AS the lights went down at the University of Sussex on February 11, 1969 the small audience had no idea what they were about to encounter.

Five months before David Bowie released Space Oddity, the Starman may as well have landed from another planet when he opened his set with those now iconic opening bars on the university campus at Falmer.

Bowie had not yet adopted his famous dress sense. Dressed casually with long hair, he opened the show with a stripped back version of what has more than 40 years later become one of rock music's most recognisable melodies.

Terence Sythes was one of the lucky few to see that early performance.

He said: "Bowie was very ordinarily dressed and performed Space Oddity very simply, no big band accompaniment. It did strike me as an unusual pop tune at the time, the subject matter quite revolutionary.

"He shared the bill with Blodwyn Pig. Great gig, wonderful audience, massive volume from the start.

"I remember the enormous volume generated by the speakers, even the MC was deafening."

Very few recordings exist of this early show which changed the face of music. Only a handful of copies are still in existence.

Months later Space Oddity was released as a single in the same week that Apollo 11 launched and Bowie secured his first top 5 hit.

But Bowie's performance at the university helped seal his place in history.

Engineering student Alan Melina was at the university at the time.

Mr Melina had already built up an interest in music - becoming social secretary of the students' union and organising acts including The Who, Muddy Waters, The Kinks and Mike Oldfield to perform on campus.

When he graduated Mr Melina set up a production company and signed up David Bowie.

He said: "I was his agent in the UK all through his Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust album cycles. A lucky break for a young, not so experienced small business owner."

Uckfield artist George Underwood went to school with the young David Jones - before he changed his name in 1965 to avoid confusion with the Monkees' Davy Jones.

Mr Underwood said the pair fell out over a girl and had a fight and a punch to the rising musician's eye left him with a permanently dilated pupil - famously looking like he had different coloured eyes.

The pair reconciled and Mr Underwood went on to create the cover artwork for some of Bowie's most famous albums - including Space Oddity.

Speaking in 2012 Mr Underwood said: "He said to me later 'you did me a favour actually'. So I don't feel so bad about it."

Devastated Mr Underwood said yesterday he was too upset to speak about his lifelong friend.

Ivor Novello winning songwriter Tony Macaulay, of Brighton, met the young David in the offices of independent record label Dick James music when they were both unknowns in 1964.

Mr Macaulay said: "He was the lead singer with Davie Jones(COR) and the King Bees and we started talking about trying to make it. He was having no success. He told me to come to Eel Pie Island to watch the band.

"I went down to see him and the band got booed off the stage.

"I didn't see him again until 1971 when I won the British Songwriter of the year awards. David was there picking up an award for Space Oddity and I said to him 'I guess we both made it then?' and he said 'If awards paid the bills I would agree with you'."

A 23-year-old John Avey met David whilst working at the Florida rooms in Brighton in 1965.

He said: "It was the days of The Who, Moody Blues, Jimmy Hendrix, The Move, Long John Baldry, Lionel Ritchie and the Commodores and many more.

"All the big names came there before they made the big time.

"David was with the Lower Third Group, and he said after his gig 'what do you think?' and I told him he would be very big one day, his music was so advanced then, he just laughed, but it came true."

Bowie's name first appeared on the bill of a Tyrannosaurus Rex concert at Brighton Dome in the late 1960s.

Co-chair of the Brighton Green Party David Jones went to see his namesake and has followed his career ever since.

He said: "He was a support act for Tyrannosaurus Rex, who went on to become T-Rex.

"I had heard of David Bowie because I listened to John Peel but I think I went to the concert for Tyrannosaurus Rex.

"I saw him again after that and I always followed his career because we shared the same name.

""Even then he was performing a mime act but you could tell there was something about him."

By the time Bowie returned to Brighton Dome with Ziggy Stardust on Valentine's Day in 1972 and Worthing Assembly Hall that May he was already changing the face of music.

Nick Barnett, who was at the Worthing gig, said: "Musically and sociologically David was seen as the leader of a glam rock trend.

"Many people in the audience including men wore makeup and androgynous clothing and not a small number had availed themselves of the then fashionable recreational drugs known as downers. In fact, at least one audience member was stretchered out after over indulgence.

"David and the Spiders played everything you would have expected them to play including a memorable cover of the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat as an encore."

A year later - shortly before killing off his Ziggy person Bowie played the Brighton Dome again.

Melita Dennett, who was just ten years old at the time, and still has a ticket, said: "It was tremendously exciting.

"It was over all too quickly, but this was it: I knew there was another life, another world because I'd seen it, here in Brighton Dome. It wasn't just about Bowie, it was the realisation that you could step outside of stifling conformity, normality and find that other world for yourself. It was just Bowie who lit the way for me and innumerable others."