David Bowie​ was an icon in music and pop culture, a chameleon who changed personas
as they occurred to him.
But Bowie was a complex and complicated man, having grown up under the shadow of mental
illness and a tough home life.
Here's the tragic real-life story of David Bowie.
David Bowie's mother, Peggy Jones, was born into a family touched by mental illness, and
she herself may have fallen victim to some degree.
Marc Spitz, one of Bowie's biographers, noted that schizophrenia quote, "seemed to be seared
deeply into the genetic code" of Bowie's family.
The behaviors associated with schizophrenia can seem hidden from outside view, only to
be triggered by calamity.
For Peggy and her siblings, there were two such forces — their mother, Margaret, and
the Nazis' bombing of England during World War II.
According to one account, via The Telegraph,
"[Bowie's] maternal grandmother, Margaret Burns, was a cruel woman who took her anger
out on everyone around her."
Two of Peggy's other sisters had exhibited signs of schizophrenia early in their lives,
but the nightly shelling during the Blitz in 1940 coupled with the idea of Hitler occupying
England exacerbated the girls' problems.
Bowie himself wondered whether he would also fall victim to schizophrenia one day.
"I've always found that I collect.
I'm a collector.
Um...and I've always just seemed to collect personalities"
Some even theorize that he developed so many personas throughout his career as a way of
dealing with some latent schizophrenic tendencies.
David Bowie's half-brother Terry was born out of wedlock and due to the stigma associated
with such births at the time was handed off to his grandmother, Margaret, who was emotionally
and physically abusive to him.
According to the Telegraph, his mental illness had its genesis there, and grew over time,
even when, at 9 years old, he was sent back to live with his mother, her new husband,
and his baby half-brother, David.
From that point, David looked up to Terry, and there was genuine affection between the
two.
Terry struggled with his mental illness but eventually was able to join the Royal Air
Force.
When he returned from the service, Terry spent his time with David.
One night they went to see Cream at a club in London, but the volume of the music proved
to be too much for Terry.
David took him outside, and Terry had a schizophrenic vision — he saw the ground opening up and
fire coming out of it, and told David he experienced these visions often.
After David's father died two years later, Terry spent time in and out of mental hospitals
for years until he finally succumbed to his illness, tragically taking his own life in
1986.
Several of Bowie's songs, from "All You Pretty Things" to "Jump, They Say," are said to contain
recollections of Terry of his visions and of him as David's big brother.
In his adolescence, David Bowie's best friend was George Underwood.
They hung out together, played music together, and, in one famous incident, even fancied
the same girl.
According to Bowie biographer Marc Spitz, Bowie had once sabotaged a date between Underwood
and their shared crush, which angered Underwood to the point of violence.
"Just walked over to him basically, and turned him round and just went whack, you know, without
even thinking"
After it was determined that Bowie had sustained a serious injury, he was sent to the hospital.
According to one account, doctors noted the muscles in his eye were damaged.
He could still see, and wouldn't lose his eye, but for the remainder of his life his
left pupil would be permanently dilated.
Underwood felt guilty for quite a while afterward, but the injury left Bowie with what he termed
"a kind of mystique," perhaps best seen on his album cover for "Heroes" and the close-ups
in "Valentine's Day."
When Bowie died in 2016, many LGBTQ fans and performers paid their respects, often noting
his influence in their lives and in queer culture, particularly in the '70s.
Then, immersed in his Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke personas, Bowie played with androgyny
as few performers of his stature had previously.
"When Bowie sort of did the Ziggy thing"
"I inherited Bowie"
He was often asked how he defined his romantic life, to which he gave coy responses.
He came out as gay in 1972, as bi in 1976, and finally as, quote, "a closet hetero…"
in 1993.
No label, however, could truly define him.
While his fans applauded his gender fluidity, not everyone was on board.
British law, in particular, had long viewed gay culture as an affront.
In the 1800s, it was even punishable by death.
Though laws were relaxed somewhat in the '60s, the lifestyle wasn't officially decriminalized
until 2000, meaning when he came out in '72, Bowie was admitting to engaging in illegal
acts.
Bowie might have been born at the right time to be free to express himself and he may also
have been responsible for moving acceptance of it forward.
Bowie biographer Peter Doggett once mused,
"Snow was the fuel of the music industry in the '70s."
If that's the case, Bowie was well fueled for much of the decade, to almost crippling
effect.
Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar told the New York Post that Bowie used the stuff to stay
up late into the night, sometimes all night, sometimes for days in a row.
He claimed,
"Its function was to keep you alert, and that's what [Bowie] was doing.
It did not stop his creativity at all."
"By the mid-70s I was so out of my gourd… really, it was impossible for me to function"
It did occasionally affect his performance onstage.
While careful not to appear high in front of audiences, Bowie would sometimes forget
lyrics, according to Alomar.
In these instances, Alomar would abandon singing his own parts and sing Bowie's, in order to
get Bowie back on track in the song.
But what cocaine did do, however, was sink Bowie into mental states akin to the schizophrenia
that the other members of his family had suffered.
Doggett wrote,
"He spent a decade trying to avoid what his grandmother called the family curse, and then
several more years creating his own form of psychosis with stuff things."
So bad were his addiction and the related mental issues while making the film The Man
Who Fell to E`arth in 1975, that Bowie claimed to see what he called, quote, "demons of the
future on the battleground of one's emotional plane."
Soon after, he moved to Germany to clean up.
"I do take a degree of theatrically when I go on stage all the time."
In the mid-'70s, certain aspects of David Bowie's Thin White Duke persona gave fans
pause, mostly for what Bowie himself described as the "very Aryan, fascist-type" qualities
of the character.
In 1976, he told Playboy,
"I believe very strongly in fascism.
The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that's hanging foul in the air at the moment
is to speed up the progress of a right-wing, totally dictatorial tyranny and get it over
as fast as possible."
He also likened Hitler to rock stars, particularly Mick Jagger, in the way he "worked" his audiences.
And then there was the moment he was photographed waving to fans at Victoria Station in London
in a manner that resembled a Nazi salute, per Politico.
Bowie eventually recanted his stance on fascism and Hitler.
His copious consumption of drugs left him, in his own words,
"[…] at the end of my tether physically and emotionally and [with] serious doubts
about my sanity."
In truth, he was exhibiting the symptoms of cocaine psychosis.
To escape the cloud that had descended upon him, he did what any great artist would do
he applied himself to his craft, creating three of his finest, most acclaimed records:
Low, "Heroes", and Lodger.
On June 23rd 2004, Bowie shortened a concert in Prague due to what he thought was a pinched
nerve.
It wasn't.
Two nights later at the Hurricane Festival in Germany, Bowie had completed a final encore
of "Ziggy Stardust" and collapsed before he could get backstage.
He was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with a blocked artery requiring an immediate
angioplasty.
He remained in Germany until he was well enough to fly, and within two weeks was back at his
home in New York.
No one knew that the June 25th show would be his last full concert.
He appeared infrequently over the next two years singing with Arcade Fire at the Fashion
Rocks benefit in 2005; performing with David Gilmour in 2006; and duetting with Alicia
Keys at the Keep A Child Alive benefit in New York later in 2006.
Bowie popped up here and there at benefits or fashion shows, but never again as a full-on
performer.
He disappeared from the spotlight almost completely, until reemerging in 2013 with his album The
Next Day, though he would not play onstage or give a single interview to support the
record.
According to Rolling Stone, Bowie arrived to the first session for his final album,
2016's Blackstar, with no eyebrows or hair on his head.
He had been diagnosed with liver cancer and was receiving chemotherapy.
He told very few people about it, preferring to keep to himself as he worked toward both
beating the disease and creating a musical statement that would outlive him.
Blackstar's themes of death and the afterlife seem chilling in retrospect.
He sang on the track "Lazarus,"
"Look up / I'm in heaven / I've got scars that can't be seen."
Bowie didn't want word of his condition or of the forthcoming record's existence released
to the press, so he had the musicians he worked with sign nondisclosure agreements.
Guitarist Earl Slick who had played with Bowie since '74 said such a step was unnecessary
due to the musicians' admiration of Bowie as an artist and a person.
Slick told a British talk show,
"I didn't have to sign it.
I signed it because I was asked to.
All anybody had to do was to ask to be quiet and out of respect, we would have been."
On January 10th, 2016, two days after his 69th birthday and the release of Blackstar,
David Bowie died.
"The world was stunned and shaken by the news that David Bowie had suddenly passed away."
The news shocked everyone, as the cancer diagnosis had been kept so quiet.
In the weeks leading up to his passing, he recorded demos for five new songs, amazing
his producer Tony Visconti.
According to Rolling Stone, just a week before he died, Bowie told Visconti he wanted to
make one more album.
It never came to be.
Visconti wrote,
"He always did what he wanted to do.
And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way.
His death was no different from his life — a work of art."
With the news of Bowie's death, fans were left to ponder what he'd left behind.
He had channeled the tragedies of his mother's family's mental illness and that of his brother
into the personas that enabled him to express his unique vision and the sounds that accompanied
it.
He had transcended the accepted attitudes on gender identity to influence generations.
He overcame a crippling drug addiction to find peace in his life and the creation of
his art.
Even though he should have had many more years to live and create, his final work succinctly
closed the book on his life — as rich and unforgettable a life as one could hope to
live.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).