Missing photo of David Bowie found after 56 years

A long unpublished photo of a young man David Bowie backstage at a concert organized by a group of teenagers from Stockport resurfaced after 56 years, when one of those students was emptying his attic. David Maynard, now 74, was a member of the Stockport Schools Students’ Union in 1970, when he booked Bowie for a gig at the Poco A Poco Club in Heaton Chapel.

Photos of the event were believed to be lost, but Maynard said he always suspected he had one somewhere.

I was relieved to find it again because I had been talking about this photograph for several years, and I think they thought I was just fantasizing, making everything up and getting carried away by fantasies. But I knew I had it and I finally found it, and now it’s available to everyone.

The image, which was also digitally coloredshows Bowie, who had already reached the top five with Space Oddityin his stage costume flanked by seven final year students from the students’ union. It was found only after a water leak in Maynard’s attic forced him to clear out piles of old boxes.

Many of my photographs have been damaged by water loss, but not this one. We were all about 17 or 18. We knew more or less what we were doing, but it was a big step forward because I think Poco a Poco that night had a little more people than it could hold, it was packed and they must have made a lot of money on the bar. Bowie was quiet but affable. He looked serious and studious. He seemed competent. He knew what he was doing.

Bowie’s night on the town had already been commemorated by a plaque at Stockport railway station, where he had spent the night after missing his train home at the end of the concert. Stockport Music Story, the company that installed the plaque, shared the news of the photo’s discovery on social media.