5Gears In Reverse

For six years between the ages of fourteen and twenty Harold Fairfax combed his hair in front of a picture of David Bowie. About eight months in he had a brief and ultimately unfulfilling fling with Bryan Ferry, but a lack of straight hair and air of faded elegance ultimately put pay to their relationship, and Bowie was welcomed back like an old flame. So, every morning, it would be fifteen minutes in front of the mirror styling his barnet in a rough approximation of the haircut Bromley Dave sported on the cover of ‘David Live’. For about three weeks in the summer of the second year he attempted to replicate the just stepped out of the grave look but abandoned his starvation rations after his mother had a few sharp words about her cooking going uneaten. He’d attempted to live on a diet of orange juice and Gitanes, but called it quits after developing a nasty cough and a bladder infection, although he’d read somewhere that Bowie had achieved the look by consuming industrial quantities of coke, although Harold had no taste for fizzy drinks, being a mild and bitter man at heart. It was only years later that he discovered the stuff Bowie had been doing was white powder from Bolivia, but by then it was too late. He’d quit school, given up sports and took a job sitting on his ass behind a desk for seventy-three quid a week. The pounds had soon piled on.
After ‘David Live’ came ‘Young Americans’ and a style that perfectly suited Harold, although its maintenance demanded endless cans of Cossack and the acquisition of a grey fedora, not an easy feat in the town in which Harold resided, an industrial backwater overlooked by fashion and forgotten by time, both of which took the ring road around its perimeter in order to avoid getting off the bus. Harold felt cool walking to work in his hat and raincoat, like Humphrey Bogart in ‘The Big Sleep’, although the Bay City Roller fans from the local comprehensive didn’t quiet see it that way, taunting him with cries of “Columbo” and “my wife loves your show!” But, stalwart that he was, he persevered throughout the autumn and winter of the fourth year before graduating to the Thin White Duke look as modelled on the sleeve of Station To Station, although his old man was none too chuffed by the sudden increased consumption of his Brylcreem, a necessary ingredient in the establishment of the slicked back storm trooper style. But Harold, an F. Scott Fitzgerald obsessive, was no gadfly, and his social calendar was peppered with nothing more adventurous than the odd trip to his local and the occasional out of town jaunt to a disco in the hope that a member of the opposite sex might just bite the bait. But by now it was 1976 and Bowie was going out of fashion, replaced by overweight husky dark disco crooners and angry young men dressed in charity shop threads sporting Ziggy haircuts, an ironic twist to an obsessive such as Harold, particularly as it was a crop he’d found impossible to replicate. Sometimes you have to admit that your hair just isn’t up to the job.
But then Bowie was back with his ‘Berlin Trilogy’ and Harold felt magnificently heroic. He could be a hero just for one day (or longer if the opportunity arose) if only someone would take him up on the offer. But no one called and Harold began to lose heart, beginning to think that he’d backed the wrong horse, watching as men with mullets and agricultural sideburns dressed in dungarees and donkey jackets cruised the mean streets in Cortina’s with Farrah Fawcett blondes reclining in the passenger seat, windows down and Earth, Wind & Fire blasting out of the 8-Track.
The next decade passed Harold by in a blur. Bowie had drifted off into an artistic backwater and Harold slipped down stakes into yesterday’s news; white to blue collar, career to job, salary to wages, vacation to days off. There was no place for a man with a stylish haircut in this land of pudding basins, wet look bubble perms and Rod Stewart shags. So, as the peacocks of New Romanticism gave way to the building site chic of Grunge, Harold began to lose both heart and direction, his life an empty vessel adrift on a sea of stylistic constipation, for these were indeed most uncertain times. If ‘Let’s Dance’ saw him pandering to the mainstream then the next few albums consisted of bad songs and crap hairstyles. Glass Spider? What the hell was all that about. And as for Tin Machine….don’t get me started on that one, pondered Harold, contemplating his own wilderness years.
Then, in a fit of creative resurgence, Bowie bounced back with a run of, if not brilliant, then mildly satisfying records and, from Harold’s point of view, the centre parting with the floppy fringe was a return to form haircut wise. Easy to wash and blow-dry, just add conditioner in the final rinse, and you didn’t need to visit the barbers every three weeks.
And then, amid rumours of a heart attack (Bowie, that is, not our Harold who, despite a mild addiction to After Eights and custard crème’s was as strong as a horse), it all came to a grinding halt. After ‘Reality’ there was nothing new, which meant the re-issue end of the market went into overdrive, churning out official bootlegs, greatest hits, ultra rare Japanese flip sides and, the holy grail of holy grail’s, the 40th Anniversary Edition of ‘Ziggy Stardust’. Now the circle had finally turned three sixty degrees, and Harold found himself back where he had begun, only this time with a bit more money and self-confidence. The Bay City Rollers fans were now middle-aged mums on their third husbands, and Bryan Ferry was a fading crooner trading almost entirely on past glories. In short, Harold could now get the patented Ziggy bog brush look, although he fell short of getting it dyed orange.
Only trouble is, he’s now a dead ringer for Paul Chuckle.
Still, pondered Harold, as he knelt in front of the bedroom mirror backcombing his rapidly thinning barnet. You can’t have everything.
To me.
To you.
Tomorrow…..