Jean Genie – The best of David Bowie

Jean Genie was created by John Mainwaring and John Ford in 1993. An original recording artist in his own right, John Mainwaring has been signed by numerous record companies throughout his career – twice with Warner Bros. In the 1980s David Bowie’s world famous producer Tony Visconti produced some of John’s songs when he was signed to WEA.

John has worked with many household names such as with Jarvis Cocker on his ‘Bad Cover Version’ single, singing and starring in the video. More recently John co-wrote and recorded all the music for Beverley Callard’s work-out fitness DVD entitled ‘Lasting Results’; she is better known as Liz McDonald in Coronation Street. As well as performing as David Bowie in Jean Genie, John is currently signed to Bucks Music Publishers. His latest achievements have been writing three songs for Tony Christie’s million selling album ‘The Definitive Collection’, plus numerous theme tunes for BBC radio.

In the late 1990s John was approached by David Bowie’s most famous band of the 1970s, ‘The Spiders from Mars’ and was asked by them if he’d front the band and tour with them. Obviously John’s answer was ‘Yes’ and John remains to this day to be one of only a few tribute artists to tour and perform with an original artist’s band. John also played harmonica and sang backing vocals with Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott on the Spiders From Mars Cybernauts album.

John owes a lot of his experience of working in theatres and opera houses to Mike Southon, aka Mike Fab Gere. They both met on the Big Breakfast TV show in the early 90s and later teamed up together when Mike asked if John would like to tour in Mike’s very own rock musical Freak Out. More recently John and Mike found themselves performing again on stage in Moscow in Russia.

John has undertaken many press/radio and TV interviews, touring extensively around the world, playing the character of Ziggy Stardust for five years. These days John prides himself on the quality of his singing voice, mannerisms and overall style of David Bowie, many of John’s latest performances have been with Trevor Chance’s famous show of ‘Legends’ in Blackpool.