Thursday, January 14, 2016

CHINA GIRL WAS NOT ABOUT A CHINA GIRL

Bowie's China Girl was not about a girl from China.

It was about heroin.

And was co-written with Iggy Pop while they were in Berlin.

Here is what they got up to in Berlin:
Later that year, David packed up and moved to Berlin, later saying: “I needed to completely change my environment and the people I knew.

“I had a small handful of what one might call normal friends. The rest were dealers. It was extremely unhealthy.”

He took Coco and Iggy with him, hoping to help Iggy kick his drug habit, as well as his own. It was a mission doomed to failure, given the propensity of drugs in the city.

Iggy once confided to Rolling Stone that in a typical week, he and David spent two days intoxicated, two days recovering and three days sober.

David later said: “I didn’t have any idea until I got there that Berlin was the smack capital of Europe.”

He finally got properly clean after being awarded custody of his son Zowie in 1980, following his divorce from wife Angie.

He admitted: “I never fully kicked until the mid-Eighties. I’ve an addictive personality, and it took hold of my life.

“I’m ambivalent about it now. It was an extraordinary thing to have to go through. I wouldn’t want to go through it again, but I’m sort of glad I did.”

In his later, sober years, David spent much time and energy helping young people face their drug habits, including Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and make-up artist Carolyn Cowan, who he met on a video shoot.

She said: “I’m so grateful for his intervention. David saved my life. He was never judgmental, just kind.”

[source : Even Mick Jagger was worried by how much cocaine David Bowie was doing, The Sun, http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/6859685/Mick-Jagger-was-worried-about-how-much-cocaine-David-Bowie-was-doing.html, 14th January 2016]

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