A little over a month on from suffering a catastrophic first ever relegation to the third tier, Sunderland AFC was busy preparing for a superstar arrival at Roker Park that was set to raise spirits — albeit it was his singing people were paying to see, not his soccer skills.
David Bowie’s worldwide Glass Spider Tour was due on Wearside on 23 June and with twenty four hours to go, everything appeared to be set.
David Bowie Photo by Hodgson/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
A spokesman advised that virtually all of the 38,000 tickets had been sold, with just a small remaining handful priced at £15 being put on sale at the door, and commercial manager Alec King informed The Echo that hundreds of crew members were on site putting the finishing touches to their preparations.
Queues of around 8,000 were expected to form from midnight ahead of the 14:30 opening of the gates, with main support act Big Country due on at 17:45 ahead of ‘The Duke’s’ own entrance at 20:00.
Promoters Harvey Goldsmith had arranged for around 100 security guards to work alongside Roker’s regular match day stewards, whilst car parking restrictions had been put in place outside the ground to enable safe passage for the crowd — which was going to dwarf the 1986/1987 Division Two average of around 14,000.
There was certainly an air of anticipation across the town, with the Tourist Information Office reporting 100% occupancy across all available hotels and accommodation.
With no Scottish dates scheduled, a large proportion of the visitors were due to travel down excitedly from north of the border, yet the tour had not been without controversy. The British leg had started in London at the weekend, with a city banker being forced to deny reports in the national press that he’d escorted Diana, Princess of Wales to one of the Wembley shows.
Lady Di’s ancestors included an Earl of Sunderland and yet it was a different member of the royal family that was spotted at the Roker leg of the tour, with Sarah, Duchess of York, in attendance.
She was said to have enjoyed the event, although despite everything supposedly being on schedule on 22 June, the day of the event was fraught with tension due to Bowie’s private jet being grounded at Luton. A dash to Heathrow for a scheduled flight proved fruitless, and it was only when a last-minute replacement was sourced that his arrival in Wearside could be guaranteed.
David Bowie performing at Roker Park, Sunderland on 23rd June 1987 in his Glass Spider Tour Bowie plays for Sunderland
Photo by NCJ Archive/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
The show itself proved tense also, with heavy downpours and an infamous greeting from Bowie threatening to dampen the mood.
The Echo’s music writer Mervin Straughan wasn’t impressed with aspects of the show either — Bowie’s ‘most theatrical tour in rock history’ being better suited to the West End, he felt — but the masses seemed to enjoy themselves and despite the obligatory complaints from local residents about noise and anti-social behaviour, the club were also happy with how things went.
On 24 June, King was back in touch with The Echo.
We are very pleased. I am sure everyone who came enjoyed it, and I hope the locals were not too inconvenienced.
Meanwhile, his colleague, general manager Geoff Davidson, was also satisfied, stating that were another promoter to approach Sunderland AFC, they would be given ‘serious consideration’ and the understanding that the club made between £30,000 and £40,000 from the show was presumably a big factor in their thinking.
Once the gig was finished, a huge operation swung into action. Two stage sets had been built so teams of roadies could leapfrog dates, with forty huge trucks and around 150 operatives required to help transport everything onto the next spot.
A specialist council clean-up squad was also deployed to clear up the streets around the stadium, whilst police officers had to complete the paperwork that was necessitated by fourteen arrests for minor offences and drunkenness, with around twenty car burglaries also being reported.
In addition to that, one man was cautioned for climbing sixty feet up a floodlight pylon, although it was Bowie himself that was guilty of the biggest crime by confusing Sunderland with Newcastle!
This Roker Report article went into greater detail about the concert itself — which was so feted that it spawned a city centre pub on Green Terrace that was named after the tour — and somewhat ironically also became notorious among Sunderland fans when in 2007 manager Roy Keane chastised his striker Anthony Stokes for the amount of times he visited.
Galway United v Sunderland Photo by Patrick Bolger/Getty Images
This was all a far cry from Roker Park’s other 1980s extravaganza, when in 1984 American evangelist Billy Graham spent a week in the North East as part of his own Mission England tour.
Despite it being late May, Graham later claimed that Roker was the coldest open air venue he’d preached at, which is why he had worn a hat on stage for the first time. On the fifth of eight consecutive nights, former Sunderland assistant and caretaker manager Dave Merrington, who was also a lay preacher, was invited on stage to speak to the audience.
The Roker End housed a choir of around 1,600, whilst in total over 124,000 people attended — not to mention the estimated audience of approximately sixty million that tuned into the BBC World Service when it transmitted one of the meetings.
Now, even Ziggy Stardust would’ve been pleased with that sort of global appeal!