Woodmansey remembers the first time he set eyes on Bowie in 1969, after he was contacted about possibly playing drums in his backing band.

Answering the door at his place in Kent, just south of London, Woodmansey found Bowie sporting a rainbow tee, red corduroy trousers and blue shoes he painted himself, with a star on top of each one.

"It was like, 'Well, OK, this is different,'" Visconti said. "I could see he was intelligent. He played some of his earliest stuff for me on his 12-string guitar, and some of it I liked, and some of it I didn't."

But by the end of the session, Woodmansey didn't hesitate to join Bowie's band. Bowie's ability to write songs, his clear voice and great presence had swayed him.

"There was a chance that we could do it with this guy, and I was right," Woodmansey said.

It was in the studio, performing on Bowie albums "World," "Hunky Dory," "Ziggy Stardust" and "Aladdin Sane," that Woodmansey realized Bowie was "a genius."

"With David, you sometimes didn't get the song until you were in the studio, and he would play it once, maybe twice, to you on guitar," Woodmansey said. "And we never played a song more than three times. 'Starman' was a first take. 'He's an idiot,' that was our initial reaction. But he was right. There was a freshness (on those first takes), where everybody was in a creative mood, and that was a big part of his success."

But for Woodmansey, one of the greatest examples of his innovation was when he toured in 1972 to 1973 behind "Ziggy Stardust." Woodmansey played drums for those shows as part of the backing band, dubbed the Spiders from Mars. Slacker chats with Woody Woodmansey.