'David Bowie was my best mate, I still think about him a lot'

• George Underwood was life-long friends with David Bowie, remaining close after they met as children.

• He went on to make artwork for album covers including several for David Bowie, working on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Hunky Dory and David Bowie's self-titled first album.

• George Underwood is now taking part in Sound & Vision, an exhibition and auction in support of War Child which is inspired by David Bowie lyric "We like dancing and we look divine".

• Sound & Vision is at 180 Studios, London 26-27 September. The global online auction runs via Art on a Postcard until 1 October.

I met David Bowie when we were nine years old, we were both enrolling in the Cubs in 1956 when we first got talking to each other, talking about music and all the things that we both liked and we realised we had a lot in common.

I thought he was someone to get on with and be a friend, when you're that age you have lots of acquaintances, people you know, but sometimes you just gel, and I think we just gelled together. We were young and open to everything that was happening at the time, the 60s was just around the corner and the birth of rock 'n' roll was happening — it all seemed to be quite new.

We remained friends for years, we even made several bands together. We both went to the same secondary school, Bromley Technical High School, after 11 plus, so we were about 11-12 years old and sort of re-cemented our relationship through music. I went to see Buddy Holly and the Cricketers, that was my first live concert, and that made me want to buy a guitar.

David used to come round my house and we used to sing harmonies together, David was very good at harmonies. We'd also practise at school when it was raining and we had a stay indoors, I was a singer with a group called The Comrades and David wanted to join the band so he learned to play the saxophone because he was into all sorts of things at the time, and saxophone was the thing he wanted to do.

So I said to the band 'look, a friend of mine is playing the sax can I bring him round for a rehearsal?' So he came to rehearsal and joined the band. We did a few gigs together, actually.

I had a bit of an argument with the drummer, we just didn't get on so I left the band and David went on to play with them a bit longer, then when he left them we got back together again. We thought 'we're quite good at this, just the two of us,' so we got ourselves a drummer and called ourselves the Hooker Brothers — these bands only lasted for two or three gigs and eventually that turned into when we called ourselves The King-Bees and that's when we made our first record, that was when I was just starting to go to art college and David was working at an advertising agency.

We were enjoying it together, David, he wasn't writing any of his numbers back then but we made a song called Liza Jane, it was something we just knocked together, you know? It was a big flop, but never mind, we did appear on telly at least.

I have so many favourite memories of David, there's one I can pick out, you have to imagine two 15-year-old boys out in Hastings, or it could have been Margate, and we were sitting at a cafe and there was a couple of girls next to us and we started talking in American accents, just fooling around.

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We told them that we were the backing singers for Roy Orbison, who was playing in London at that time, and we were laughing all the way home because these girls were lapping it all up. He was very funny, David. We used to fool around a lot and it was good fun.

Creating David Bowie's iconic album covers

I saw David all the time when he began his solo career, and he just rang me up one day to ask if I could do some artwork for his first album. I did the back cover of what's now known as the Space Oddity album [1969's self-titled album, David Bowie], and it was all the lyrics of the songs they had asked me to illustrate on the back in a montage-type way.

There was a lot more painting involved in that, whereas when it came to Hunky Dory he presented me with a black and white photograph that Brian Ward had taken —He also took the photograph for the Ziggy album as well, lovely photographer— and David wanted them to be changed from black and white to colour, so I got them colourised.

We didn't know at the time how iconic they were going to be, you never do realise at the time when it happens and it's only later on you think 'oh yeah, I did that'.

When he came to me to do the artwork for his first album we just had a chat, and it was very casual. What happened, with both albums actually, is they were needed so quickly, in fact they needed yesterday, so everything was so fast, but we got it done.

I first began making album covers thanks to David. It was David who rang me about a year before I did the artwork for his album and he said 'I've got a friend who wants an album cover done and I think you'd be good for it', it was Marc Bolan and he wanted artwork for T. Rex's album My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair... But Now They're Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows — that was a very long title, but I know that was very well received by everyone so I got a lot of work via that.

Even so, I've got to put David's first album at the top of my list of favourite covers I've made. I think about him a lot, you know, so I have to put that one first because it was the one that I remember being so closely tied with him and working together on that.

He was a part of my life, he was my best mate. He went up into the stars and beyond, didn't he?

Continuing David Bowie's legacy

30 years ago, David and Brian Eno did some of the first images for War Child. David was very supportive of War Child, so I wanted to be a part of their exhibition Sound and Vision. It's a great charity anyway, because of the way the world is at the moment I think children need all the help they can get in these terribly awful times with war-torn countries and all we can do to help the better, that's my philosophy anyway.

When I was invited to be included amongst the other artists I decided to make a painting based on another painting I did, originally called Dancing with Giants, where I had two people dancing and I thought it was quite fitting.

I adapted it for this project because the dancers look like they were quite enjoying themselves and the theme was We like Dancing, and We look Divine, which is taken from the lyrics of Rebel Rebel.

I clothed the dancers in my painting with costumes that were similar to the costumes which were used for one of the early Ziggy concerts at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park in 1972, it was just a little nod to David there. A lot of kids won't be old enough to remember it, but some of the older Bowie fans will know exactly where they come from.

To tell you the truth I decided to be part of this exhibition because I thought it was a great cause and I've been trying to do as much publicity as possible because it would be great if people could put some money down on the auction. It would be great if we could make lots of money for the charity and I'm trying my hardest to promote it. I didn't really think about myself, it's the charity that's important.

George Underwood told his story to Roxy Simons.

Sound & Vision will be held at 180 Studios, London from 26 to 27 September. The global online auction runs via Art on a Postcard until 1 October.