Having completed the David Bowie album, David entered a period which lacked the continuity of previous band relationships. The first of many sporadic line-ups that flickered briefly between 1967 and 1972 was The Riot Squad, an East London band who were on the lookout for a new vocalist when David joined them for a run of about twenty gigs in the spring of 1967. Signed to David's former label Pye, The Riot Squad were adjusting to the sudden death on February 3rd of their biggest champion, the legendary producer Joe Meek, who had produced their most recent (and, as it would turn out, final) Pye single "Gotta Be A First Time", released just a month earlier.

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David encouraged the band to wear extravagant, clownish face-paint and to use psychedelic accessories on stage. "David was always a laugh," saxophonist Bob Evans later told Paul Trynka. "He liked us because we'd do anything." Reviewing one of the gigs fronted by Bowie, The Walthamstow Independent observed that the band "dress up as flowers and their instruments have been converted into flowers", and went on to divulge the startling news that "offers from all over the world have come flooding in, so much so that the group has had to turn down an offer of a tour in Venezuela." Kenneth Pitt records that The Riot Squad appeared at Oxford Street's Tiles club on April 13th with a flashing red police lamp, and that their live act included The Velvet Underground's "Waiting For The Man" and The Fugs' "Dirty Old Man". Bowie later recalled that "I also made them cover Mothers Of Invention songs. Not happily, I seem to remember, especially as my big favourite was "It Can't Happen Here". Frank's stuff was virtually unknown in Britain, and re-listening to that song I can see why he wasn't on any playlists."