The men who fell to henna – 1982

It was December 1982. Chris and I had returned to his parents house in Radford after a night on the town. We’d been dancing, drinking ‘red witch’ and giving away Smart Cookies demo tapes in Nottingham’s Rock City nightclub. ‘New Romantic’ nights were always interesting, the venue awash with fashion victims from all walks of life: Gary Numan garage mechanics, David Sylvian shop assistants, Duran Duran schoolkids, nurses in ra-ra skirts and the Bauhaus unwashed. Doing Rock City had become a ritual whenever we were home from college. Ainsley Road, Radford had its ritualised comforts too. Riff’s Mum and Dad – Harry and Lisa would be tucked-up in bed and we’d occupy their armchairs to catch up on events, drink coffee and pass comment on whatever was being dished out on TV.

Most TV channels had closed-down for the night by the time we got back from town but you could usually rely on BBC 2 to be screening an art-house movie. Tonight we were in luck, the beeb were showing Nicolas Roeg’s classic movie ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ starring David Bowie. Although released when I was still at school and mad on Science Fiction, I’d never actually seen it, so we were captivated.

Bowie’s portrayal of the frail alien, fainting in the hotel lift is a classic, only someone with his gangly frame could pull that off convincingly. In later years I recall having an argument on ICQ with an American who criticised Bowie’s ‘wooden’ delivery, he failed to see that Bowie was just displaying a very natural English characteristic, which is often stiff, inarticulate and bumbling. However, I did have to laugh at his witty comment ‘The Man Who Fell to Acting’.

There were several memorable scenes it the film. I particularly liked the widescreen, sepia-tinted wild west flashbacks and the jump-cut sex scenes, where a dirty lecturer [Rip Torn] gets laid for doling out good grades. We had fun casting our own friends and colleagues in the various roles, with Ivan Pastuch as the alien visitor and Tony Evans preying on gullable female students.

There was also the scene where the terrified female lead [Candy Clark] wets her pants after seeing the alien’s real face. At school that particular scene was relayed to me by Martin Austin and Malcolm Percival [Possy] who had an intimate knowledge of adult certificated movies!

What made a lasting impression that night was Bowie’s golden hair and bright crimson fringe. And the very next day we made a special pilgrimage to the city centre, to acquaint ourselves with the alien world of ‘wash-in wash-out’ hair colourants.

Falling to Earth, we landed in Boots the chemist with its overpowering perfume and caramel faced ladies serving behind brightly coloured concession stands. There was something distinctly seedy about two twenty year old guys loitering with old ladies around the purple rinse. Like Bowie, we were aliens and we spent far too much time examining the items on the shelves. As if colour matching wasn’t a challenge in itself, each box of hair colourant also included an instruction leaflet the size of a paperback book.

Recognising our dilemma, we were eventually rescued by a kindly-faced store assistant, who provided us with everything we needed to reinvent ourselves as ‘The Men Who Fell to Henna.’