Addicted to excess: From reverence for the Nazis to an insatiable appetite for drugs and sex, a new biography of David Bowie portrays a man even more outrageous than his reputation
By
Glenys Roberts
Last updated at 12:26 PM on 22nd March 2011
Pan-sexuality is the latest buzzword in California, where all trends are said to originate. It means anything goes. Skinny chicks as lithe as young boys hang out with men dressed up like pantomime dames.
Goodness knows what they get up to behind closed doors — but people are titillated by it, and that’s the whole point.
Yet there was one person who invented this provocative sexual ambiguity long before the rest of the world caught up. He was British, he became a superstar because of it and his name is David Bowie.
Glam rocker: David Bowie in his Aladdin Sane guise in 1973
Sexual adventures are at the heart of a fascinating new biography of the gender-bending Bowie, which lays bare his prodigious appetite for coupling of all sorts, as well as the gargantuan quantities of drugs he consumed during the Seventies.
Today, of course, at 64 he lives quietly in politically correct mixed matrimony with the Somalian supermodel Iman in New York. But it was not always like this.
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Other musicians, including his friends Marc Bolan, Bryan Ferry and even Mick Jagger, all toyed with a provocative bisexual image — but Bowie, born plain David Jones in Brixton, South London, ruthlessly made his reputation with his ethereal, androgenous looks.
So who was the real Starman, as Paul Trynka, author of the new book, dubs him?
Was he gay, straight, innovative genius or just a student of rock who recognised a good tune and a good act when he saw others performing, and plundered their ideas to make his fortune?
Was he gay, straight, innovative genius or just a student of rock who recognised a good tune and a good act when he saw others performing, and plundered their ideas to make his fortune?
Either way, his is a story of ferocious ambition. The angelic look, the faraway gaze — the result of an early playground injury that left one pupil permanently dilated — always belied the way he would use anything in his armoury of charm to seduce any man or woman.
As Trynka reveals, it was a case of ‘I will do anything, play anything, say anything, wear anything to become a star’. Friends from the rock star’s youth tell a disturbing story of how he pulled his van over one night to pick up an unwashed female vagrant from the roadside, and would gladly have had his way with her if the other members of his first band, the Mannish Boys, had not made her get out.
No woman was safe, and many did not want to be, when rumours started to spread among groupies about the size of Bowie’s manhood. Yet for a long time, if anyone asked him about his sexuality he always said he preferred boys.
Starman: Bowie in concert at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, during the last performance he made in the guise of his character Ziggy Stardust in the early Seventies
At least one young man — talented dancer Lindsay Kemp — fell deeply in love with him. Kemp cast Bowie in one of his exotic shows, but was driven mad with jealousy one night by the sounds of David making love to the show’s female stage designer in the next bedroom.
Kemp was distraught as Bowie proceeded to move in with another woman from the show.
The new books reveals that many people, including Bowie’s first wife, Angie, have speculated that Bowie was always in control of his urges, while others felt they were simply picked up like toys and discarded just as quickly.
In Los Angeles in the Seventies, he discovered the streets were paved with boys and girls offering sex and drugs to rock stars
Bowie met Angie in 1969 just before he had his first commercial success with Space Oddity — they were both going out with the same man, record producer Calvin Lee. Within a few months, they had moved into a grand Gothic flat in Beckenham, South London. From the start they entertained lovers of both sexes.
As one American visitor recalled: ‘There was so much sex going on . . . I used to wake up under a pile of bodies. I thought, having been on the road in America, I knew what the rock ’n’ roll life was. I didn’t have a clue until I went to England.’
David’s relationship with American-born Angie was never exclusive, but she did make a unique contribution to his career by masterminding the image that guaranteed his success.
Breaking new ground: Bowie on stage in the early Seventies
He left behind the Mod look he had tried in the Sixties, and she dolled him up in glitter and frills and dubbed him Rainbowman. Glamrock was born.
Within a year, the two had married, but it was always a union of convenience — according to many friends who were shocked to see Bowie dancing with a man on their wedding night.
Soon, Angie was pregnant with their son, Zowie — a name derived from the Greek word for life — while David was off to the U.S., strutting his stuff in a dress made by outrageous Sixties designer Mr Fish.
There, he carefully studied the three most degenerate American icons of the time — pop artist Andy Warhol, singer Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, the punk rock star. He was desperate to find the secret of their success.
But the new biography shows, too, that on the road in the States, Bowie gave full rein to his indulgences. Though he had started smoking cannabis in Beckenham with a neighbour who had done time for possession, he had never been too interested in drugs or, indeed, alcohol.
Unconventional: Bowie's marriage to his first wife, Angie, was anything but conventional
But in Los Angeles in the Seventies, he discovered the streets were paved with boys and girls offering sex and drugs to rock stars. First, Quaaludes — a popular sleeping pill — were the drug du jour; then cocaine, which in those days was considered to be an aid to the creative process and highly fashionable rather than the danger it is now known to be.
Until now, few outside the rock world knew exactly what went on behind the scenes in California in those heady days, but the new book reveals the extent of the depravity to which many stars succumbed.
Bowie’s favourite companion was a louche concentration camp survivor named Freddy Sessler, drug supplier to Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards, whose pockets were always full of vials of pure Merck — medicinal cocaine — the drug that Sigmund Freud called a ‘magical substance’.
Creature of habit: According to the new book, Bowie was back on drugs in the early Eighties after a period of clean living
Another of his friends was his old role model Iggy Pop, who had spent time in the local psychiatric ward. Bowie wooed him into his entourage by arriving on his doorstep with a mound of cocaine and another druggy friend, Easy Rider star Dennis Hopper.
Outwardly, Bowie was at the top of his game, romanced by the ageing Elizabeth Taylor, sleeping with Amanda Lear — Salvador Dali’s sex-change muse — and packing the audiences into his Hollywood concerts. But behind the scenes all was not well.
John Lennon and Elton John, both in Hollywood at the time, were horrified by the extent of Bowie’s cocaine habit. According to Lennon’s then girlfriend May Pang, no one had ever ‘seen such mounds of the stuff’ as Bowie consumed.
Soon, he was having such terrible cravings he could not go on stage without snorting the drug.
Bowie, living on a bizarre diet of peppers, cocaine and milk, was painfully thin and in the grip of the irrational fears prompted by the drug. He regularly suffered from the well-known chills that come over cocaine users and, when not on stage, walked round in the highest temperatures wearing an overcoat, his nose constantly dripping.
He also became obsessed by the occult and the fear that one of his mistresses would give birth to the Devil’s child.
None of this deterred cult British movie director Nic Roeg from casting him as the spaceman in The Man Who Fell To Earth.
And surprisingly, despite years of excess, Bowie’s androgynous features and thick hair never looked better than in this film. He even managed to give up the worst of his crippling drug habit.
Still in fashion: The ability to re-invent himself has given Bowie's career a longevity few can rival
As Trynka reveals, by Christmas 1976, Bowie had miraculously re-invented himself once more. He went to Jamaica for the sun, put on weight, got a tan and a personal trainer and was telling a friend: ‘I’ve got over all my cocaine stuff now. I took that image off. I put it in a wardrobe in an LA hotel room and locked the door.’
Soon, he was on the road again, taking with him his friend Iggy Pop and adopting a new alter ego, The Thin White Duke. This, from the song of the same title, was a clear reference to the physical changes resulting from his mammoth cocaine habit.
But it was also an apt description for the decadent, emotionless character the rock star was becoming, smartly dressed in aristocratic Thirties style with slicked-back hair and by now obsessed with Nazi paraphernalia.
Bowie, now obsessed with the Berlin cabaret scene, had yet another lover, a 6ft nightclub artiste who had been born a man but had had a sex-change
His fascination with Hitler’s Third Reich started after a concert in LA, when one of the town’s most famous British expats, the writer Christopher Isherwood, went backstage with the gay artist David Hockney. Isherwood had spent time in Berlin in the Thirties, writing the novella Goodbye To Berlin, which inspired the hit musical Cabaret. The chameleon in Bowie was enthralled by this piece of history.
By the time his tour reached Stockholm, he was musing publicly that Britain could benefit from a fascist leader, and when he reached London he was pictured, to his shame, at Victoria station giving what looked very much like a Nazi salute.
Soon, he had rented a flat in Berlin for himself, Iggy Pop and his on-off lover Coco Schwab, near Isherwood’s old home in the city.
Angie Bowie, to whom he was still married, was left behind in the Swiss chateau (once the home of star-crossed lovers Frederic Chopin and George Sand) which she had bought in the vain hope of reviving their unorthodox relationship
But as his biographer reveals, Bowie, now obsessed with the Berlin cabaret scene, had yet another lover, a 6ft nightclub artiste who had been born a man but had had a sex-change.
Conventional couple: Bowie with his second wife, Imam
And he was still comforting himself with beer, women and French cigarettes, plus his unashamed fascination for the Fuhrer, whom he habitually called ‘the first Pop star’ because of the theatrical political rallies Hitler staged.
Though he and Iggy now took long walks in the countryside, in keeping with the Nazi pursuit of rude health, they had not given up cocaine. They used it to keep them awake till the early hours so they could visit three or four of the city’s famous cabaret clubs, including an old speakeasy which had been popular with the SS during the war.
Bowie described his time in Berlin as one of the happiest in his life. He celebrated his 30th birthday in the city and also produced three albums in his new so-called Krautrock style. He and Iggy were so close they were suspected of being lovers during this period, though they also had girlfriends — one of Bowie’s was Mick Jagger’s then wife Bianca.
And the distractions of Berlin proved a respite from the troublesome happenings elsewhere. In quick succession, Bowie’s friend Marc Bolan died in a car crash in 1977, his long-suffering wife, Angie, tried to kill herself, and his half-brother — who had spent most of his adult life in a British mental hospital — threw himself under a train.
Survivor: Now virtually retired, Bowie must reflect that he is lucky to be alive
The new book claims that whenever he left Berlin, his life seemed to spiral out of control. His good friend Lou Reed was downing nearly a pint of whisky a day and, fuelled by drink, the two famously came to blows in a London restaurant.
Then, when Bowie went to New York, around the time of John Lennon’s death in 1980, the drug use began again. The same year, having divorced Angie, he was smoking 80 cigarettes a day, drinking endless cups of coffee and running through a prodigious number of girls without anyone to apply the brakes.
Those present at one memorable sexual rampage back in London during the Eighties remember how a glint appeared in his eye, a hint he had had one drink too many before he vanished into the bedroom with one of the girls. ‘He’d leave the room with her and come back 15 or 20 minutes later — and hit on another girl. And then it would happen again. And this went on several times.’
By the end of the decade, 43-year-old Bowie was running out of steam, his place in the charts taken by Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna. He was also fighting a lawsuit from a woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her in a Dallas hotel room.
Though a grand jury refused to indict him, he was chastened, tired of performing and looking for a new start.
It came on September 29, 1990, when his hairdresser arranged a blind date with 35-year-old Iman, a stunning Somalian model working for French couturier Yves St Laurent. In fact, Bowie had met her three or four times before after concerts, but from that point they would become inseparable.
Within a year, he had proposed to her on stage in Paris, and they were married in Switzerland in April 1992 before going to live in New York.
Though at first he did not stop touring, within a couple of years Bowie had given up drugs and most drinks.
Today, he has more or less retired, following a heart attack and surgery in 1994, preferring to spend time with his ten-year-old daughter by Iman and his 39-year-old film-maker son (who now goes by the name of Duncan Jones).
And reflecting, no doubt, that he has been lucky to survive so long. Those who live fast too often die young, but though Bowie has lost his elfin looks and is uncharacteristically overweight, against all the odds, he is still with us.
Addicted to Excess
