The Sane Event

When Chris Duffy was a child, a blacked-out limousine would occasionally draw up outside the family home in London, disgorging a pale, skinny man with a flaming orange mullet.

“David Bowie used to call around for dinner,” says Duffy, son of Brian Duffy, the celebrity snapper best known for the iconic ‘lightning bolt’ Bowie portrait that graces the Aladdin Sane album – and which appeared on the cover of Hot Press last issue.
“The neighbours wondered who it was. He’d come and he and Duffy would speak all night.”
This was the early ’70s, the height of the Ziggy phase. In photos from the period Bowie resembles a dissolute alien recently fallen to earth. But Duffy’s recollections are of a softly spoken young man with at least one platformed heel firmly in the everyday world.
“He was a normal chap really,” says Duffy. “Ziggy was a projection. David was brilliant at being a chameleon. At every turn, as soon as a character became incredibly popular he killed it off. He would do that at the high point, then re-engage with someone new.”
Brian Duffy – his son refers to him as simply ‘Duffy’ – died in 2010. The photographer originally got to know Bowie through Tony DeFries, the controversial manager with whom the Thin White Duke had a nasty falling out in the mid-’70s. An operator with an eye always on several prizes, DeFries hired Duffy to shoot the Aladdin Sane sleeve.
“He was really quite clever. He wanted the cover to be the most expensive ever so it would commit RCA records to backing Bowie. He said to Duffy, ‘Make it as costly as you can’. That’s why he went to town using the dye transfer method, which can be seen as a sort of early photoshopping.”
The image is so iconic that, when London’s Victoria and Albert Museum set about organising its forthcoming Bowie retrospective, Chris Duffy, who acts as custodian of his father’s estate, was the first person they called.
“It’s the 40th anniversary of the image and it’s extraordinary how much power it still has worldwide. He created a masterpiece, really. I would say it’s the most iconic pop image of all time. I call it the Mona Lisa of pop. I can’t think of an item it hasn’t been copied on, from fridge magnets to posters to calendars.”
Duffy’s own career had a somewhat Ziggy-esque arc. One of the new generation of photographers that chronicled Swinging London, Duffy, whose parents were from Dublin, immortalised The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and practically every major British model. Then, in the late ’70s, he gave it all up, declining to take another picture for 30 years. Indeed, his passion for photography was re-ignited only after his son had stumbled upon a collection of old negatives and started to quiz his dad about his past career.
Still, Brian remained close to Bowie, each recognising the other as a kindred spirit.
“They had a very good relationship, David was always intrigued with Duffy. Then Duffy was an interesting person. If you looked at a piece of card and it was white, he’d say it was black and spend the next three hours convincing you it was the other colour. That intrigued David. I think he took some of the best pictures from Bowie’s career.”
With Bowie’s first album in 10 years just out, what does Christopher think of the sleeve, which consists of the cover of Heroes with a white space over Bowie’s face?
“Rock started off as the music of youthful rebellion, and now for the first time we have an older generation making rock music. It’s a different kind of rebellion, isn’t it? The turn-around is quite fascinating, really.”

David Bowie Is runs at the V&A, Cromwell Road, London, from March 23 to August 11.