The song David Bowie wrote about his attempted suicide
By 1975, David Bowie possessed the ability to effortlessly craft glam rock anthems as if they flowed from him in his sleep. Having experienced the height of fame with the hit ‘Space Oddity’ in the late 1960s, the singer skilfully transformed himself into one of the most captivating frontmen of the glam era.
Creating distinct personas like Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, Bowie veiled himself while delivering albums that tantalised the world’s musical appetite. Although Bowie could have ridden the success of these personas indefinitely, the time had come for yet another metamorphic transition within the realm of glam rock.
During the creation of the album Diamond Dogs, Bowie embarked on his own interpretation of a dystopian future set against the backdrop of glam rock. Initially envisioning a concept album centred around George Orwell’s 1984, Bowie’s plans took a different course. Undeterred, he forged ahead, crafting his own peculiar rendition of the future.
By 1976, Bowie moved countries with his friend Iggy Pop in an effort to curb their drug addictions: a venture that would supersede the singer’s usual approaches and result in the renowned Low. The album was Bowie’s first official foray into the realm of electronic and ambient styles, with explorations into the darker sides of life that continued to inspire his artistry.
While writing Low, the depression that beset Bowie filtered through into his work. ‘Always Crashing In The Same Car’ was written about an incident when Bowie vengefully drove his car into a drug dealer he thought had wronged him. The lyrics act as a metaphor for the mania that occurs when you knowingly make the same mistake over and over again.
As the story goes, behind the wheel of his Mercedes, Bowie caught sight of a drug dealer on the streets, whom he suspected of having swindled him. In a retaliatory act, Bowie proceeded to collide his own vehicle into the dealer’s car multiple times. Following this altercation, he made his way back to his hotel, where he engaged in the act of driving around in circles in the hotel’s garage. It’s been rumoured that the name ‘Jasmine’ alludes to Iggy Pop, who purportedly accompanied Bowie in the car during this incident.
In 2001, Bowie gave a full account of the incident: “I wrote [the song] in Berlin, in the mid to late seventies. It was about one of the few very stupidly, badly attempted, thank God, suicide attempts that I tried. The full story is rather alarming. I’m not sure if I should tell it or not.”
He continued: “It involved a coke dealer whose car I saw on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin one day, and I’d got it into my mind that he screwed me over a deal. […] So I was driving that, and I saw this guy, let’s call him Johan, in the car. And I was so crazed I started ramming him in the Kurfürstendamm, in daylight, in, like, 12 o’clock in the day. And I rammed him, and I rammed him, and I was ramming him; he looked around, and I could see he was mortally terrified for his life. I’m not surprised. I rammed him for a good, it must have been a good five to ten minutes, which is a very long time actually. Nobody stopped me. Nobody did anything. And I got out of it, ‘What am I doing?’”.
