Richard Barbieri, Mick Karn and David Sylvian were all classmates at Catford Boys school in South London. Karn and Sylvian were friends, their surnames then Michaelides and Batt, the latter’s home being ‘close to the school,’ as Mick recalled, ‘so we would go there together for lunch, with his brother Steven Batt bringing a friend and joining us.
‘Music was our common interest, namely David Bowie. Steve was a big Alice Cooper fan and they were both very keen on T. Rex and their earlier incarnation Tyrannosaurus Rex… Every inch of their rooms were filled with posters, I’d never seen anything like it.’ A photograph of a teenage Sylvian shows him strumming a 12-string guitar with every inch of wall space taken up by pictures of his musical idols. Clearly visible is a shot of David Bowie performing ‘Cracked Actor’ on the Diamond Dogs tour of 1974, with dark glasses, cape and skull in hand, below there is one of Terry O’Neill’s images of the singer with an imposing dog – a publicity photograph for the album after which Bowie’s tour was named.
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