king-in-yellow:

I heard this song today, and was vaguely reminded of something I read in Boy George’s 1995 autobiography, Take It Like A Man. Around 1979-1980 or so, he lived at the Warren Street Squat, where a lot of the fabulous and strange people who eventually ended up becoming famous members of the whole New Romantic scene hung out. He mentioned that everything eventually fell apart there because one of the members, a beautiful South-East(?) Asian girl probably in her early 20s, overdosed on heroin there, and with all the unwanted police attention and the girl’s mother banging on the locked door screaming that they’d killed her baby, it just was the end of that particular gathering place. (Not that they didn’t all end up addicted to heroin in the end, but you know.)

As I vaguely recall (damn, I must have read this 16 years ago), Boy George said that this particular girl had been the original inspiration for China Girl, which was co-written by Bowie and Iggy Pop in 1977. (Of course, as the phrase “china girl” is slang for heroin too, who knows.) 

I remembered this, but I couldn’t find anything online to confirm my vague memories - except for one reference. 

Here is an interview with Kim Bowen, one of the original Blitz Kids from that time who “became muse to legendary milliner Stephen Jones, Fashion Director at Harpers Bazaar and Blitz magazine, and is now stylist to a spectacular list of stars and a Costume Designer for feature films. ”

She says:

What made you leave Warren Street?
We’d all been living at Warren Street for a while when a girl called Mitsou died of a heroin overdose.  It was a terrible, terrible moment.  Mitsou was the girl that Iggy Pop apparently wrote China Girl about.  She was really beautiful with jet black hair, a stunning looking girl who had tons and tons of money and used to wear the most amazing Mugler creations.  Mitsou was hanging with all the druggy people on the other side of the house and one night she overdosed and died.  After that, it was over for me.  I remember walking back through the house after all the emergency services had been and thinking “I don’t want to die in this house.”  It was a really big turning point.

So my fevered memories were correct!

Sort of interesting to think of this song not being about a generic woman but about a specific one who died young. (If it’s not just about heroin, of course.)

The music video was directed by David Mallet and is shot mainly in the Chinatown district of Sydney, Australia. Alongside Bowie, New Zealand model Geeling Ng starred in the video, which Bowie described as a “very simple, very direct” statement against racism (alongside his previous single’s video for “Let’s Dance”).

Apparently the model was a waitress that Bowie picked out of a crowd to do a video with him. *shakes fist at uncaring heavens*