Our latest chapter of ‘Off The Records’ delves into a dark era for David Bowie: the months spent in Los Angeles in 1975. Famously subsisting on a diet of cocaine, milk and red peppers, he stayed awake for days at a time, driving himself to the brink of sanity through malnutrition and sleep deprivation. “It was a dangerous period for me,” David would later say. “I was at the end of my tether physically and emotionally and had serious doubts about my sanity.” But from the depths of his personal hell, he produced the landmark ‘Station to Station,’ an album that most fans rank among the best work he ever made.
For the first few months of his stay, David lived with his friend Glenn Hughes, a rock icon in his own right. Glenn was in the midst of his tenure as the bass player for Deep Purple. They’d met in Hollywood the previous year, when the band was recording their hard rock epic ‘Stormbringer’ and David was in town to perform his Diamond Dogs extravaganza. The pair hit it off and stayed in touch. When David made the move from New York to LA to make his feature film debut in ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ a few months later, he decided to stay with Hughes to keep a low profile.
The excesses of the period have gone down in rock lore. Witches exorcising pool. Phantom falling bodies. Nazi news reels on loop. Thankfully, both men made it out of the grips of addiction. David decamped to Berlin to push his music boundaries with albums like ‘Low’ and ‘Heroes.’ (But we’ll get to that.) Glenn Hughes continued to enjoy a remarkable run in Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, the supergroup Black Country Communion, and a host of solo projects. Most recently, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer joined the group the Dead Daisies, who released their latest album ‘Holy Ground’ in January.
Jordan spoke to Glenn about his new music and his time as David Bowie’s housemate back in 1975.
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