Horton secured a series of summer engagements for The Lower Third, including a clutch of Saturday gigs at the Winter Gardens in Ventnor and a residency at the Bournemouth Pavilion, where on August 20th (the same day that "You've Got A Habit Of Leaving" was released) David played his one and only gig in support of The Who. Other acts supported by The Lower Third in the summer of 1965 included The Pretty Things and Johnny Kidd & The Pirates. A series of Saturday afternoon shows at the Marquee followed in the autumn as part of "The Inecto Show", sponsored by Inecto Shampoo and taped for broadcast by pirate Radio London. It seems that The Lower Third's contribution was restricted to warm-up spots that were never actually broadcast.

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"We were too loud on stage," David recollected. "We used feedback and sounds and didn't play any melodies. We just pulverised the sound, which was loosely based on Tamla-Motown. We had an ardent following of about a hundred Mods, but when we played out of London, we were booed right off the stage. We weren't very good." At David's instigation the band started behaving like The Who on stage - Denis Taylor thrashed his guitar and David smashed his microphone against the drumkit, breaking a cymbal on one occasion. "We were known as the second loudest group in London," Taylor said years later. "The Who were the first. A publisher...remarked that we sounded like a Lancaster Bomber flying through the studio." It's odd, then, to note David's apparent preference for well-behaved audiences: "We're not a 'scream' group," he declared in a Parlophone press release in August 1965. "We like our audiences to be quiet while we're performing a number, and then to give us a healthy response when we finish."

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Ralph Horton did not prove to be The Lower Third's greatest asset, lacking both the tactics and the financial skills necessary for successful management. Nevertheless it was Horton who took the band from Shel Talmy to Tony Hatch, a producer whose style was arguably more suited to David's songs. And it was Horton who, under no illusions about his own limited cachet in the industry, opened a significant door in David's career when he elected to contact a more powerful manager.

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On September 15th 1965 Horton telephoned Kenneth Pitt, manager of Manfred Mann and rising star Crispian St Peters - not to mention Bob Dylan during his English tours - to request assistance in furthering the prospects of The Lower Third. Pitt was busy with other clients and declined, but among the advice he offered was that the vocalist might consider changing his name to avoid confusion with the Davy Jones who was making waves as a versatile actor-singer and was about to find global fame with The Monkees. Horton passed on Pitt's advice, and on September 17th, The Lower Third were duly informed by their singer that he was now called David Bowie.

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Denis Taylor thought the name ludicrous, remarking that it would "never catch on". Horton's flatmate Kenny Bell's first reaction was apparently to tell David that the new name was "fucking stupid". David would subsequently say that he chose the name because a Bowie knife is double-edged and "cuts both ways" - in fact a suggestion given to him much later by William Burroughs - and he also remarked that "I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that." Incidentally, David always, but always, pronounced the name to rhyme with "Joey". It doesn't rhyme with "Howie", and nor is the correct pronunciation "Boo-ie" (this being the version favoured by many Americans including, almost certainly, the original Jim Bowie).

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Shortly afterwards David Bowie and The Lower Third secured their deal with Pye Records and made their first recordings with Tony Hatch. On November 2nd they taped an audition at the BBC, whose selection panel noted that they had "quite a different sound" but "a singer devoid of personality". Later the same month Horton negotiated a miserable sponsorship contract with business entrepreneur Raymond Cook, who was assured 10 per cent of Bowie's earnings in exchange for limited financial investment. Kenneth Pitt later reproduced the text of this contract in his memoir The Pitt Report, rightly describing it as "an amazingly inept, do-it-yourself document".

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New Year's Eve 1965 saw the group sharing the bill with Arthur Brown at the Golf Drouot Club in Paris, with further Parisian gigs following on January 1st and 2nd. The release of "Can't Help Thinking About Me" was imminent, but the preferential treatment given to David during the publicity push for the single was instrumental in driving a wedge between him and the rest of the band. Although a couple  more live dates followed, the writing was on the wall for David Bowie and The Lower Third. Matters came to a head at the Bromel Club where, on January 29th, the band refused to play after being told by Horton that no wages were available for them that night. "David cried, but it made no difference," said Graham Rivens, "We all had had enough."

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"We realised that Dave wasn't backing us up," Phil Lancaster later recalled. "Looking back, it was absolutely right that we should split up...David was the bloke with the songwriting ability and the individuality and the performing skills. It was absolute destiny that he was going to go off on his own." The Lower Third took their small place in the history books and Ralph Horton, already seriously in debt to Raymond Cook, was left with a potential solo artist on his hands.