Live: Bridlington Spa, Bridlington

David Bowie and the Spiders From Mars performed at the Bridlington Spa ballroom in Bridlington on 28 June 1973.

It was the 150th date of the Ziggy Stardust Tour, which had begun on 29 January.

I had come full circle; I had played Bridlington Spa so many times with The Tennesseans in the sixties when we had supported the likes of Gene Vincent, The Alex Harvey Soul Band and The Kinks at the huge seafront venue. We had also played several ‘all-nighters’ at ‘Brid Spa’. These were essentially dusk till dawn drinking marathons for the youth of the surrounding Wolds and coastal villages, for the country boys and girls who never had much to look forward to in terms of musical entertainment.

Brid was home ground for Mick, Trev and Woody too of course, especially Woody, whose home town is nearby Driffield, which is either yet another one-horse town with nothing ever happening, or a nice quiet little country market town, depending on your perspective. Bridlington itself is on the coast mid-way between Scarborough and Hull and is consequently a little on the quiet side all round. As a rock venue in the sixties and seventies, Bridlington Spa was something of an enigma, stranded out on the far-eastern Yorkshire coast but it did very well…

Almost everyone I had ever known in Scarborough, apart from my two sons who were too young to come to gigs and my parents who were too old and anyway thankfully always stayed clear of my rock and roll business altogether, came to Bridlington Spa to see the gig. They all came to see David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars, but they also came to see the bloke that they all knew, the 12-string and rhythm guitarist John Hutchinson from Scarborough.

My ex-wife, my future wife, the Spiders from Hull’s wives and ex-wives, girlfriends and ex-girlfriends, they all were there. David Bowie fever, Aladdinsanity had come to Scarborough, well Bridlington actually, but it was all too close for comfort in my home town that evening.

The setlist

• ‘Hang On To Yourself’
• ‘Ziggy Stardust’
• ‘Watch That Man’
• ‘Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud’
• ‘All The Young Dudes’
• ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’
• ‘Moonage Daydream’
• ‘Changes’
• ‘Space Oddity’
• ‘The Jean Genie’
• ‘Time’
• ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’
• ‘Suffragette City’
• ‘White Light/White Heat’
• ‘Round And Round’