David Bowie is one of the most influential musical artists and pop culture icons of the 20th century. He sadly passed away in 2016, yet Bowie has left a legacy not just in music, but his artistry has inspired fashion trends and various works in visual presentations and art.
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00:00David Bowie was an icon in music and pop culture, a chameleon who changed personas as they occurred
00:06to him.
00:07But Bowie was a complex and complicated man, having grown up under the shadow of mental
00:11illness and a tough home life.
00:13Here's the tragic real-life story of David Bowie.
00:16David Bowie's mother, Peggy Jones, was born into a family touched by mental illness, and
00:21she herself may have fallen victim to some degree.
00:24Mark Spitz, one of Bowie's biographers, noted that schizophrenia, quote, seemed to be seared
00:29deeply into the genetic code of Bowie's family.
00:32The behaviors associated with schizophrenia can seem hidden from outside view, only to
00:36be triggered by calamity.
00:38For Peggy and her siblings, there were two such forces, their mother Margaret and the
00:42Nazis' bombing of England during World War II.
00:45According to one account via The Telegraph, Bowie's maternal grandmother Margaret Burns
00:50was a cruel woman who took her anger out on everyone around her.
00:53Two of Peggy's other sisters had exhibited signs of schizophrenia early in their lives,
00:58but the nightly shelling during the Blitz in 1940, coupled with the idea of Hitler occupying
01:03England, exacerbated the girls' problems.
01:05Bowie himself wondered whether he would also fall victim to schizophrenia one day.
01:09I've always found that I collect.
01:11I'm a collector.
01:14And I've always just seemed to collect personalities.
01:17Some even theorized that he'd developed so many personas throughout his career as a way
01:21of dealing with some latent schizophrenic tendencies.
01:24David Bowie's half-brother Terry was born out of wedlock and, due to the stigma associated
01:29with such births at the time, was handed off to his grandmother Margaret, who was emotionally
01:34and physically abusive to him.
01:36According to The Telegraph, his mental illness had its genesis there, and grew over time.
01:41Even when, at nine years old, he was sent back to live with his mother, her new husband,
01:44and his baby half-brother David.
01:46From that point, David looked up to Terry, and there was genuine affection between the
01:50two.
01:51Terry struggled with his mental illness, but eventually was able to join the Royal Air
01:54Force.
01:55When he returned from the service, Terry spent his time with David.
01:58One night, they went to see Cream at a club in London, but the volume of the music proved
02:02to be too much for Terry.
02:04David took him outside, and Terry had a schizophrenic vision.
02:07He saw the ground opening up and fire coming out of it, and he told David he experienced
02:11these visions often.
02:13After David's father died two years later, Terry spent some time in and out of mental
02:17hospitals for years, until he finally succumbed to his illness, tragically taking his own
02:22life in 1986.
02:24Several of Bowie's songs, from All You Pretty Things to Jump, They Say, are said to contain
02:28recollections of Terry, of his visions, and of him as David's big brother.
02:33In his adolescence, David Bowie's best friend was George Underwood.
02:36They hung out together, played music together, and in one famous incident, even fancied the
02:40same girl.
02:42According to Bowie biographer Mark Spitz, Bowie once sabotaged a date between Underwood
02:47and their shared crush, which angered Underwood to the point of violence.
02:50I just walked over to him, basically, and turned him around and just went whack, you
02:54know, without even thinking.
02:55After it was determined that Bowie had sustained a serious injury, he was sent to the hospital.
03:00According to one account, doctors noted the muscles in his eye were damaged.
03:04He could still see and wouldn't lose his eye, but for the remainder of his life, his left
03:08pupil would be permanently dilated.
03:11Underwood felt guilty for quite a while afterward, but the injury left Bowie with what he termed
03:15a kind of mystique, perhaps best seen on his album cover for Heroes and the close-ups in
03:19Valentine's Day.
03:21When Bowie died in 2016, many LGBTQ fans and performers paid their respects, often noting
03:27his influence in their lives and in queer culture, particularly in the 70s.
03:32Then, immersed in his Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke personas, Bowie played with androgyny
03:37as few performers of his stature had previously.
03:40When Bowie sort of did the Ziggy thing, why inherited Bowie?
03:43He was often asked how he defined his romantic life, to which he gave coy responses.
03:48He came out as gay in 1972, as bi in 1976, and finally as, quote, a closet hetero in
03:541993.
03:56No label, however, could truly define him.
03:59While his fans applauded his gender fluidity, not everyone was on board.
04:03British law, in particular, had long viewed gay culture as an affront.
04:07In the 1800s, it was even punishable by death.
04:10Though laws were relaxed somewhat in the 60s, the lifestyle wasn't officially decriminalized
04:15until 2000, meaning when he came out in 72, Bowie was admitting to engaging in illegal
04:20acts.
04:22Bowie might have been born at the right time to be free to express himself, and he may
04:25also have been responsible for moving acceptance of it forward.
04:29Bowie biographer Peter Doggett once mused,
04:32"[Cocaine was the fuel of the music industry in the 70s.]
04:35If that's the case, Bowie was well-fueled for much of the decade to almost crippling
04:39effect."
04:40Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar told the New York Post that Bowie used the drug to stay
04:45up late into the night, sometimes all night, sometimes for days in a row.
04:49He claimed,
04:50"[Its function was to keep you alert, and that's what Bowie was doing.
04:53It did not stop his creativity at all."
04:55"'By the mid-70s, I was so out of my gourd that, really, it was all nigh on impossible
05:02for me to function in any rational way.'"
05:05It did occasionally affect his performance on stage.
05:08Careful not to appear high in front of audiences, Bowie would sometimes forget lyrics, according
05:12to Alomar.
05:13In these instances, Alomar would abandon singing his own parts and sing Bowie's in order to
05:18get Bowie back on track in the song.
05:20But what cocaine did do, however, was sink Bowie into mental states akin to the schizophrenia
05:25that the other members of his family had suffered.
05:28Doggett wrote,
05:29"[He spent a decade trying to avoid what his grandmother called the family curse, and
05:33then several more years creating his own form of psychosis with cocaine and amphetamines."
05:38So bad were his addiction and the related mental issues while making the film The Man
05:42Who Fell to Earth in 1975 that Bowie claimed to see what he called, quote,
05:46"...demons of the future on the battleground of one's emotional plane."
05:50Soon after, he moved to Germany to clean up.
05:53I do take a degree of theatricality when I go on stage all the time."
05:57In the mid-'70s, certain aspects of David Bowie's thin, white duke persona gave fans
06:01a pause, mostly for what Bowie himself described as the very Aryan, fascist-type qualities
06:06of the character.
06:07In 1976, he told Playboy,
06:10"...I believe very strongly in fascism.
06:12The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that's hanging foul in the air at the moment
06:16is to speed up the progress of a right-wing, totally dictatorial tyranny and get it over
06:21as fast as possible."
06:22He also likened Hitler to rock stars, particularly Mick Jagger, in the way he worked his audiences.
06:28And then there was the moment he was photographed waving to fans at Victoria Station in London
06:32in a manner that resembled a Nazi salute, per Politico.
06:36Bowie eventually recanted his stance on fascism and Hitler.
06:39His copious consumption of drugs left him, in his own words,
06:42"...at the end of my tether physically and emotionally, and with serious doubts about
06:47my sanity."
06:48In truth, he was exhibiting the symptoms of cocaine psychosis.
06:52To escape the cloud that had descended upon him, he did what any great artist would do.
06:56He applied himself to his craft, creating three of his finest, most acclaimed records
07:00Low, Heroes, and Lodger.
07:03On June 23, 2004, Bowie shortened a concert in Prague due to what he thought was a pinched
07:08nerve.
07:09It wasn't.
07:10Two nights later at the Hurricane Festival in Germany, Bowie had completed a final encore
07:14of Ziggy Stardust and collapsed before he could get backstage.
07:18He was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with a blocked artery requiring immediate
07:22angioplasty.
07:23He remained in Germany until he was well enough to fly, and within two weeks was back at his
07:28home in New York.
07:29No one knew that the June 25 show would be his last full concert.
07:33He appeared infrequently over the next two years, singing with Arcade Fire at the Fashion
07:37Rocks!
07:38benefit in 2005, performing with David Gilmour in 2006, and duetting with Alicia Keys at
07:44the Keep a Child Alive benefit in New York later in 2006.
07:48Bowie popped up here and there at benefits or fashion shows, but never again as a full-on
07:52performer.
07:54He disappeared from the spotlight almost completely until re-emerging in 2013 with his album The
07:59Next Day, though he would not play onstage or give a single interview to support the
08:04record.
08:05According to Rolling Stone, Bowie arrived to the first session of his final album, 2016's
08:09Blackstar, with no eyebrows or hair on his head.
08:13He had been diagnosed with liver cancer and was receiving chemotherapy.
08:17He told very few people about it, preferring to keep to himself as he worked toward both
08:21beating the disease and creating a musical statement that would outlive him.
08:25Blackstar's themes of death and the afterlife seemed chilling in retrospect.
08:29He sang on the track Lazarus,
08:30"'Look up.
08:32I'm in heaven.
08:33I got scars that can't be seen.'"
08:35Bowie didn't want word of his condition or of the forthcoming record's existence released
08:39to the press, so he had the musicians he worked with sign non-disclosure agreements.
08:44Guitarist Earl Slick, who had played with Bowie since 74, said such a step was unnecessary
08:49due to the musicians' admiration of Bowie as an artist and a person.
08:53Slick told a British talk show,
08:55"'I signed it.
08:56I didn't have to sign it.
08:58I signed it because I was asked to.
09:00All anybody had to do was to ask to be quiet, and out of respect we would have been.'"
09:05On January 10, 2016, two days after his 69th birthday and the release of Blackstar, David
09:11Bowie died.
09:13The world was stunned and shaken by the news that David Bowie had suddenly passed away."
09:22The news shocked everyone, as the cancer diagnosis had been kept so quiet.
09:27In the weeks leading up to his passing, he recorded demos for five new songs, amazing
09:32his producer Tony Visconti.
09:34According to Rolling Stone, just a week before he died, Bowie told Visconti he wanted to
09:38make one more album.
09:40It never came to be.
09:42Visconti wrote,
09:43"'He always did what he wanted to do, and he wanted to do it his way, and he wanted
09:46to do it the best way.
09:48His death was no different from his life, a work of art.'"
09:52With the news of Bowie's death, fans were left to ponder what he'd left behind.
09:56He had channeled the tragedies of his mother's family's mental illness and that of his brother
10:00into the personas that enabled him to express his unique vision and the sounds that accompanied
10:05it.
10:06He had transcended the accepted attitudes on gender identity to influence generations.
10:10He overcame a crippling drug addiction to find peace in his life and the creation of
10:14his art.
10:15Even though he should have had many more years to live and create, his final work succinctly
10:19closed the book on his life, as rich and unforgettable a life as one could hope to live.
10:25If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
10:29Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK 8255.