Just like John Lennon or Elton John, in 1970s David Bowie was an iconic figure of the Western music scene. Nicknamed Chameleon of Pop for his flamboyant outfits, pale make up and eccentric tunes, David Bowie made a train tour of Russia, all the way from Vladivostok to Moscow, eighteen days in a sleeper. Back in the days, when the Cold War was in its prime, getting a permission to look behind the Iron Curtain was an incredible phenomenon by itself. Well, did David enjoy himself while in the USSR? Let’s see.
David Bowie in the Red Square, Moscow, April 1973.
While in Moscow, apart from visiting the top 10, David did not get up to much. He visited GUM, a Russian version of Bloomingdale’s, where he got a pair of souvenir underpants and some soap. He enjoyed the May Day Parade, which he later described as “incredible”; however, he also called the Moscovites “cold people’, stating that the Siberian crowd is a much warmer lot.
May Day Parade, Moscow, 1973
Interestingly enough, soon after David got back to the civilised world, the Western media labelled these photos fakes, which was understandable: a prominent singer walking about in a communist country, and even more so, taking the longest train in the world? Incredible!
Sightseeing in the USSR
The Trans-Siberian Express is not only the longest train ride in the world — 5,350 miles from Khabarovsk in the Soviet Far East to Moscow — but it is considered by railroad buffs to be the last great train ride on earth.
David, who spent most of his time while on the train in a kimono, did not mind singing for the train passengers every now and then. The people travelling seemed to enjoy his songs although they probably did not realise who he was. He also had a camera which he had bought in Japan, which he kept using continuously, shooting everything around him.
Just about to board the Transsiberian Express
David wrote in his diary then:
We had these two fabulous attendants, Danya and Nadya. I used to sing songs to them, often late at night, when they had finished work. They couldn’t understand a word of English, and so that meant they couldn’t understand a word of my songs! But that didn’t seem to worry them at all. They sat with big smiles on their faces, sometimes for hours on end, listening to my music, and at the end of each song they would applaud and cheer! They were a wonderful audience — it was a real pleasure to sing to them.
The train journey was eighteen days long.
David left the USSR by a plane bound for Germany. West Berlin, with its neon lights, taxis, doormen in their red uniforms with shiny buttons and the cold champagne waiting in the hotel suite, was just incredible. But there was just one thought in our minds, wrote David:
How to get as quickly and inconspicuously as possible to a hot bath, a good hair wash, and a suitcase full of lovely, fresh, clean, beautiful clothes.
From DB’s personal notebook: “It was an old French train from the turn of the century, with the most beautiful wood veneer, decorated oval mirrors, and velvet couches. Really it was like something out of a romantic novel or film.”
In all honesty, there is a lot of discrepancies in the story of David touring Russia. His own personal diaries are brief and inexpressive — apart from calling Russia “incredible”, David does not bother with further notes. The photos he took never saw the daylight. Most importantly, there is a controversy about his travel companions: there are numerous references to the other foreigners sharing his sleep car or encountering him on the train, and this seems to be fairly improbable. But nonetheless, considering that the Beatles never made it to the USSR, Ziggy Stardust was lucky enough to actually visit the country behind the Iron Curtain.
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