Househunting with David Bowie

Country number three - Switzerland 🇨🇭

Rolling into Geneva on a brilliant blue autumn morning, first impressions are it’s clean, rich and full of lads wearing expensive cashmere v-neck jumpers. As for Bowie, the genius bugger lived here for twenty years.

Today’s modern, youthful cosmopolitan city was in sharp contast to Bowie’s arrival in 1976. He wasn’t carrying a squashed croissant and two poorly packed panniers, his baggage was paranoia, cocaine addiction, holdalls of cash seeking a tax-free home and a marriage on its last legs. It had only been three years since Life on Mars? was released, but in a whirlwind of character shape shifting he’d gone from lovelorn balladeer, to Ziggy Stardust, lightning-faced Aladdin Sane, dystopian Diamond Dog, a funky Young American and an emaciated Thin White Duke. Not only did he get into the ski’ing lifestyle he also bought a rather sensible Volvo car.

As we exited Geneva in search of Bowie’s swiss years, passing its wealthy resident’s supercars and breezing under tangles of tram wire the reward was a view of Lake Geneva, or Le Lac. Highway 1 runs all the way around the glistening behometh on tight little roads so as you gaze over to France you can feel the breeze of the expensive feats of engineering as they hammer past you. For those looking for more genteel rides there are nice little signed cycle paths that dip in and out of villages and pretty orchards flush with juicy red apples.

It wasn’t just doughnuts revving their BMW’s who kept me company, an old schoolmate Lee had joined the band. As we roll along Lake Geneva’s pretty banks we hit up the pretty little cycle trails that took us across stone arch bridges and cornfields gleaming in sleepy autumn gold.

Of course the best part of cycling is eating your face off with local cuisine. We stop for a sandwich - which costs a tenner. We stop for two coffees - a tenner. We stop for a beer - also a tenner. Basically tenners are worthless pieces of god damn junk here. Lee, below, indulging in a little Bowie rebellion as we steal the fruits of our labour.

But we’re not here to burn cash, we’re here for Bowie. So we set about burning our thighs instead, firing up Swiss mountains into the blue skies, striving for the wisps of chilly dew-drenched clouds that rush down to meet us. We’re looking for some of the many houses Bowie inhabited in the area. In preparation, I’d downloaded a grainy picture of a Swiss-style chalet, said to be DB’s. The problem was it looked exactly the same as every other Swiss-style chalet plonked along the mountain line.

The name of the house, Clos de Mésanges, was distinctive, yet difficult to pronounce. We ask a man, we ask a dentist, we ask a dog - nobody knows where it is. Finally, we stumble over the Blonay cuckoo clock house he shared with first wife Angie. She loved it, it’s Swiss aesthetic, but Bowie wasn’t impressed by this twee turn to his life, “It wasn’t his scene at all” she commented with a huffy roll of her eyes in her autobiography.

We mooch around outside, not really sure what to do. We sing, or rather, freak out with a little Moonage Daydream and plop a shoddy ginger wig Lee brought which is supposedly the incarnate of Ziggy Stardust. I wonder if Bowie’s hair was this itchy and flammable. Probably with the amount of hairspray he plopped on.

Bowie’s life was moving hastily through the gears, like our chugging bike cogs and in 1982 the Clos de Mésanges was sold and with first wife Angie no longer on the scene, Bowie upgraded to the recklessly large fourteen-room Château de Signal. It’s value probably as high as a one bed London bedsit. This lay high above the Sauvabelin Forest in an exclusive neighbourhood a long way out of the reach of pesky cycle bums. Or so they thought. Some scruffy Googling later and we had three possibilities, all with a hefty climb involved. We headed for No.22 Route du Signal again with a grainy old picture to identify Bowie’s old abode where he lived with his son Zowie (Duncan Jones.)

We clocked the house numbers straightway, numbers 18 and 20 were clearly signed, 22 was unmarked except for a hulk of tangled foliage that rendered the property unviewable. A cocked head here, led to a shrub there; standing on tippy toes, was a brambled no-go. Indeed, a tower of ravenous giraffes would’ve struggled to dismantle these leaves. We spied an electricity pillbox, Lee cupped his hands, I clambered up and yes, I could just make out bricks, mortar and a spire. It didn’t stop there, I yelled out all the things I could see: gravel, grass, a gargoyle, a birdbath. Bowie had a birdbath!

There was only one thing for it, we’d ring the doorbell, perhaps chat to the owners, inspect the grounds, see if Bowie had left any clues about the meaning behind Life on Mars?

I pushed the doorbell.

‘’Ello,’ said a terse voice.

They weren’t meant to answer this quickly, what was I supposed to say? Lee looked at me. I wracked my brain for signs of intelligent life and then it slipped out.

‘Ou est le Bowie?’

Well, it shouldn’t have been that. In a final act of wretched schoolboy stupidity, I’d asked, ‘Where is the Bowie?’ Lee took this as his cue to run away giggling. I swiftly followed. We had barely reached the first junction when a police car tore around the corner in a wail of siren and blue light leaning from their window, waving a Swiss first and yelling in French “Pesky Bowie cycle bums.”