The George Harrison song David Bowie used to kick his addiction
While David Bowie’s legacy is rightly built upon artistic fearlessness, creative innovation and social activism, somewhere lurking between the clouds of his legend is the myriad of tales that speak to his role as chief hedonist. In the heady days of sex, drugs and rock and roll, Bowie was in full exploration mode and the subject of many tales mythologised by us music lovers.
Before his days of mega-stardom, Bowie was using drugs as a teenager in the 1960s. A typical counter-culture rebel, he got stuck into a range of amphetamines as well as stimulants such as cocaine, and that was all before he developed a penchant for the more tepid marijuana.
In a 1976 interview with Playboy, Bowie spoke of his introduction to drugs, saying: “I’d done a lot of pills ever since I was a kid,” he said. “Thirteen or fourteen. But the first time I got stoned on grass was with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin many, many years ago, when he was still a bass player on Herman’s Hermits records. We’d been talking to Ramblin’ Jack Elliot somewhere and Jonesy said to me, ‘Come over and I’ll turn you on to grass’. I thought about it and said, ‘Sure, I’ll give it a whirl.’”
He continued: “I had done cocaine before but never grass. I don’t know why it should have happened in that order, probably because I knew a couple of merchant seamen who used to bring it back from the docks. I had been doing it with them. And they loathed grass. So I watched in wonder while Jonesy rolled these three fat joints. And we got stoned on all of them.”
What followed was not only an iconic career driven forward by a relentless pursuit of innovation but a love affair with drugs that fuelled the liberalist underbelly of his artistic life. Following the widespread success of 1972’s Ziggy Stardust, he became seriously addicted to cocaine and It had a defining effect on the making of his follow-up record, 1973’s Aladdin Sane, which in a representation of his disposition, had a much darker tone.
His subsequent follow-up 1974 Diamond Dogs tour was where his issues culminated. He suffered from severe physical debilitation, paranoia, and emotional problems that all stemmed from his over-indulgence with cocaine.
In a 2003 interview with Paul Du Noyer, Bowie recalled the depths of his darkness during that ‘74 tour and the formative impact a George Harrison song had on him at that time: “George’s song, ‘Try Some, Buy Some’ means a lot to me now. When I first heard that song it had a very different narrative to it. Now my connection to the song is about leaving a way of life behind me and finding something new.
He continued “it’s overstated about most rock artists leaving drugs, it’s such a bore to read about it. But when I first heard the song in ’74 I was yet to go through my heavy drug period. And now it’s about the consolation of having kicked all that and turning your life around”.
While it wasn’t until the 1980s that Bowie began to make a marked improvement in his relationship with drugs, the song clearly had a subconscious impact on Bowie that turned the wheels of impact without him knowing. It’s a song he covered in his 2003 record Reality, which was released two years after the death of George Harrison.
