A lifelong friendship with David Bowie – In photos
- Text by Emma Garland
- Photography by Geoff MacCormack

When David Bowie calls you up and asks you to join him on tour, you say yes. For singer, songwriter and producer Geoff MacCormack, the decision was even more obvious. The pair first met at Burnt Ash Primary School in Bromley in the mid-1950s, when Bowie was just a boy known as David Jones, and remained friends from there. MacCormack was Bowie’s constant companion from childhood, through fame, and until the end. For over 60 years, they were joined in a whirlwind of music discovery and music-making – much of which is captured in MacCormack’s new photographic memoir David Bowie: Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me.

David Bowie with Geoff MacCormack on the set of ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’.
Intimate and full of references so specific you can almost smell the pub carpets and stage make-up, the book provides an account of Bowie’s life that could only come from a lifelong friend, as we follow the pair from The Starlight Rooms in Brighton, where Bowie performed in June 1965 as Davy Jones and The Lower Third, to their final exchanges before his passing in January 2016. On the way we pass through the Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane tours, shooting The Man Who Fell to Earth, the recording of Station to Station and beyond, with over 150 rare and unseen images giving sudden colour and movement to MacCormack’s writing. The touching afterword comes courtesy of David Bowie himself.




Since MacCormack, also known as Warren Peace, had no formal photography training, the images capture a side to Bowie not often seen in carefully curated studio imagery or artistically poised artwork. Whether he’s napping on the Trans-Siberian Express or caught in the middle of a sentence, they show glimpses of the man behind the many personas.
“Those holiday snaps, as I call them, are sometimes even better than the one where he looks wonderful and heroic, which in a lot of them he does,” MacCormack told The Guardian, when some of the images in Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me being exhibited at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery from October 2020 to June 2021. “They’re holiday snaps really.”



It’s a beautiful and generous project – a rare kind of memoir that gives a remarkable insight into a friendship between two men who shared their love for music from the moment they met to their final farewells. It also, undoubtedly, answers some of the questions one might have about what it was actually like touring, recording, and travelling with the man who changed music.

David Bowie: Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me is available now through ACC Art Books.
Follow Emma on Twitter.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
You might like

After Assad’s fall, Syria’s musicians rebuild from the rubble
Spaces Between the Beats — Following decades of dictatorship and 14 years of civil war, the country’s classical and creative scenes have an opportunity to build from scratch. Andrei Popviciu speaks to the people hoping for a flourishing new era of art and sound.
Written by: Andrei Popoviciu

At Belgium’s Horst, electronic music, skate and community collide
More than a festival — With art exhibitions, youth projects and a brand new skatepark, the Vilvoorde-Brussels weekender is demonstrating how music events can have an impact all year round.
Written by: Isaac Muk

Tony Njoku: ‘I wanted to see Black artists living my dream’
What Made Me — In this series, we ask artists and rebels about the forces and experiences that shaped who they are. Today, it’s avant-garde electronic and classical music hybridist Tony Njoku.
Written by: Tony Njoku

Dalia Al-Dujaili: “When you’re placeless, nature can fill the void”
Babylon, Albion — As her new book publishes, the British-Iraqi author speaks about connecting with the land as a second-generation migrant, plants as symbols of resistance, and being proud of her parents.
Written by: Zahra Onsori

Turnstile benefit gig raises $35k for Baltimore homelessness charity
Never Enough — The hardcore band also performed two new songs at Wyman Park Dell in their first live concert in nearly two years, which was organised in support of Health Care For The Homeless.
Written by: Isaac Muk

We are all Mia Khalifa
How humour, therapy and community help Huck's latest cover star control her narrative.
Written by: Alya Mooro