On this day, January 27, 1971, David Bowie arrived in the United States for the first time.

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David Bowie's First Visit to America Started in D.C. Area

1/11/2016 in DC, Maryland, Virginia by Patrick Kiger



David Bowie jams at a party thrown by publicist Rodney Bingenheimer at lawyer Paul Figen's house in January 1971, in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Earl Leaf/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Rock superstar David Bowie, who died at age 69 on January 10, 2016, sold 140 million albums in a career that spanned more than four decades and earned fame as perhaps the genre's most flamboyantly inventive performer.

But back on Jan. 27, 1971, when he arrived on a flight from London at Dulles International Airport, Bowie was still a largely unknown 24-year-old singer-songwriter, hoping somehow to break through. His album The Man Who Sold the World, had been released in England three months before and sold disappointingly. But his label, Mercury Records, hoped that he would make a bigger splash if he went to the U.S. and had a chance to meet rock journalists and radio disc jockeys. So Bowie, despite his fear of flying, had gotten on the jet and endured a flight across the Atlantic for the first time.

But instead of flying to New York or Los Angeles, the twin capitals of the American music industry, Bowie's first stop on American soil was in the D.C. area. The reason, as biographer Marc Spitz explains, was that the Chicago-based Mercury publicist Ron Oberman happened to be in the area, visiting his family in Silver Spring, Maryland. Oberman, his parents and brother Michael, who at the time wrote a music column for the Evening Star, were waiting at the gate when Bowie's plane arrived. They continued to wait, long after the other passengers disembarked.

"David was held in customs at the airport for a few hours," Michael Oberman, who today is a prominent nature photographer, recalled in an email. "Not unexpected in those days." ... Finally, Bowie appeared, explaining that he'd been held up by Customs officials, "maybe because I look so strange." The singer had worked with his then-wife Angela to cultivate an attention-getting androgynous look; as another Bowie biographer, Christopher Sandford, recounts, the slender, long haired singer was clad in a purple maxi-coat and white chiffon scarf, and his luggage contained two dresses.

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Sat Jan 27, 2024: On this day, January 27, 1971, David Bowie arrived in the United States for the first time.

Fri Jan 27, 2023: On this day, January 27, 1971, David Bowie arrived in the United States for the first time.

Thu Jan 27, 2022: On this day, January 27, 1971, David Bowie arrived in the United States for the first time.

[twodogsbarking]

1. Talented and intelligent.