Drugs, wild orgies and a string of famous lovers - both men and women. David Bowie sure lived the life of a rock god, as a new book claims.
Bowie, by author Wendy Leigh, pours over the intimate details of the singer’s legendary sexual appetite, painting a colourful picture of a gender-bending star whose lovers (rumoured and confirmed) are believed to include Elizabeth Taylor, Bianca Jagger, Mick Jagger and Susan Sarandon, among many others.
According to the Daily Mail, Leigh spoke to friends, ex-lovers, business partners and industry insiders in an attempt to find out if Bowie was a sex addict, or simply a star eager to make himself seem more exciting to potential fans.
Leigh writes that Bowie and his first wife Angie met while having an affair with the same man, and “were notorious about weaving a sexual web around those who took their fancy”.
At the time, says Leigh, Bowie was determined to break into the London music scene, and became “adept at playing London’s gay elite”. As one acquaintance quoted in the book says: “I said he would either be a gigantic star or make a lot of money in the Piccadilly men’s loo”.
In the book, Leigh writes that Angie was desperate to be the wife of a rock star, and catered to Bowie’s every whim. She had, according to Leigh, the “uncanny ability to bring home the most free-spirited girls”.
In 1970, around the same time the couple had their son Zowie, David Bowie told an interviewer “I’m gay and always have been”. At the time, he and Angie were crafting his new stage persona, the sexually-ambiguous Ziggy Stardust. According to a staff member at his record label, Bowie slept with just about everybody who worked there. One of his gay lovers however, wondered whether it was the sex or the adoration that got him going.
“When we were in bed together, he was more sensual and narcissistic,’ said Tony Zanetta, Bowie’s ex-assistant. “To him, it was about being adored... I don’t think sex mattered to him.”
Yet Bowie’s appetite for sex was voracious. At their London home, the Bowie’s entertained guests in what was known as the pit – a four-foot deep bed covered in fur.
“Angie and David used to have the most amazing orgies at Oakley St. Everybody f****d everybody in the pit. Mick Jagger used to come there and be involved with sexual things,” a source is quoted as saying in the book.
As Bowie became addicted to cocaine, so his sex drive increased. The singer himself admitted as much in a BBC interview, saying: “I was hitting on everybody. I had a wonderfully irresponsible, promiscuous time”.
A string a famous women were to share his bed. Elizabeth Taylor, 15 years his senior, was rumoured to be one of his most famous conquests, although Leigh merely refers to it as an “amorous friendship”. Then there was the affair with Charlie Chaplin’s widow Oona, 20 years older than him. Bowie met her while playing the Elephant Man on stage in 1980.
Ronnie Spector, ex-wife of legendary record producer Phil Spector, recalls being taken to see Bowie after a performance in 1975. She was led straight to his hotel suite where he was waiting for her, naked. Even Guns & Roses guitarist Slash caught a glimpse of Bowie’s sexual prowess, walking in on the naked star and his mother when he was just 8-years-old.
Bowie and Angie split up in 1980, but the singer’s sexual adventures only came to a halt in 1990, when he met his current wife, the former supermodel Iman.
“I was naming the children the night we met,” said Bowie.
“It was so lucky that we were to meet at that time in our lives, when we both were yearning for each other.” - Tonight Reporter