David Bowie was so high that he couldn’t remember recording ‘Station to Station’
David Bowie’s Station to Station is an undoubted masterpiece—but one he barely remembered making. Consumed by cocaine at the time, Bowie was deep in addiction, yet somehow, he turned chaos into art. The six-track album, both sprawling and razor-sharp, was an instant triumph and remains one of his most defining works.
Released in 1976, Station to Station arrived at what was arguably the peak of Bowie’s career, as he fully embodied The Thin White Duke—a persona that remains a fan favourite. But while his artistic success soared, his personal life was in freefall.
As was well known to the watching world, Bowie had developed a chronic cocaine addiction as a coping mechanism to deal with the clear decline of his marriage, a long-running lawsuit to end his management contract with MainMan, and his growing hatred of the music industry. It was a combination that threatened to swallow him whole.
Station to Station was made in Los Angeles, a city that totally drained Bowie. He hated living there, and this period was among the darkest of his life. Years later, he distanced himself from it entirely, saying it felt like something that had happened to someone else.
“First, there’s the content, which nobody’s actually been terribly clear about,” Bowie once said of the record. “The ‘Station to Station’ track itself is very much concerned with the stations of the cross. All the references within the piece are to do with the Kabbalah. It’s the nearest album to a magick treatise that I’ve written. I’ve never read a review that really sussed it. It’s an extremely dark album. Miserable time to live through, I must say,” Bowie added.
The album carries an air of mystery, adding to its allure. Its songs invite endless interpretation, securing Station to Station a place among Bowie’s finest works. Even Bowie himself wasn’t entirely sure of its meaning—though that might have had something to do with the staggering amounts of Colombian marching powder he was consuming at the time.
“I would say a lot of the time I spent in America in the ’70s is really hard to remember in a way that I’ve not seen happen to too many other artists,” Bowie disclosed to Q back in 1997. “I was flying out there – really in a bad way. So I listen to Station To Station as a piece of work by an entirely different person”.
Bowie reflected on this dark period and the damage it was doing to his body as well as his appearance to Dylan Jones for his book David Bowie: A Life, commented: “I’ve never really thought about whether or not a person can be too thin. Well, I certainly was at one point, back in the 70s, when I just ate peppers and drank milk. I have various photographs of me looking skeletal, which remind me how badly behaved I was back in the 70s”.
Bowie continued: “They’re Polaroids as well, which makes it even worse because they’re badly lit. I occasionally look at them and think, How did I ever get to that state? How did I ever survive it? So yeah, you can be too thin! I know some of those outfits, and some of those characters were iconic, and I know the image was enhanced by my skeletal nature, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a process, I wouldn’t recommend it as a career template”.
It’s remarkable that out of all the turmoil that was going on at every junction of Bowie’s life, once he entered the studio, all that was left behind and he could do what he did best — make magical music.
Of all the ‘cocaine records’ that have tarnished many artists’ reputations over the decades, Station to Station somehow did the opposite and is up there with Bowie’s best.
