It’s secure to say that David Bowie led a storied life. His adventures learn one thing extra akin to a piece of fiction than that of 1 man’s experiences, positioning the human behind the music as a counterpart of the numerous kaleidoscopic characters he established in his music. Whether or not it’s Main Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, or The Skinny White Duke, every of probably the most well-known personas he created accounted for the numerous completely different sides of David Jones, a playful south London native who had a vivid creativeness not like every other.
Duly, this multi-faceted nature gave Bowie the power to take pleasure in a profession that had many twists and turns, and one which at all times saved us guessing, leaving us with the 2016 masterpiece Blackstar, his departing present earlier than he left this realm for the ether. Chameleonic in each sense of the phrase, his inventive imaginative and prescient understood that fluidity was the important thing to inventive endurance, serving to to pave the best way for a lot of of our different favorite artists, starting from Björk to Chris Cornell.
Followers of his will know that while Bowie had an ever-expanding inventive palette, medicine typically helped him alongside the best way. The hazy, weed-influenced features of his earlier materials and the cocaine-fuelled insanity of Aladdin Sane and Diamond Canine are just a few highlights, that affirm that Bowie with out medicine would have been a very completely different beast. Experimentation got here as second nature to him, and naturally, as a younger man, this led him to begin his journey into the world of narcotics.
Bowie first began utilizing medicine when he was a youngster within the early ’60s. A member of the mod scene, he had tried amphetamines and cocaine lengthy earlier than he tried marijuana, which defies custom – however this was David Bowie, skewing established traditions was his forte.
Talking to Playboy in 1976, Bowie recounted how his relationship with medicine commenced. “I’d achieved a variety of tablets ever since I used to be a child,” he stated. “13 or fourteen. However the first time I acquired stoned on grass was with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin many, a few years in the past, when he was nonetheless a bass participant on Herman’s Hermits data. We’d been speaking to Ramblin’ Jack Elliot someplace and Jonesy stated to me, ‘Come over and I’ll flip you on to grass.’ I considered it and stated, ‘Positive, I’ll give it a whirl.’”
While this expertise with the long run Led Zeppelin bassist would kick off a protracted and fruitful relationship with candy Mary Jane, there was one drug that by no means actually did it for him, though it was one of the fashionable on the market; LSD.
In the identical Playboy interview, Bowie defined that he took LSD solely a handful of occasions within the ’60s and that he wasn’t blown away by it like different individuals, as he was snug within the data that his creativeness was already vibrant sufficient.
He expressed: “I did [it] thrice. It was very colourful, however I believed my very own creativeness was already richer. Naturally. And extra significant to me. Acid solely offers individuals a hyperlink with their very own imagery. I already had it. It was nothing new to me. It simply kind of made a variety of fancy colours. Flashy lights and issues. ‘Oh, look. I see God within the window.’ So what? I by no means wanted acid to make music, both.”
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