Rehearsal: Ready Steady Go!

The day before their performance for the television show Ready Steady Go! was filmed, David Bowie and the Buzz took part in rehearsals at Rediffusion’s studios in Wembley, London.

They also recorded a new backing track for ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’, Bowie’s most recent single, which had been recorded with his previous band the Lower Third.

The rehearsals and filming took place over two days at Associated-Reddifusion’s Wembley TV Studios at 128 Wembley Park Drive, London.

We were all reassured and very impressed with Ralph Horton’s management capabilities when we learnt that our TV debut was to be the ‘live’ BBC [sic] TV show Ready Steady Go! in just a few days time, on March 3rd 1966. The prestigious TV engagement had been made possible by the recent (and not a little surprising) appearance of David’s single ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’ in the lower reaches of ‘The Melody Maker Pop 50’…

Although the show was described as being ‘live’ this meant that we were to record our ‘live’ sound in the morning, and then mime to ourselves in order for the cameras to shoot the show in the afternoon – the show went out that evening. The introduction to ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’ was a distinctive guitar riff that I had copied from The Lower Third’s recording and it was also the main ‘hook’ on the record. I played it on an acoustic 12-string guitar that David lent me, and the morning recording session went off without a hitch from Dave B, Hutchie, Ego, Dek and Chow’s point of view.