Christine Patton & David Bowie | Backing Vocalist with The Konrads

The Konrads and Bowie’s earliest band years

The Konrads were one of the earliest groups connected with David Jones, long before he adopted the name David Bowie. The band began in the West Kent and South London area and performed mainly at small local venues, including youth clubs, church halls, school events, dances and local halls.

In their early period, The Konrads performed mostly popular cover material, including songs influenced by The Shadows, Cliff Richard, American rock and roll and early 1960s beat-group repertoire. For the young David Jones, the group offered practical experience in rehearsing, performing and understanding how a live band worked.

Christine Patton’s role

Christine Patton is documented as one of the vocalists in the later early-1960s Konrads line-up. She appeared alongside her sister Stella Patton, with both sisters listed among the group’s vocalists during the period when the band expanded beyond its original drums, guitar and saxophone format.

Because surviving information about Christine Patton herself is limited, the safest historical description is that she was part of the Konrads vocal line-up rather than a later Bowie collaborator. Her importance comes from her presence in the same early musical environment in which David Jones was learning how to perform before fame.

The Patton sisters in The Konrads

Christine Patton and Stella Patton were part of the expanded Konrads line-up connected with the Dave Hadfield period of the band. Their presence shows that The Konrads were not simply a basic guitar group. At times, the group included multiple vocalists, saxophone, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass and drums.

This kind of expanded local-band format helped create a more varied live sound. For David Jones, performing inside a group with several singers and instrumentalists gave him experience in arrangement, stage discipline and group dynamics at a very early stage of his musical life.

David Jones before David Bowie

During his time with The Konrads, David Jones was still developing as a performer. He played tenor saxophone, sang, helped with original ideas and experimented with the kind of musical direction he wanted to follow. Some accounts also note that he used the stage name “Dave Jay” during this early period.

The Konrads gave him practical experience: rehearsing with a group, playing in front of local audiences, learning stage discipline and testing the difference between popular cover material and more personal musical ambitions.

The expanded Konrads line-up

The Konrads line-up changed several times during the early 1960s. Members connected with the group included Dave Crook, Neville Wills, George Underwood, David Jones, Dave Hadfield, Roger Ferris, Christine Patton, Stella Patton, Alan Dodds and Rocky Shahan.

Christine Patton’s place in this history is tied to the line-up in which The Konrads became a fuller local performing group, with more than one vocalist and a stronger stage presentation than the earliest formation.

“I Never Dreamed” and the Decca audition

Bowie leaves The Konrads

David Jones eventually left The Konrads after becoming dissatisfied with the band’s musical direction. He wanted to move toward a stronger rhythm and blues influence, while The Konrads remained closer to the popular beat-group and cover-band repertoire of the period.

This split was important. It marked an early example of Bowie’s refusal to remain in a musical setting that did not match his ambitions. The desire to move forward, change direction and seek a more distinctive sound would become one of the defining patterns of his entire career.

The Konrads after Bowie

The Konrads continued after David Jones left. Later line-ups no longer included Bowie, and the group eventually released records without him being part of the band. For collectors and Bowie historians, however, the group’s lasting importance lies mainly in the period before Bowie’s departure and in the survival of the I Never Dreamed demo.

Christine Patton’s connection belongs to this early chapter. She should not be presented as a later Bowie collaborator, but as someone present within the wider Konrads story at the beginning of Bowie’s musical journey.

Later recognition

In later years, renewed interest in The Konrads came mainly through Bowie’s fame and through the rediscovery and discussion of early recordings such as I Never Dreamed. The musicians around Bowie in this period have gained historical attention because they were present before the formation of the Bowie identity.

Christine Patton remains one of the more obscure names in this history, but her listing as a vocalist with The Konrads places her inside a rare and important circle: the group environment in which David Jones first tested himself as a young musician.

Legacy

Christine Patton’s significance in the Bowie story is modest but real. She was not part of Bowie’s later recording career, theatrical reinventions or international tours, but she belonged to the beginning: the local-band world of rehearsals, youth clubs, school events and early ambitions.

For that reason, her page belongs within the Bowie collaborations and early associates story. The Konrads were part of the road from David Jones to David Bowie, and Christine Patton was one of the vocalists connected with that formative period.

Chronology