Suzi Ronson remembers the moment back in 1971 when her life changed from dreary black and white into cinematic technicolour. She was then Suzi Fussey and worked at Evelyn Paget, a hair salon in Beckenham, a small town in the London borough of Bromley. One day, Margaret Jones came in for her weekly shampoo. “I was 22 at the time,” Ronson recalls from her home in London. “Mrs Jones, who was wearing a tweed skirt with sensible shoes and the ever-present English cardigan, was waxing poetically about her son, David.”

Ronson knew of David Jones, who’d changed his surname to Bowie in the late 1960s and had a top 10 hit with Space Oddity (1969), released shortly before the Apollo 11 moon landings. Bowie was known locally for his odd brand of psychedelic folk music, which he occasionally played at The Three Tuns, a pub on Beckenham High Street.

A few weeks after meeting Mrs Jones, Ronson saw Bowie in Beckenham wheeling a pram, wearing a dress and accompanied by his then wife, Angie. Angie visited the hair salon with Mrs Jones that same month asking Ronson for highlights. Angie was so impressed with the results that she later requested a private appointment at Haddon Hall, a Victorian mansion in south-east London.

Angie, Bowie and their son, Zowie, lived on the ground floor. The flat was a bohemian space where Bowie wrote most of The Man Who Sold the World (1970) and Hunky Dory (1971). A revolving crew of musicians regularly passed through Haddon Hall – and lived there for a time too – including guitarist Mick Ronson, bass player Trevor Bolder and drummer Mick Woodmansey. They would eventually become Bowie’s backing band, The Spiders from Mars.

Ronson first encountered Bowie at Haddon Hall just before Christmas in 1971. “David [sat] in the bay window, flicking through a magazine, wearing a soft velvet shirt with rolled-up sleeves and fitted trousers, his skin white, his face finely boned,” she writes in Me and Mr Jones.

The candid memoir recalls Ronson’s time working as a stylist on Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust Tour in 1972-73, which included 182 shows in the UK, US and Japan. In addition to his extensive touring duties, Bowie was prolific in the studio, releasing The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), Pin Ups (1973) and Aladdin Sane (1973).

“I was around for the best part of it. It was an incredibly creative time for David,” Ronson remembers. “He was always going to see different things so he could get an influence or an idea for something and then make it his own.”

Ronson was initially employed part-time as Bowie’s chief stylist, after creating the haircut that became the focal point of his androgynous, alien-like image. Bowie was always extremely fashion-conscious, she says. She recalls him showing her a photograph of a model with a red spiky hairdo from the Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto and asking her to emulate it.

“David’s haircut evolved many times during this period, the first haircut had a little red puff right in the front, and the rest was very short – it’s on the front cover of the Ziggy album,” Ronson says. “The hair managed to stand up because I had this fabulous anti-dandruff setting lotion that made David’s hair very stiff.

“I created an amazing look and colour for David. And I remember thinking, he’s not going to be able to find anyone else to touch this haircut up, so he’s going to have to take me with him on the road, and he did!”

Prior to going full-time on the road, Ronson would occasionally visit Haddon Hall. Bowie and Angie were polyamorous and bisexual. Ronson was not. But she and Bowie did have a one-night hook-up. She recalls that he was a tender, romantic lover, but insists: “I was not in love with David. He made me nervous because he was so different from anyone I had ever met.”

By July 1972, Ronson was working full-time with Bowie, initially as his hairdresser, but performing other duties as the tour progressed. With Angie, she would sometimes scour London boutiques for new outfits for Bowie and the band. “Or I would do make-up, run errands and take orders for lunch, coffee, tea, and cigarettes, or anything [else] anyone wanted,” she recalls.

“I was not in love with David. He made me nervous because he was so different from anyone I had ever met.”

This often involved liaising with groupies after gigs. “I wasn’t procuring fans to sleep with David or other band members, I was bringing them back for a drink to the hotel bar with the band and whatever happened after that, happened. This was long before the era of #MeToo. I never met another woman at the time, who was on the road, working, like me. Women were in a very different position in the 1970s.”

When the band appeared on Top of the Pops in July 1972, Bowie looked like he had arrived from another planet, says Ronson. He wore full make-up, a two-piece suit made from quilted nursery fabric, and red plastic boots. Casually strumming a blue acoustic guitar Bowie oozed charisma as he played Starman, the lead single from his latest album. The magnetic performance instantly transformed Bowie into a global pop star. In 2022, The Guardian called it “the most famous three and a half minutes of music television in British history”.

“It’s funny, when I saw them playing Starman on Top of the Pops and David put his arm around Mick, everybody made such a big fuss about that,” says Ronson. “And I thought, wow, that is nothing, they should come to the shows and see what happens!”

The last two shows of the Ziggy Stardust Tour took place at Hammersmith Odeon, London, in July 1973, and left a cultural legacy that was captured in D. A. Pennebaker’s 1979 documentary, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The band finished with Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide and Bowie’s announcement that “it’s the last show that we’ll ever do”.

Ziggy Stardust had already morphed into Aladdin Sane, who was evolving into the cocaine-snorting Thin White Duke. The latter persona epitomised all the narcissistic traits of the 1970s superstar. Ronson points out that Bowie would later blame cocaine for his bad behaviour at the time but says she never saw cocaine in the dressing room during the last tour she worked on.

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“David made the band and crew look like arseholes and fools and didn’t tell them he was quitting until they heard it on stage,” she says. “But Mick and I knew.”

Suzi and Mick Ronson married in 1977 and had a daughter, Lisa. After working with Bowie, Mick recorded, produced and played live with various acts including Mott the Hoople, Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn, Morrissey and Lou Reed. He died of liver cancer in April 1993, aged 46.

“Mick had so much more to do and accomplish,” says Ronson, visibly upset. “He didn’t make a lot of money with David, but his time would have come around again.”

A core founder of The Spiders from Mars, Mick Ronson was credited as co-arranger and guitarist on the five Bowie albums he played on between 1970 and 1973. Ronson believes her husband was shafted financially. “Mick could have got some more co-writing song credits from David, quite frankly,” she says. “Many people who worked with David told me he was difficult to give credit in the field of songwriting, when credit was clearly due,” says Ronson. “I think David became a nicer person as he got older.”

Today, Ronson insists there are no hard feelings. She recalls a shiver running down her spine when she heard the news in January 2016 that Bowie had died.

“Whatever else I might say about David, I am so grateful for him for taking a chance on me all those years ago,” she says. “If it hadn’t been for David, God knows what would have happened to me or where I might have ended up.”

Me and Mr Jones is published by Faber at $49.99.