21 HEDDON STREET, W1

Looking suitably glam in cat suit and spikey hair, David Bowie posed beside a phone box beneath a K-West sign here late one Saturday night in 1972 for his Ziggy Stardust album cover. Photographer Brian Ward shot the picture in black-and-white, which he later tinted to achieve a hyper-real effect. The building, minus K-West sign, is now The Zinc Bar & Grill. The shot is unusual in the Bowie album cover pantheon in that rather than showing a close up of the latest Bowie incarnation, Bowie is presented as a somewhat diminutive figure against the shabby urban backdrop, looking not unlike a man recently fallen to earth. Various commentators have speculated that the K-West was intended by Bowie as a pun on the word ‘quest’. Certainly, the thesis would fit reasonably with the album’s loose, sci-fi theme. Then again, maybe not.

   Incidentally, the red phone box that features on the reverse cover shot can be glimpsed briefly in the 1966 movie Blow Up, as enigmatic photographer hero David Hemmings pauses on the corner of Heddon Street and Regent Street during a chase sequence. Hemmings has just dashed past the Permutit boutique at 151 Regent Street in pursuit of a mysterious young woman, who disappears into a ‘nearby’ nightclub (actually the Ricky Tick club in Windsor). Inside, the Yardbirds, featuring the duelling guitars of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, are blasting their way through a ferocious version of Stroll On. Director Michaelangelo Antonioni had originally wanted the Who for this sequence, but (allegedly) the Who’s co-manager Chris Stamp was unhappy that Antonioni had dumped Stamp’s movie star brother Terence in favour of Hemmings for the lead role, and so the Yardbirds got the gig instead.