WEBVTT - Chapter Nine: The Thin White Duke (1976) 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.360 Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio. 0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:11.400 A busted up Mercedes bands roared through an underground parking 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:15.280 garage and for Lynn careening dangerously in circles amid the 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:19.520 piercing squeal of rubber on concrete. David Bowie was doing 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:23.720 donuts and he was definitely breaking a speed limit. Hell, 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:26.320 at this rate, he was going to break the sound barrier. 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:29.720 He drove like he was on the auto box, narrowly 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:34.280 avoiding concrete pillars and other cars. Around and around. He 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:40.559 started to scream faster and faster, sixty than seventy than 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:48.519 than then he took his hands off the wheel. It 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:54.600 was the fall of David was quite literally spiraling. He had, 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:58.440 in his own words, reached the spiritual impass. He wasn't 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:01.840 suicidal per se. He just didn't particularly care whether he 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:05.520 lived or died. So he made a little wager with God, 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:09.360 gambling with his life. There is a certain romance to 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:13.120 it all. He recalled his early idol, James Dean, whose 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:15.119 life had been cut short in a high speed car 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:18.440 wreck two decades earlier. Perhaps he'd go out in the 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:21.800 same way, ram into a pillar or a car or 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:26.160 a wall. Bang he'd take out both himself and his passenger, 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:30.720 Iggy Pop, whose outlook on existence wasn't much sunnier. What 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:33.399 set him off could have been any number of things, 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:38.120 money problems, lawsuits, a press calling him a Nazi, his 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:44.199 impending divorce, booze, drugs, lack of drugs, all the above. 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:48.240 Maybe David himself would cite an unpleasant incident from earlier 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:52.360 that evening, cruising with Iggy down one of Berlin's main thoroughfares, 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:55.040 He'd spotted a parked limo that belonged to a local 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:58.640 coke dealer. David was convinced the guy had ripped him off. 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:02.279 In retaliation, he rammed the front grill of his rusty 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:05.760 Mercedes into the back of the dealer's car, then again, 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:11.359 and again and again. This continued for at least five minutes, 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:18.400 maybe ten. Nobody interfered, nobody even stopped. Then David sped off, 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:21.640 winding up in the parking garage, locked in a death 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:24.320 loop where one wrong move would wipe them both out. 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:29.000 At least that's the story David would tell, although we 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.440 did have a habit of self mythologizing. But even if 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:36.000 this wasn't technically true in the literal sense, it certainly 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:41.160 was in the spiritual one. The metaphor isn't subtle. Physically, 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.079 emotionally and creatively exhausted, Bowie was locked in a cycle 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.640 of drugs and depression, going round and round and unsure 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.240 how to get out of it. He would describe it 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:53.880 as quote like being in a car with a steering 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.120 had gun out of control, and you were going towards 0:02:56.160 --> 0:02:59.000 the edge of a cliff. Whatever you did, it was 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:01.679 inevitable that you were to go over the edge. I 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:03.919 had almost resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:05.800 going to be able to stop, and that would be it, 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.560 whipping himself in circles. That night in Berlin, he released 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:13.920 the wheel and squeezed his eyes shut, awaiting the crash 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:17.560 that seemed imminent for the last few years. But it 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:22.040 never came. Rather than a sudden smash, the car slowed 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:25.840 to an uncertain sputter Before the engine died. It was 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:29.680 out of gas. Just like David, there was only one 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.440 thing left to do. He and Iggy burst into hysterical laughter. 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:37.720 So David Bowie's time in Germany did not end with 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:41.720 a bloody heap of steel. Instead, he would finalize a 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:46.080 groundbreaking new record that many would rank among his finest. Low, 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:49.280 the first in a series of albums that would come 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:52.040 to be known as the Berlin Trilogy. It contained a 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.720 track called always Crashing in the Same Car. The song 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:57.880 is a nod to his trip to the brink, a 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:02.920 meditation on old destructive pad. He could have died, perhaps 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:06.120 even should have died. If not this night, then certainly 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.240 many others spent in l A, the noxious neverland that 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:12.800 had been his former home. He seemed destined to become 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:16.440 another seventies rock and roll casualty, just like Jim Jimmy 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:21.560 and Janice. But instead he was alive in Berlin. The 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:25.000 city would be both his savior and his muse. It 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:33.520 would be David's second chance. Hello, and welcome to Off 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:36.080 the Record, the show that goes beyond the songs and 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.320 into the hearts and minds of rock's greatest legends. I'm 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:43.360 your host Jordan Runtug. This season explores the life, or 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:47.760 rather lives, of David Bowie. Today's episode looks at the 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:52.000 Thin White Dupe, the manifestation of megalomania and paranoia that 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:56.480 gripped Bowie at his personal love. Among his most frightening creations, 0:04:56.920 --> 0:04:59.560 It was the physical embodiment of the darkness that threatened 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:02.920 to eclip his own likeness of being, but he would 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.279 save himself with a new life in a new town. 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:08.240 It was a personal reinvention that was every bit as 0:05:08.240 --> 0:05:11.600 impressive as his musical ones, and it was certainly more 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.480 fulfilling for David as he inched towards something resembling peace. 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:27.760 David Bowie found himself in hell at the dawn of 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:32.640 Technically it was Los Angeles, but the city of Angels 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:35.040 had more than its fair share of demons for David. 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:38.120 As he turned twenty nine that January. It was a 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:40.800 town he'd come to call the most vile piss pot 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:43.600 in the world and the most repulsive warts on the 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:46.880 backside of humanity. The place should be wiped off the 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:50.039 face of the earth, he'd later grumble. To be fair, 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.760 it wasn't completely l A's fault. Mired in the city's 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:58.160 toxic hedonism and shamefully indulged in sycophants, he followed cocaine 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:00.120 up his nose at a rate that worried he ben 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.320 the likes of Elton John and Keith Richards, hardly shrinking 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:06.920 violets surviving on a diet that consisted of little more 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:09.960 than red peppers and milk. His body grew frail and 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:14.000 his mind slid dangerously close to psychosis. He stayed awake 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:15.920 for as much as six days at a stretch, and 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:19.039 his rented bell Air home ruminating on the occult and 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.880 watching Nazi newsreels on loop. It was a dangerous period 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:25.080 for me, he would admit. I was at the end 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:28.520 of my tether physically and emotionally, and had serious doubts 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:34.640 about my sanity. It wasn't just the drugs, though they 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:38.839 certainly didn't help. His years of wilfully schizophrenic shape shifting, 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:41.479 both on stage and off, had left his sense of 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:45.680 self about as fragile as a pound frame. The cavalcade 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:49.160 of characters and personas stretched back to his adolescence, A 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:54.279 Laddin saying Halloween, Jack Ziggy, Stardust, Major Tom Hell, even 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:57.479 David Bowie was a facade that shielded David Jones, a 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:01.239 shy boy from the British suburbs. The constant masks swapping 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.119 left him wondering, in his words, whether I was writing 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:08.080 the characters or the characters are writing me. In January 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:10.920 of nineteen seventy six, he seemed destined to follow his 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:14.320 half brother Terry into a mental hospital or his father 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:19.320 into an early grave. Nineteen seventy six began much like 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:22.840 the unhappy year before. He just finished a new album, 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:25.760 Station to Station, a stunning piece of work that was 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:28.840 as transformative and innovative as the Philly soul steeped young 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.640 Americans have been in nineteen seventy five on shelves at 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:35.400 the end of January. Station to Station was proof to 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:38.840 all who listened that despite David's psychic turmoil, he was 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:43.520 just as creative as ever. Legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:47.800 historically cynical about David's more theatrical work, proclaimed that Bowie 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.640 had quote finally produced his masterpiece, an album that built 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:59.200 on beautiful swelling, intensely romantic melancholy. But like the previous January, 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.360 David's career was in a state of chaos. A year 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:05.880 after severing ties with manager Tony de Freeze, David was 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:10.200 gearing up to fire his replacement, lawyer, Michael Lippman. Lippman 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:12.480 was generally viewed as a nice guy by those in 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:16.160 Bowie's coterie. Perhaps that was part of his downfall. He 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:20.480 lacked a freeze killer promotional instincts, and Barracuda business acumen. 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:24.200 Their relationship began the sour during the production of Bowie's 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:27.480 first feature film, The Man Who Fell to Earth. As 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:29.880 the star of the movie, David assumed he'd be asked 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:32.840 to write the soundtrack music. When he was passed over 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:36.720 by director Nick Rogue, David blamed Littman for the deal's collapse. 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.400 It all went downhill from there. The final blow came 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:45.520 when David flew his band to Jamaica for Christmas to 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:48.439 rehearse for an upcoming tour to promote Station to Station. 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:51.800 The entourage arrived on the island only to find that 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:55.080 no one the thoughts of book any hotels they were stranded. 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:58.800 Bowie pointed the finger at Littman for this logistical flub. 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:02.319 By New Year, Latman had got the axe, kicking off 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:05.520 a nine month, multimillion dollar court battle that would leave 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:12.400 David nearly broke. Despite his temporary homelessness, David felt restored 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:15.480 by the trip to Jamaica, or rather the trip out 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:18.839 of Los Angeles. His time away made him realize the 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:22.600 corrosive effect Hollywood was having on his health. He would say, 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:25.280 I was lucky enough to know somewhere within me that 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:27.600 I was really killing myself and that I had to 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.800 do something drastic to pull myself out of that. He 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:34.040 began plotting his Excess strategy from Los Angeles, but in 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:39.760 the meantime he had a tour to think about. It 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:42.240 was his first since the Diamond Dogs Trek had wrapped 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.679 over a year earlier. That tour, with its two hundred 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:50.000 and fifty dollars set and elaborate choreography, required weeks of 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:54.000 technical rehearsals. This venture would be significantly simpler when it 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:57.679 kicked off on February second in Vancouver. Instead of an 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:00.679 opening musical act, the audience was greeted with a screening 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:05.319 of Salvador Dolly and Luis Brunel's surrealist art film When 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:09.959 Chian and Delude. Even non cinephiles are probably familiar. It's 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:12.440 the one with a notorious sequence of a razor blade 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:16.800 slicing through an eyeball. German techno pioneers craft Work provided 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.560 the soundtrack to the gruesome images on the screen. As 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:23.599 mechanical blips, beeps, and whirls from the new album Radioactivity 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:30.760 ricocheted around the venue. The bisected eyeballs were jarring enough, 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:33.040 but the crowd was in for a second shock when 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:37.840 the concert began. Gone with the props, lasers, dancers, and 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:41.040 other trappings of glam rock maximalism that had factored so 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.560 heavily into Ziggy stardust, A, Laddin, Sane and the Diamond 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:48.520 Dogs tour. Where was the huge disco ball cage, or 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:53.480 the cherry picker, or the massive, decaying city stage set. Instead, 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:57.680 there was nothing but white, utterly blinding white racks of 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:01.760 pale fluorescent bulbs loomed over the stage. Flashes of light 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:06.280 rendered audiences temporarily blind, making the unholy howl of guitarist 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:11.280 Stacy Headon's feedback all the more potent. He was joined 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:15.880 by guitarist Carlos Alamar, bassist George Murray, drummer Dennis Davis, 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:19.800 and keyboardist Tony Kay. Through the sonic hazes, a song 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:23.440 began to take shape, the hypnotic lurching march of Station 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:30.640 the Station. As the lengthy intro wound down, Bowie appeared, 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:34.280 bathed in the harsh white spotlight, he heralds his own 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.880 return as the thin white Duke, David's latest and most 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:42.720 terrifying character, A cabaret crooner with pleated black pants, matching 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:47.160 vest and crisply starched white shirt. With the slick back hair, 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:51.120 he resembled the smoldering silver screen star of the nineteen thirties. 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:55.320 Almost The thin white Duke evoked them the farious glamour 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:59.040 in pre war Germany, a sort of sinister European superman, 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:03.520 dap her yet deadly. If Ziggy was androgynous, the Duke 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:07.000 was hyper masculine, dripping with an eroticism all his own. 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:10.560 Even without the props and the sets, he somehow came 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:14.440 across as even more theatrical and dramatic. The character has 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:18.600 been alternately described as a mad aristocrat and amoral zombie, 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:23.240 or an emotionless aryan superman. He was, em Bowie's own words, 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:30.600 a nasty character. Indeed, despite the Duke's icy exterior, the 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:34.360 shows were among David's most incendiary live performances to date. 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:37.839 When he wasn't delivering the Duke's dead pan croone, he 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:41.320 went back to being David, dancing, telling jokes, and even 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:45.120 playing sacks. At one point each evening he'd inevitably strip 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:48.600 off his shirt and performed topless. The fans ate it up. 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:53.800 One teenager cut a show in Detroit that March, showing 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.960 up in her highest platform shoes and a long black cape. 0:12:57.520 --> 0:12:59.760 It was her first ever rock concert, and she wanted 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:03.439 to look her best. She was known then as Madonna Chaconi, 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:06.000 but today she gets by on just her first name. 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.360 I don't think that I breathed for two hours, Madonna 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:13.160 would later say, I came home a changed woman. She 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:16.840 was inspired by his consummate showmanship and pension for constant 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:21.120 self reinvention. Twenty years later, when David was inducted into 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:23.320 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was she 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:28.400 who inducted him. The passion on stage was palpable, but 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:31.000 two weeks into the tour, David was complaining to a 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:34.360 journalist that he was quote a little bored and merely 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:37.160 doing the shows just for the money. He may have 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:39.760 been unhappy, but if he was going through hell, he 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:43.319 had company in the form of one Jim Osterberg, better 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:47.520 known as Iggy Pop since meaning at Max's Kansas City 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.839 in the fall of one. David had become something of 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:54.840 a guardian angel for the troubled punk godfather, frequently appearing 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:58.360 in times of trouble. When CBS Records was unhappy with 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.760 Iggy's mix of his album Raw Power. Bowie was called 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:04.200 in to clean it up. When Iggy was put on 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:07.400 a psychiatric hold in late nineteen seventy four following a 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:10.800 drug fueled altercation with the l A. P. D. Bowie 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:12.439 was one of the only people to visit him in 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:18.400 the psych ward. Upon his release, Iky had nothing, he'd 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.480 been dropped by his management, and was still hopelessly addicted 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:24.760 to drugs. By nineteen seventy five, he was reduced to 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.640 sleeping on a mattress stolen from a nearby thrift store 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:30.560 and living in an abandoned garage with a male hustler. 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:33.400 Iggy was on downers when he went to a local 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:36.520 supermarket and attempted to make off with some apples and cheese. 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:39.160 He was bailed out of prison by a well known 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:42.000 coke dealer, who put Iggy to work in some telemarketing 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:45.840 scam he was running. Not surprisingly, Iggy Pop was not 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.400 cut out to be a telemarketer and his tenure proof 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:51.240 short lived. Eager to be rid of him, the coke 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:54.560 dealer called another one of his clients, David Bowie, to 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:57.680 see if he could help set Iggy straight. Bowie was 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.600 not exactly a poster child for clean living at the stage, 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:06.120 but he'd do what he could. Iggy and David linked 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:09.440 up in February of six when the Station the Station 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:13.400 tour passed through southern California. From the start, it was 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:15.520 clear that Iggy was in worse shape than even the 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:20.040 exhausted and emaciated David. Bowie coaxed Diggy back into his 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:21.960 orbit by playing him a cassette of a lick he'd 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:24.920 written with Carlos Alomar. It was a germ of the 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:28.000 song Sister Midnight, and David asked Iggy if he wanted 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:32.040 to record it. Eggy liked the idea. The old friends 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:35.040 quickly rekindled the relationship, and Iggy was told to drop 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.960 by David's hotel the next morning with a suitcase. Iggy 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:41.960 came on board for the remainder of the tour, technically 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.840 as a backup singer, but primarily as a friend to David. 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:48.800 Both knew they were in a bad way, especially Bowie, 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:50.960 who knew that big changes had to be made if 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:53.840 he wanted to live out the decade. They had an 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:56.440 unspoken agreement to keep one another on track and hold 0:15:56.480 --> 0:16:01.280 themselves accountable. Like ad hoc sobriety sponsors. More often than 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:04.360 not they were successful, which is surprising because in the 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.480 midst of the tour David was busted for drugs and 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:10.880 they weren't even his. It went down after a concert 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.800 in Rochester, New York, on March, David through a party 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.040 at his hotel suite, and true to form, he extended 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:20.520 a cordial invitation to a few women hanging out in 0:16:20.600 --> 0:16:23.880 the hotel bar. They stopped by and things were great 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.080 for a time as everybody got to know one another. Then, 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:30.400 midway through the shin dig, the ladies revealed themselves to 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:34.800 be undercover narcotics officers, and they brought friends four vice 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:40.080 squad detectives. This spoiled the party somewhat as Bowie, Iggy, 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.440 Bowie's bodyguard and another young woman were arrested on possession 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:46.840 of marijuana charges. At the time, this was a Class 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.760 C felony, carrying a maximum sentence of fifteen years in prison. 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:55.000 Obviously no laughing matter, but Bowie can be seen smirking 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:58.760 ever so slightly in his booking photo, clearly bemused that he, 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:02.280 one of the great enthusiasts of the age, got caught 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.880 with something like pot, a drug he loathed. He spent 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:08.480 several hours in a jail cell before being released on 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:12.040 bond rest. Assured the stuff was not mine, he told 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:14.760 the press soon after. I can't say much more, but 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:16.520 it did belong to others in the room. We were 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:21.240 busted in, bloody potheads. What a dreadful irony Me popped 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:24.280 for grass. The stuff sickens me. I haven't touched it 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:28.639 in a decade. Overall, Bowie and Iggy did a good 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:31.879 job of staying off the hard stuff. Sure they slipped 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:34.840 up on occasion, but Bowie was proud when Iggy declined 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:37.480 the line of heroin offered by New York Dolls guitarist 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:42.000 Johnny Thunders. David felt protective of Iggy. Perhaps he saw 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:45.600 echoes of his half brother Terry. David had been powerless 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:49.280 to stop Terry's descend into mental illness. Iggy offered a 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:53.399 second chance at rescue and redemption. Their bond forged in 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:58.119 misery grew strong. This guy salvaged me from certain professional 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.440 and maybe personal annihilation. Simple as that, Iggy would say 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:05.040 in a lot of people were curious about me, but 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:07.760 only he had decent enough intentions to help me out. 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.639 He did a good thing. He resurrected me. He was 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:14.440 more of a benefactor than a friend. He went out 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:18.119 of his way to bestow some good karma on me. Jimmy, 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:21.359 as Iggy was always known in Bowie Circle, would ride 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:23.640 with David in the back of his chauffeur driven car 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.439 on the lengthy drives between concert dates. Along the way, 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:30.720 David DJ on the cassette player, playing tracks from his 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:34.680 favorite new artist like Tom Waits and Craftwork. Iggy got 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:36.879 a kick out of hearing The Ramons, a group who 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:39.639 so clearly out of debt to his former band, the Stooges. 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:43.080 They caught one of the band shows at CBGB, the 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:45.800 Granddaddy of all dive bars and New York's broke and 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:49.840 bombed out Bowery. Iggy was treated like visiting royalty by 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:53.040 the gangs of emerging punks, a welcome role reversal from 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:56.480 his usual status as Bowie screw up friend. In a 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.920 funny way, they each emvied each other. Despite his wild 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.560 man persona, Iggy was a college educated debate champ who'd 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:07.000 been voted most likely to succeed in junior high. Yet 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:10.480 he'd never have Bowie's credit with the intellectual elite, and 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:13.880 for all his boundary pushing, David would never enjoy Iggy's 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.679 dangerous reputation as a man on the edge. They complimented 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:20.680 each other well, often talking late into the night, for 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:24.520 sometimes just sitting quietly with cups of espresso, wordlessly enjoying 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:27.960 each other's company. In addition to hooking up with Iggy 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:30.800 on the l a tour dates, David encountered another man 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:33.840 who would alter the trajectory of his life. His name 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:37.119 was Christopher Isherwood, the British writer famed for a semi 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:41.199 biographical novel Goodbye to Berlin, later adapted into the Oscar 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:46.199 winning film Cabaret. Visiting David backstage following his performance at 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:50.399 the Forum, the prototypical Englishman abroad regaled Bowie with tales 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:54.359 of his time in Weimar era Germany. Theisher would maintain 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:57.320 that Berlin was no longer the den of depravity, decadence, 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:00.600 and artistic freedom it had been between World Wars. Bowie 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.800 heard enough to be intrigued. David knew he was coming 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:06.480 to the end of his time in Los Angeles. After 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.159 two years of residing in the United States. He was 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:13.040 pining for Europe. After wrapping his l a shows, David 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:15.200 visited his rented house in bel Air for what would 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:17.880 be the last time, to load up his belongings into 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.159 two U hauls. It was an unceremonious end to the 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:30.840 lowest period of his life. Berlin had long been on 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.479 Bowie's shortlist of potential new homes. As a student at 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:37.439 Bromley Tech in the early sixties, he poured over the 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:41.560 art of Max Reinhardt, Bertold Brecht and Fritz Lange. He 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:45.240 obsessed over the angst ridden emotional work of the Expressionists, 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:49.280 and Berlin had been their spiritual home. In particular, he 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:51.480 was drawn to the work of the die Bruca or 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.000 the Bridge movement. It was an art form that mirrored life, 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:57.760 not by event, but by mood. He would later say, 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:01.200 this was where I felt my work was owing. There 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:05.119 were certainly signs. The Diamond Dogs Tour boasted a backdrop 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:08.760 modeled after the nineteen nineteen expressionist film The Cabinet of 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:11.800 Dr Kalaghari and the Thin White Duke may well have 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:16.879 been a character from one of Isherwood's stories. Of course, 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:19.600 the Berlin of the nineteen thirties had mostly vanished by 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:23.760 nineteen seventy six. For a start, Allied troops have bombed 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:26.119 much of the city into rubble during World War Two. 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:29.800 What little remains was divided by the Berlin Wall, a 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:33.280 grotesque and deadly symbol of the geopolitical fault line between 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:38.280 Eastern communist repression and Western capitalism. Germany as a whole 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.560 was bisected along similar lines, with West Berlin as a 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:45.240 democratic oasis administered by the Western Alliance deep within the 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:49.760 Soviet controlled Eastern territory. Many of the businesses and industries 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:53.879 had moved out, leaving behind factories and warehouses that attracted 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:56.760 young artists looking for cheap studios or places to live. 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:01.480 As a result, West Berlin was thriving creatively, though decimated 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:05.160 in so many other ways. The split city mirrored Bowie's 0:22:05.200 --> 0:22:08.560 own fractured psyche and the anarchist vibe of the left 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:13.280 wing socialist fueled as renegade spirit. In short, Berlin was 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:16.640 the perfect place for him to be. Berlin would strike 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:19.760 some as fitting for more worrying reasons. Dave is growing 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:23.840 fascination with German history and particularly his apparent fixation on 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:27.040 the Third Reich. At the height of his cocaine abuse 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:31.080 in Los Angeles, he sat for hours watching Nazi newsreels 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:35.000 with unnerving intensity. He became intrigued by the mythical link 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:38.200 between the Third Reich and the occult, and Hitler's supposed 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:40.800 search for divine artifacts like the Holy Grail and the 0:22:40.840 --> 0:22:44.280 Spear of Destiny. In recent months, he began to go 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:47.960 public with his studies, raising eyebrows and a number of interviews. 0:22:48.880 --> 0:22:52.840 In one, he characterized Adolf Hitler as quote a marvelous 0:22:52.840 --> 0:22:55.680 morale booster, and in another he claimed that the young 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:59.000 Americans track somebody up there likes me was about how 0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:02.639 Quote Hitler is on his way back. In an interview 0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:06.560 with Rolling Stone published in February of ninety six, David 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:10.159 drew parallels between the fewer and themselves. I think I 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:13.200 might have been a bloody good Hitler, David said, I 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:16.600 would have been an excellent dictator, very eccentric, and quite mad. 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:20.400 In an interview with Playboy later that year, he would 0:23:20.440 --> 0:23:23.959 dub Hitler quote one of the first rock stars, citing 0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:27.760 his powerful messianic charisma that to David at least didn't 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:31.159 seem that far off from ziggy stardust. Look at some 0:23:31.200 --> 0:23:33.840 of the films and see how he moved. David's quoted 0:23:33.880 --> 0:23:36.680 as saying, I think he was quite as good as Jagger. 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:40.400 The world will never see his leg again. He staged 0:23:40.440 --> 0:23:43.879 a country. Some critics would wonder if David took some 0:23:44.000 --> 0:23:47.159 art direction from the Third Reich. One review of the 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:51.399 Station the Station Tour noted it's Nuremberg overtones, while another 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:54.119 said that the rock concert quote could have been staged 0:23:54.119 --> 0:23:58.680 by Spear or Albert Spear, the chief architect of Hitler's regime. 0:23:59.720 --> 0:24:02.720 That April, David took the show to Berlin, performing in 0:24:02.760 --> 0:24:06.720 the German cultural capital for the first time. During his stay, 0:24:06.800 --> 0:24:10.600 he visited communist East Berlin and cruised past the Looming Wall. 0:24:11.040 --> 0:24:14.000 He was photographed gazing intently at a bust of Adolf 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:16.920 Hitler and later giving a stiff armed salute at the 0:24:17.000 --> 0:24:20.400 ruined sight of the Furis fortified bunker where he'd ended 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:23.320 out his last days of the war and ultimately shot himself. 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:27.399 David made the photographer, promised to never release the image, 0:24:27.600 --> 0:24:30.280 but his interests were not going unnoticed in the press. 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:34.119