No drugs please and ‘keep it down’ – David Bowie letter reveals do’s and don’ts of putting on a gig

In a previously unseen letter from David Bowie written in 1969, the rock star reveals his own guide to hosting a concert. As a flamboyant, gender-bending rock star with an extraterrestrial alter-ego, he gave little impression of being overly worried by practical matters.
But David Bowie had his feet on the ground in some respects and knew when to “keep it down,” it seems.

In a letter seen by the Daily Telegraph but never before made public, he issues some surprisingly sensible advice to a teenage concert organizer on the eve of his first chart hit, Space Oddity.

Writing to the 17-year-old schoolgirl, who had persuaded him to perform at her local arts club, Bowie sets out the “obvious and not so ob. points on putting a Thing on” ahead of the 1969 gig.

“Ask landlord about the volume,” he cautions her before the event at Croydon’s Gun Tavern in south London, where a group of countercultural youths had set up an “Arts Lab.”

Source: The Telegraph