Music

Watch a 17-year-old David Bowie defend longhaired men on British TV

by Tyler Munro

For reasons too long to list, David Bowie is the best. Even forgetting for a second his incalculable artistry and talent, he’s forever been an outspoken voice for doin’ you. For many, that started when he famously wore a dress on the cover of The Man Who Sold the World, a look that saw critics describe him as “ravishing” and skeptics going so far as to pulling a gun on him.

But it turns out Bowie’s protests against stifled heteronormitivy date back even further: In a video unearthed by Open Culture, a 17-year-old David Jones is seen on a 1964 episode BBC’s Tonight standing up for long-haired men.

“I think we all like long hair,” said Bowie on behalf of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men. “And we don’t see why other people should persecute us because of this.

“I think we’re all fairly tolerant, but for the last two years we’ve had comments like ‘Darling!’ and ‘Can I carry your handbag?’ thrown at us, and I think it just has to stop now.”

Spin rightly points out that this is more than anything ad early indicator of Bowie’s puppeteering of the media, eventually referring to it as “a scam for some free publicity.” But while the prospect of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men seems lifted right out of a Monty Python sketch, the message is the same: Let it be, dudes. He would release his self-titled debut as David Bowie three years later.

The video isn’t clear, like, at all, so check the image up top for a better approximation of David Bowie’s early longhair roots. Here is another: