It's Not A Side Effect of the Cocaine

Chapter III, Part I - The Return of the Thin White Duke

Somewhere in Los Angeles, 1976, the Thin White Duke leans over a table and snorts a line of cocaine. He wipes his nose and looks around the room in the mansion he never leaves. Swastikas are traced on the windows and black candles burn. Books on the Occult, a title called Psychic Self-Defence and other texts on mystic religions litter the ground. Pentagrams are scrawled across the floor. Salt has been sprinkled in the corners of the room and the fridge brims with jars of urine. The word ‘AUMGN’ is scribbled on the wall. On the far side of the room the devil’s horns rise from the indoor swimming pool. The water bubbles and rages as if the elements themselves are possessed. Terrified, ‘demons of the future’ advance towards the Duke ‘on the battleground of [his] emotional plane’ while Glenn Hughes, Deep Purple’s bassist, collapses on a nearby couch, similarly blitzed on drugs. To him the Duke speaks at the speed of life, rambling about numerology, Aleister Crowley, Jimmy Page’s occult powers, the witches that would force the Duke to procreate a child, an anti-Christ to offer to the devil. Milk and red peppers rot next to a diner-plate of amphetamines. The radio flickers on and off, static sounding as spirits interfere with the spectrum of invisible waves. Characters from the Duke’s past—Halloween Jack, Aladdin Sane, Ziggy Stardust, and who knows who else—creep closer as he monologues into the abyss, grinning while they whisper of their plans to take him over completely. The Duke’s psyche is shattering, disintegrating, going ‘through the roof,’ and he is less and less sure if he is writing his characters or they are writing him.

Trapped in this ‘bizarre nihilistic fantasy world of oncoming doom,’ of ‘imminent totalitarianism,’ the Duke takes refuge in his television. Onscreen a film plays. It is Adolf Hitler, raging and spewing his hatred to the masses. Fixating on the Führer the Duke feels his anxiety recede. His world quiets. Transfixed, absorbed, entertained, obsessed by the narcissism of this terrible man, the Duke spends the rest of the day watching reel after reel of Nazi film.¹ Calmed by the footage, the Duke leans over a table again and snorts another line of cocaine. His demons run for the shadows.

Over the past year Hitler and the Nazis have had an extraordinary effect on the Thin White Duke. In an interview published in August 1975, the Duke had already shared his belief that America and Britain need ‘an extreme right front come up and sweep everything off its feet and tidy everything up.’ Only dictatorship, he believed, could restore each nation’s foundations and produce ‘a new form of liberalism.’ ‘There's some form of ghost force liberalism permeating the air in America,’ he argued, ‘but it's got to go, because it's got no foundation at all.’ Strangely, given his own decadent lifestyle, he raged against his society’s sickness. ‘[M]orals should be straightened up,’ he said. ‘They're disgusting.’ To exorcise the ghosts of liberalism and cure society’s illness, he concluded, ‘the best thing that can happen is for an extreme right Government to come.’²

The Thin White Duke’s fascination flourished over the ensuing months. By February 1976, the Duke’s own writing had become more ‘radical right’ as he ruminated on society’s doom.³ Three months later another interview emerged where he argued that ‘Adolf Hitler was the first rock star.’⁴ But it wasn’t until September 1976 that the depths of his obsession became clear. In an interview with Cameron Crowe published in Playboy, the Duke spoke frankly of his fascism. ‘I believe very strongly in fascism,’ he said. ‘The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that’s hanging foul in the air at the moment is to speed up the progress of a right-wing, totally dictatorial tyranny and get it over as fast as possible.’ Crowe, a journalist now familiar with the Duke’s fascism, pressed him to continue. ‘Television is the most successful fascist, needless to say,’ the Duke argued. ‘Rock stars’—that is, people like himself—‘are fascists, too. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.’ If this was not extreme enough, the Duke then used a final interview to bring his fascist reasoning to its height. ‘I am the only alternative for the premier in England,’ he said. ‘I believe Britain could benefit from a fascist leader.’⁵

The Thin White Duke was a committed fascist. He was also one of David Bowie’s characters – one of the personas Bowie created to capture ‘the truth of his time.’⁶

On several occasions over about a year Bowie said the truth of his time was fascism.⁷ A superficial read of Bowie’s prolonged interest in fascism makes his statements a symptom of cocaine psychosis. An equally unrewarding interpretation insists they were pure provocations designed to produce good copy for journalists. Bowie’s remarks, of course, were both drug-fuelled and provocative. Yet neither interpretation explains Bowie’s sustained fascination with fascism. Nor do they account for the consistency of his statements across time. They ignore his passion, his lucidity, his coherence.

Bowie gave his own explanation of his fascism just days after his last public fascist statement. ‘What I’m doing is theatre,’ he said. ‘I’m using myself as a canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time on it.’⁸ It wasn’t just the Duke who was fascist, the artist suggested. The Duke was only a reflection, an echo. He was only a fascist because his society had veered towards the right. The Duke’s fascism, in some way, was first America’s.

Bowie’s explanation may be a disingenuous excuse for appalling behaviour. He never explained this ‘truth.’ Nor did he elucidate his remarks. Despite his evasions, Bowie’s fascism reveals something vital about the liberal societies of the 1970s. It is the same truth we see today in Kanye West who samples Bowie’s Hitler-love in a new context. Liberalism and fascism, Bowie said and Kanye says, are linked. The ideologies unconsciously draw on one another. They are codependent in some way.

The Thin White Duke reveals something of ante-fascism. But to see this truth, we must return to a moment in mid-1973 before the Duke existed, to the night where Bowie began to turn away from liberalism. We begin with the final show he played as his androgynous, hyper-sexual alien ‘Übermensch’⁹ messiah rockstar – Ziggy Stardust.

← Chapter II, Part VI

Chapter III, Part II →

References

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Morley, P. (2016) The Age of Bowie: How David Bowie Made a World of Difference. London, Simon & Schuster.

O’Leary, C. (2015) Rebel Rebel. Winchester, United Kingdom, Zer0 Books.

Sandford, C. (1997) Bowie: Loving the Alien. London, Warner.

Zanetta, T. & Edwards, H. (1986) Stardust: The Life and Times of David Bowie. London, Michael Joseph.

Footnotes

1. The sources for this description are: https://www.bowiebible.com/albums/station-to-station/5/, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/david-bowie-ground-control-to-davy-jones-77059/, https://www.theuncool.com/2015/04/17/david-bowie-creem-magazine-76/, https://thequietus.com/articles/03598-david-bowie-nme-interview-about-adolf-hitler-and-new-nazi-rock-movement, https://www.theuncool.com/journalism/david-bowie-playboy-magazine/, https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-haunting-of-david-bowie/, Stardust, pp.211, 261-264; Age of Bowie, p.298-309; Bowie: Loving the Alien, p.140; Rebel Rebel, p.407.

2. https://thequietus.com/articles/03598-david-bowie-nme-interview-about-adolf-hitler-and-new-nazi-rock-movement

3. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/david-bowie-ground-control-to-davy-jones-77059/

4. https://www.theuncool.com/2015/04/17/david-bowie-creem-magazine-76/

5. https://www.theuncool.com/journalism/david-bowie-playboy-magazine/, http://www.bowiegoldenyears.com/1976.html and https://www.bowiebible.com/1976/04/26/david-bowie-britain-could-benefit-from-a-fascist-leader/

6. https://www.theuncool.com/journalism/david-bowie-playboy-magazine/ and http://www.bowiegoldenyears.com/1976.html

7. It’s difficult to establish the exact timeline because a) Bowie’s interviews aren’t always dated and b) there was often a large delay between the date the interview occurred and the date the piece was published. Cameron Crowe, for instance, began his interviews with Bowie in early 1975 and dates the conversation with Bowie published in Rolling Stone to May, 1975. That piece, however, wasn’t published until February 1976. Likewise, the piece published in Playboy in September 1976 is not dated. Conducted in L.A, however, it ostensibly came before the Stockholm interview in April 1976. The last time that we can verify the date for Bowie’s fascist remarks dates to late April 1976, while the first dates to Crowe’s interview in 1975. The public record therefore shows his fixation lasted at least eleven months.

8. http://www.bowiegoldenyears.com/1976.html

9. On Bowie, p.55.