This is the reason why David Bowie had two different coloured eyes
There are very few things about the great David Bowie that are not unique. If the late icon wasn’t changing his on-stage persona with prolific effect, then he was in the studio delivering yet more genre-melding hit songs. However, The Starman’s ability to separate himself from the rest transcended further than just his creations
In the spring of 1962, Bowie would walk into a confrontation that would change his life forever when his childhood friend, George Underwood, would be the reason why the future musician would end up having two completely different coloured eyes.
Underwood, who went to school with Bowie, later revealed that the two had an argument over a girl which resulted in a playground fight. With both Underwood and Bowie liking the same girl, the two had a “short-lived falling out” which turned physical.
According to Underwood, Bowie had forced his way into the reckoning in bid to date Carol Goldsmith, the girl they both liked having struck up a conversation at a 15th birthday party.
“Just to get the story straight, it was about a girl we both fancied,” artist Underwood told The Telegraph. “She came to my 15th birthday party – everyone was drunk at about eight, including David.
He added: “I was sensible and managed a date with her. David phoned me on the day and said she had told him she didn’t want to meet me because she wanted to go out with him.”
However, later that evening, Underwood visited his youth club only to find that the girl had been waiting with Bowie. “So I was very pissed off with him, and in the morning I got on the bus to school and overheard him talking about this girl he was going out with,” he said. “At break time I hit him [inadvertently causing one pupil to become permanently dilated, so Bowie’s eyes appeared to be different colours]. Later David said I did him a favour – everyone talks about his eyes, don’t they?”
The fight resulted in Bowie suffering a Heterochromia, a condition which resulted in the right eye turning blue in appearance while a left one remained a darker shade of brown, apparently due to suffering “a deep corneal abrasion and paralysis of his iris sphincter muscle.”
Bowie embraced his unique feature throughout his career as he donned his different stage personas right up until his death in 2016.