David Bowie was born in London, England. I’m in London, Canada. When reading the booklet included with the record for Bowie’s 1995 album 1. Outside, I came across this:

That’s a rare mention of my often-ignored home of London, Ontario, as a place to buy lamb penis necklaces and goat-scrotum purses.

This is from a story Bowie wrote for Q Magazine, which later turned into the concept for the concept album, then was reproduced in the liner notes. Not many people notice the London connection, and it’s not mentioned much on the Internet, so I thought I’d write a bit about it.

One fan site notes the London mention, and points out that it’s consistent with the main setting of the dystopian story, Oxford, New Jersey. That’s not a real place, but matches a UK city. So the London, Canada mention is just a little throwaway joke about another doppelgänger city.

Did Bowie even know this London is a real place? He doesn’t seem to have visited here until about 10 years later, when his Reality Tour came to the JLC in 2004.

Whether he knew of our existence or not, he chose an appropriate city. The Outside album and story were inspired by Twin Peaks. In Vanessa Brown’s The Forest City Killer, she jokes that London is the real site of the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks and has lots of similarities, including all the murder. I agree—this is a place that wants to be a wholesome small town, but its dark past and present keep getting in the way, making for surreal juxtapositions. So Bowie, likely inadvertently, had the right Lynchian getaway for one of the murder suspects in his story.

Bowie has lots of other connections to Canada, but this little link between his home town and my home town has mostly escaped notice. Now we just need to start a local chain of body-parts jewelry stores and sell scrotum purses. You know, as a tribute.