The Glasgow bootmaker who ordered Freddie Mercury to fit David Bowie with a pair of platforms – Glasgow Live

If not for Alan Mair, one of the best-known rock and pop collaborations of the 20th century might never have happened.

In the 1970s, Alan, a musician and former bootmaker who grew up in Glasgow and tasted UK-wide success with seminal '60s beat group The Beatstalkers, hired the then unknown Queen frontman Freddie Mercury to run his fashion boutique in London's Kensington High Street.

As if that wasn't sensational enough, Alan happened to know David Bowie and once asked Freddie to fit the Life On Mars and Space Oddity legend with a pair of platform boots.

It was a first meeting between the two iconic rock stars, who would one day collaborate together on the epic international hit 'Under Pressure'.

Alan, whose successful fashion outlet attracted everyone from Deep Purple and The Who to Santana and Yes, says he started making clothes around 1969 after the Beatstalkers split up. By the early 1970s, he was earning a fortune as the owner of one of the best-known boutiques in London.

At the birth of the glam movement in Britain, anybody who was anybody had to own a pair of Alan Mair platform boots.

He told Glasgow Live: "It was a very natural progression for me and just as exciting as being in the Beatstalkers. I was the first person to do handmade platform boots in Kensington Market, and that's why it was so successful.

"I supplied a huge percentage of the rock bands that were playing in the Britain, and from abroad as well. Any time I went down to the shop unit you would see Deep Purple, or Keith Moon, or the guys from the Tremeloes there.

"One of the best adverts was the Santana double-gate sleeve. The whole band are sat on this couch and wearing my boots. Early shots of Queen were the same.

"I had 10,000 'Boots by Alan Mair' bags printed. It wasn't long till I'd sold out of them - so that's how I knew sales were going really well."

In 1970, with business booming and further outlets opening across London, Alan was finding he had less and less time to oversee the day-to-day running of his main boutique at Kensington Market. Help would arrive from the most unlikely of sources.

Queen frontman Freddie Mercury ran another clothes shop nearby with his drummer mate Roger Taylor. However, their outlet, a second hand clothes emporium, wasn't nearly as busy as Alan Mair's.

Alan, who is now in his 70s and still living in London, recalls: "Freddie found out I was a musician and we got talking. I told him how the factory was getting too busy, and asked how he might feel about looking after my shop in the mornings.

"He said yes, and within a few weeks he decided to close his shop down and suggested becoming my full-time shop manager - it was perfect.

"I knew I could trust Freddie. It was really important to get someone trustworthy, and there was a really nice way about him - he was a really pleasant guy. Songwriters were quite often very boastful, Freddie was never like that. He would say things like, 'I've got this little band called Queen'."

With Queen only recently having formed, Alan Mair's shop would be Freddie's main source of income throughout the early 1970s.

One man who wasn't in need of a second job at this time was David Bowie. After years of struggling to become known, David was capturing the zeitgeist of the glam era with his alter ego outfit Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

Alan had gotten to know David years earlier from recording cover versions of Bowie originals when he was still with the Beatstalkers. The pair were good friends and Bowie even penned a track in tribute to Alan's son, Frank.

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Fast forward to 1973, when he was at the peak of his powers in the UK, David Bowie paid Alan a visit at his boutique. The Starman singer would leave that day with a new pair of platform boots fitted by none other than Freddie Mercury.

"I asked David if he'd come in for a pair of boots, and he replied, 'No, I've just come in to see you," explains Alan.

"I told him how he was doing really well these days and he said he didn't have any money. 'But you're a big rock star,' I said, to which he replied, 'Oh, you know what the industry's like, Alan'.

"That's when I said, 'Freddie will fit you up with a pair of boots - you can have them for free'.

"I could tell Freddie recognised David - this was around '73 - but Bowie didn't know who Freddie was. David didn't acknowledge him as a fellow musician, more just a shop assistant fitting him with a pair of boots."

Within a period of just 18 months, Freddie's 'little' band Queen were riding high in the UK charts with international success to follow. Never again would Freddie Mercury be fitting platform boots for a living.

Queen would go on to play a pivotal role in engineering David Bowie's early '80s comeback, with the band and singer collaborating on the worldwide smash Under Pressure in 1981.

Alan added: "When I first met David and first met Freddie, nobody back then could've imagined what they'd become. I remember first hearing Bohemian Rhapsody, I just thought, 'my God, this is the band? This is Queen!?'. That song's so iconic, it deserves all the credit it gets.

"That's when I think of the modest Freddie, saying, 'I've got this little band called Queen'."

Alan Mair is still active in music and is currently working on a new single due to come out in coming months.

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The Glasgow bootmaker who ordered Freddie Mercury to fit David Bowie with a pair of platforms - Glasgow Live