I was invited to what I thought was just a small private party by Peter, who was a close friend and didn’t realise he’d invited so many stars. I’m glad I took my camera – it was a one-off moment in rock 'n' roll history. I never knew Bowie could play the sax.”
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Apparently Bill Wyman wasn’t quite as enthused about it as Terry was: “It was hopeless – we couldn’t get one song together between us.”
David related his own recollection of the evening in 2002:
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“Bill Wyman was already discontent with being a Stone and coaxed Ronnie Wood and me into forming the band Trading Faces. The idea was to cover the big hits of the time with each of us impersonating a popular singer while the others played in the style of a band discordant to the chosen singer. This would lead to hybrids like Wayne Newton with The Troggs or my personal favourite, The Singing Postman with Tower Of Power.”
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David’s close friend, Geoff MacCormack, was in attendance but neglected to pack a camera or his vocal chords and so just ‘enjoyed’ the entertainment with the other non-participants. We’ll leave you with his account from 2007:
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“Neither David nor any of the other musicians seemed to be playing the same songs and they made such a racket it disturbed the neighbours. The police were called and Keith Moon, of all people, tried to politely reason with them whilst they threatened to arrest Sellers. Sellers didn't say a word: he just looked bemused by it all. He looked exactly like Chance, the character he later played in Being There.”
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FOOTNOTE: Following the end of filming The Man Who Fell To Earth a couple of weeks earlier, David had returned to L.A. and a few days before Sellers’ party he contributed backing vocals to Keith Moon’s song, Real Emotion.
* One of the names in today’s lyric quotation has been changed to protect the innocent.
#BOWIEbyONEILL #BowieTradingFaces
