DAVID BOWIE and MICK RONSON were one of the great double acts: scintillating and simpatico, taboo-smashing in ways ‘Ronno’ was not always comfortable with. In her new memoir, Bowie’s Ziggyera stylist – and later, Ronson’s wife – gives the inside track on their rise, fall, reunion, and the untimely end of one of rock’s superlative talents. “My God, those two together,” marvels .

Words: MARIC PAYTREES.

Moonage daytrippers: David Bowie and Mick Ronson on the train to Aberdeen for the first gig of Bowie’s final Ziggy tour, May 15, 1973;

Photography: MICK ROCK.

ONE SATURDAY, IN EARLY SUMMER 1971, heads turned in the busy Evelyn Paget hair salon on Beckenham High Street.

“Look at that!” said a stylist named Doris. “Whatever’s next…”

Passing by the window was a tall, slim man with chest-length wavy blond hair. While he, David Bowie, pushed the pram, wife Angie strutted in black jeans and a furry jacket, her hair blonde and boyish. For the main attraction, David Bowie was wearing a flowing dull-gold midi dress, complemented by a floppy hat and knee-length boots.

Suzi Fussey, a trained stylist at the salon, knew that Bowie was a local ‘name’, that he’d played regularly at The Three Tuns just down the high street, and that he was a one-hit wonder. As Suzi Ronson, she would become a crucial figure in Bowie lore, but for now she was the favoured hairdresser of the singer’s mother, one Mrs Peggy Jones from nearby Bromley.

Suzi Ronson, 1965.

Courtesy Suzi Ronson/Faber, © Mick Rock

“David’s mum was quiet, but not haughty,” says Ronson of the middle-aged lady in the tweed skirt, cardigan and sensible shoes. “She would have a shampoo and set. Sometimes she’d have a trim. And occasionally she’d have a chocolate kiss rinse.”

That winter, encouraged by Angie, who’d visited the salon, Fussey was in the Bowies’ communal-style residence, Haddon Hall, creating a hairstyle for Mrs Jones’s son that would change her world, Bowie’s world and the wider world of popular culture. What soon became known as ‘the Ziggy Cut’ would bring an element of deviant dandyism back into pop. Today, it remains one of the most potent symbols of 20th century youth rebellion.

“No one had short hair then, let alone short hair like that, spiked and dyed brilliant red,” Ronson tells MOJO today. “No man dyed his hair unless it was some old fart trying to touch up his grey. Marc Bolan was the star before David came along and he had those long black curls. David’s hair really shocked people.”

Working wonders with a pair of scissors and some hair stiffener gave Suzi an entrée into Bowie’s world. As Bowie’s new stylist, she became a regular at Haddon Hall.

“It’s only three miles from home, but I might as well be in a foreign land,” she writes in her breezy new memoir, Me And Mr Jones. This grand, decaying residence provided a blank canvas for all kinds of experimentation. One minute, Bowie would be French kissing his clothes designer pal Freddi Buretti, the next Angie was telling her about her fling with T. Rex’s Mickey Finn. “Oh, it’s OK,” said Mrs Bowie. “David knows all about Mickey. He encourages me!”

Soon, Suzi was taking a tentative step into bohemia, discovering for herself that the building’s number one resident was “a tender, romantic lover”. Angie, it appears, didn’t mind at all.

“David and Angie were outrageous, creative, vibrant people,” says Suzi today. “They were living life. It made everything else look so grey and dull.”