The man who broken David Bowie’s eye throughout a teenage disagreement mentioned he nonetheless worries concerning the second to at the present time.

George Underwood met David Jones – later Bowie – when the pair have been 9 years previous. Long after settling their dispute over a possible girlfriend, they traveled the world collectively, and Bowie made frequent use of Underwood’s creative skills, as he designed the covers of Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust.

Marking the launch of an exhibition in London, Underwood informed the BBC that the argument had been over a lady named Carol.

READ MORE: Why David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ Was Rush-Released

“We were always together – we were very good friends and we used to go up and down Bromley High Street all dressed to the nines, thinking we were God’s gift, trying to chat up all the girls,” he recalled.

Both boys had tried to draw Carol at a fifteenth celebration, and she or he’d agreed to satisfy Underwood later on the native youth membership – however then Bowie informed him she’d modified her thoughts and was going to satisfy him as an alternative.

“I decided to go down the youth club anyway a little bit later on, because I’d never been there before,” Underwood continued, “and her mate came out shouting: ‘Where have you been? Carol’s been waiting for you for over an hour!’ I thought, ‘Uh-oh. David’s told me a porky-pie [lie] here.’”

A friend urged Underwood to “stick one on” Bowie, and that’s what he did.

Why David Bowie Didn’t Mind Living With His Damaged Eye

The rock star later explained: “It wasn’t a very hard punch but obviously caught me at a rather odd angle,” admitting that he’d been “boasting to my mate about what a Casanova I was.”

The result was that Bowie’s left iris became paralyzed, giving the impression that the eye was a different color than his right, and magnifying the red-eye effect of flash photography.

“It was just horrible,” Underwood mentioned. “I did not prefer it on the time. But in fact in a while, lo and behold, he says I did him a favor as a result of it’s given him this enigmatic, otherworldly look.”

Teenage spat aside, Underwood remembered his friend fondly. “I miss him deeply because he went too soon, as we know, and he was just great to be with, always fun to be with. We laughed a lot,” he mentioned. “I often wondered whether every time he looked in the mirror he thought of me.”

Underwood went on to design album covers for artists such as T. Rex, Procol Harum and Mott the Hoople as well as Bowie, yet he confessed the eye incident still haunts him: “I’m just a bit worried that I might have it carved on my tombstone.”