VIDEO – MOONAGE DAYDREAM –
March 24, 2022 – For most of the 1970s, David Bowie’s life revolved around when he’d be getting his next hit of drugs. After he managed to shake off his sordid habits, Bowie reflected on his dark struggle through his preferred communication medium.
Bowie’s grapple with substances had significantly amplified throughout the making of his seminal album Station To Station, and he had slowly morphed into a paranoid shadow of his former self. Partly, this was down to moving to Los Angeles and the prevalence of narcotics in the City of Angels, which made that whole period in his life an unrecognisable blur. Bowie once reflected: “I started on the drugs at the end of 1973 and then with force in 1974. As soon as I got to America, pow! It was so freely available in those days. Coke was everywhere… Because I have a very addictive personality, I was a sucker for it.”
In another interview, he said: “It was a dangerous period for me. I was at the end of my tether physically and emotionally and had serious doubts about my sanity.” He needed a clean break and moved to Berlin with Iggy Pop to break himself from his dangerous cycle of addiction, unbeknownst to them moving to the then-heroin capital f the world. However, following the release of Low and a world tour, enough time had passed for Bowie to look back upon his struggle on ‘Ashes To Ashes’.
