Just Some Completely Random, David Bowie Celebrity Interactions

The fist fight with Axl Rose…

Bowie’s famous heterochromatic eyes are actually the result of a damaged cornea he suffered as the result of a fight over a girl, as a youth. He’d repeat the trick with a less flattering result, as a 42-year old man. Amazingly, we have this story from Slash’s 2007 memoir, a 1990 interview with Axl in Kerrang, and in the words of Riki Rachtman, the owner of the club where it happened. The timeline is a little murky, not surprising for the Rashomon-like accounting of the event, but it involves a drunk Bowie coming onto Axl’s girlfriend, Erin Everly (daughter of Don Everly), Axl hurling insults at Bowie from the stage, and finally chasing him down the street yelling “I’m gonna kill you, Tin Man”.

And how did Bowie end up at a small warm up gig by the up and coming Sunset Strip metallers?

…Bowie’s was caught naked with Slash’s mom.

Slash’s mom Ola Hudson was Bowie’s costume designer in the mid-70s, during the Young Americans and Station to Station eras, as well as during the filming of The Man Who Fell to Earth. They dated too, and remained friends. This is well-known. The stranger revelation came when Slash spoke to Australian radio station Triple M in 2012 “I caught them naked once,” Slash said. “They had a lot of stuff going on, but my perspective at eight was limited. Looking back on it I knew exactly what was going on.”

Slash later said that he was embarrassed by the attention the story had gotten, clarifying “I had no idea it was going to get blown up. It became this big headline and it was very awkward… I’m embarrassed because I’m sure David didn’t appreciate it… And my mum, rest in peace, probably wouldn’t have dug it either.” But, come on Dude, that’s a headline story.

Sending Lewis Hamilton a guitar with no explanation.

In an interview with IGN, the formula one driver revealed that he’d received a guitar in the mail with no note or explanation. It was around a year later that he learned that Bowie had sent it. Bowie was a fan, apparently. Though Hamilton could think of no further connection between the two, other than his father having met him once. “He [Hamilton’s father] had met him [Bowie] on the street in London… And said that he was one of the nicest people ever.”

Guitar.com helpful added that “While it’s not confirmed that this guitar was used on any records by Bowie, extensive scratches in its pickguard do suggest it was heavily played”. Investigative journalism is alive and well, folks.

Hiding under a table to avoid Roger Moore

It’s the stuff of Hollywood legend that Bowie was considered for a role in 1985’s Bond flick A View to Kill, opposite Roger Moore. He and Grace Jones were to play as pair of androgynous villians. But Bowie turned the role down, saying at the time that he “didn't want to spend five months watching [his] stunt double fall off cliffs.” But perhaps there was a different reason he turned the role down.

This story comes via journalist Dylan Jones who heard it from author Hanif Kureishi. In the late 70s when Bowie was living in Geneva, he knew nobody in the city, until he discovered that Roger Moore was a neighbor. Roger Moore visited Bowie for tea, stayed for dinner and drinks, and told stories about the James Bond films.

The next day, Roger Moore visited again. He invited himself into Bowie’s home, said “yeah, I’ll have a gin and tonic”, and told all the same stories again. After two weeks of Moore visiting literally every day at 5.25pm sharp, Bowie was reduced to hiding under a table and pretending not to be home.

Sting turned the role down too, it eventually went to Christopher Walken. What did Roger Moore do to Sting?

Trading random non sequiturs with Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl

When Grohl appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and discussed his working relationship with Bowie, the headline anecdotes were the usual stuff about the track they’d recorded together, and the track Grohl had pitched, but Bowie rejected. But the real revelation into Bowie’s psyche came next. When Grohl proposed that they collaborate on a track, Bowie didn’t just politely decline, he told Grohl to “f-- off” over email.

It soon became apparent that Bowie was just being Bowie, as Grohl became his penpal “He would email me in like June and say, ‘Well, happy new year!’ … I’d say, ‘Drinks someday, yes?’ And he’d immediately email me back and say, ‘I will, thanks!’ … I couldn’t tell, I’m like, maybe, he’s on a health kick. I’m like, ‘Nuts and muffins?’ And he’d email back and say, ‘Those are my attornies.’ S— like that.”

The two times Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell accidentally gave Bowie’s contact details out to strangers.

In an interview with NME, Perry Farrell told the sort of story that any reader would want to know more about. He left his cell phone in a taxi cab, a phone that had David Bowie’s phone number on it. Farrell only devotes a sentence to what happens next, but one’s imagination runs wild “The cab driver got a hold of it and started texting him, ‘Yo David, what’s up?’ in my name… This guy was constantly texting him and trying to get hold of him”.

The second time involved the sort of email mishap everyone who’s ever worked in an office is familiar with. “[S]omebody had approached me to do a bit of charity work to try to stop DuPont from polluting the waters... So I thought ‘I do want to help this person, and I’m going to get David Bowie to help me too!’ I forwarded the text to David and it had maybe a chain of 200 people saying ‘I will help you’...I didn’t understand about blind CC’ing in those days, so I effectively gave like 200 people access to David’s private email.

Everything about this makes me want to know more… What was that cab driver hoping for? What were the consequences of 200 people having David Bowie’s email address? Next time you’re in a New York taxi cab, check under the seat for a lost cell phone with David Bowie’s name in the contacts.

David Bowie and Spongebob Squarepants

Bowie’s 2007 appearance on Spongebob Squarepants was pretty surprising, but it made sense when you gave it a second’s thought. He was retired with an eight-year old daughter. It’s what happened eight years later that truly defied sense or logic. Bowie contributed a song to the Spongebob Squarepants Broadway musical.

Bowie had many many many hits and deep cuts over the years that would’ve fit right in very appropriately in children’s entertainment, from the 60s novelty vaudeville pastiches to the 80s power pop. So, which song did he contribute? No Control, a song from 1995’s 1.Outside, a concept album telling the futuristic dystopian tale of a murderous self-mutilating conceptual artist green cyborg who “dreams of ape men with metal parts”. Songs from 1.Outside were also used in the mind-bending Horror films 7even, and Lost Highway.

7even, Lost Highway, and The Spongebob Squarepants Broadway Musical! Now you know what those three things have in common. .

Saving Peter Frampton from a burning plane

This is another one that begs further explanation. Our record of the story is only a few sentences told by Frampton himself. Frampton toured with Bowie on the ‘87 tour, and in April 2020, he told The Mirror: “On that tour we had private planes, and on one flight smoke started coming out of the vents… Dave stands up and goes, ‘Smoke! Smoke!’ So the pilot stops and the flight attendant pulls the back stairway down… I’m in my seat and Dave literally lifts me out of my seat and carries me down the chute. I’ll never forget that… He coulda run out, but he wanted to make sure I was OK. That was the kind of guy he was with me, and in general. He was a lovely man.”

Why did Peter Frampton need to be carried out? Was he incapacitated somehow? Or did Bowie just decide that Frampton needed to be carried? And was it a fireman’s carry, or did he cradle him? Did Bowie start the fire, as a pretense to grab Frampton? Did Frampton start the fire hoping Bowie would grab him?

Stealing the Talking Heads’ nuts and cheese platter

The world would certainly be a duller place if it weren’t for rock memoirs, even if for just the catty or bizarre anecdotes. Remain in Love, the memoir of Chris Frantz of the Talking Heads contains a charming little anecdote about Bowie.

Back stage when the Heads played at the Montreux Jazz Fest in 1982, there was a knock at the door. It was Bowie, dressed in a Khaki anorak (which is a pretty amazing image in and of itself, given Bowie’s glamorous image) “There was a lovely assortment of backstage munchies on the table, and Bowie zeroed in on that. He asked politely, ‘are you going to be eating those nuts?” “Please help yourself,” Frantz replied. “He filled one big pocket of his jacket with nuts. Then he asked, ‘how about those cheeses, are you going to be eating those nice cheeses?” Again, Frantz said “Please help yourself.” “Bowie neatly wrapped most of the cheeses in a napkin, and put them in his other pocket. Then he said ‘well, have a great show, break a leg, can’t wait to hear Tom Tom Club.’ And with that, he was off.”

The final three words of the passage land like a punchline: “Byrne looked burnt.”

Unknowingly giving Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones and Paul Cook their career starts

The fact that the Sex Pistols started out with stolen equiptment is the stuff of urban legend. Like with many urban legends, in every telling it’s different. Sometimes it’s said that the equipment came from an unattended Bob Marley tour van, others say it was from Paul McCartney’s warehouse or The New York Dolls, but the version told by Jones and Cook themselves is by far the most interesting.

In The Sex Pistols Documentary The Filth and the Fury, Jones says that he posed as a road crew member, and stole amps, guitars, and other equipment from the stage, between the first and second nights of Bowie’s legendary farewell Ziggy Stardust show at the Hammersmith Odeon. Paul Cook gave the same account to Loudwire.

Those were the shows in which Bowie famously killed off Ziggy Stardust. One of the most famous events in rock ‘n’ roll history was interrupted by a couple of teenagers; who, one imagines were dressed in charity shop overalls and fake moustaches. And by the way, that’s five-odd years before The Sex Pistols formed, so there was no gig that they needed the equipment for. Just a couple of punks getting into trouble.

The bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar, indeed.

This ad for XM Satellite Radio starring Bowie, Snoop Dogg, Ellen Degeneres, Derek Jeter, and Martina McBride.

Snoop Dogg can’t find his big giant diamond necklace that says ‘Snoop’. He asks the other famous people who present at XM Satellite Radio. Turns out Bowie stole it. THUD! Groan! You’d think that with access to this much star power, they’d come up with something a little better than a plot and denouement that would embarrass an elementary school production writer. But then, the juxtaposition is so memorably weird that we still remember it sixteen years later. Advertising doesn’t have to be good, just has to make an impression, right?