David Bowie: The occult, cocaine, orgies, arrests, exorcisms, a weird flirtation with fascism and a dead body.
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The stories about David Bowie are insane. He was obsessed with the occult, with Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn. It drove him to near madness. Down a dark, excessive wormhole with cocaine, narcissistic rock star excess, orgies, arrests, exorcisms, a weird flirtation with fascism, and a dead body.

No musical artist better personified the hedonism of the 70s than David Bowie. He captivated the imaginations of music fans all over the world, not to mention fellow artists, some of whom he confounded, alienated, and annoyed, Andy Warhol, Paul McCartney, and Bob Dylan among them.

Bowie was unlike any singular rock star before him. He was more than just David Bowie. He was a dizzying meld of creative alter egos. Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, and the Thin White Duke among the few he gave voice to with his great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Showdown at the OK Space Corral, MK1.

I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet by Henry Mancini. And why would I play you that specific slice of star-crossed lover's cheese? Could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on July 11th, 1969. And that was the day David Bowie released the single, Space Oddity, launching into the public consciousness his first truly great artistic vision. The first of many that would significantly alter the future of rock and roll. On this episode, orgies, exorcisms, creative alter egos, and David Bowie. I'm Jake Brennan. This is Disgraceland.

David Jones made his way through the crush of fans and press, up the front of the stairs to the Public Safety Building at Rochester City Court in upstate New York. He was up early on this March morning in 1976 and had arrived early for his arraignment.

A lucky fan nabbed an autograph from the accused outside the courthouse doors. Once inside, one of the most recognizable rock stars in the world at the time was ushered into the courtroom and passed half a dozen prostitutes awaiting their own arraignment in the hallway. The pros erupted into cheers when they saw him pass. He gave them a polite smile from under his fedora. Ever the gentleman. Inside the courtroom, he settled in. The proceedings got underway.

David Jones, 29, and his fellow defendants James Osterberg, 28, and Duane Voss, 22, were asked by Judge Alphonse Cassetti how they pleaded to the charge of fifth-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, marijuana, about half a pound of it. David Jones, in his dapper three-piece suit, hat in hand at his side, stood alone, still, and politely answered in his proper English accent, "'Not guilty, sir.'"

The judge agreed to a $2,000 bail bond for Jones and an additional $2,000 for his security guard, Dwayne Voss, as well as for his other friend, James Osterberg, who was popularly known by at least some of the record-buying public as the notorious Iggy Pop, one-time frontman for the late 60s punk rock archetypes, the Stooges. David Jones kept such interesting friends because he was, of course, not only David Jones, he was David Bowie.

He was also most famously Ziggy Stardust, the androgynous bisexual rock star. Prior to Ziggy, Major Tom, the junkie astronaut, strung out in heaven's high, constantly trying to avoid the all-time low. Before Major Tom, he was the laughing gnome bent on bringing to the masses some sort of Jacques Brel psychedelic baroque. And before that, he was Davy Jones, another blue-eyed soul singer shuffling through London doing his best Bobby Blue Bland via Brian Jones' Mick Jagger.

But as of late, while on tour in support of his 10th album, Station to Station, he was the thin white dude. And his mugshot for the arrest proved it. It's possibly the greatest rock star mugshot ever. There he is, and he is indeed thin, white, and with an air of nobility to him. If you learned he ruled over a duchy, you would not be surprised. His eyes are two different colors. He's skeletal, haunting, almost transparent, sticking out of his starched collar and wide lapels.

You get the sense that at one point in the evening, a tie was definitely in the mix. Something wide, a double Windsor knot perhaps. His blonde hair is slicked back, but there's one strand slightly askew. It suggests a long night, nothing out of control, just long, most likely tiring. If he's put out, you can't really tell. His expression is dead serious, but not mean. He is beyond handsome. In a word, the mugshot is compelling.

If you knew nothing about the photo or the man in it or his fame, you'd still want to know more. Who was this dude and what was his deal? Which was why one of the non-arresting officers working the station house that night he was arrested pulled the mugshot from the trash when he saw it lying there on top. It was too compelling not to give it a second look, to not wonder. David Bowie had that kind of image and his image had that kind of power and he knew it.

It was all by design, all part of the creative package. It wasn't all about the music, it was about so much more. There was a theory that one creates a doppelganger and then imbues that with all your faults and guilts and fears and then eventually you destroy him, hopefully destroying all your guilt, fear and paranoia. And I often feel that I was doing that unwittingly, creating an alternative ego that would take on everything that I was insecure about.

That's a Bowie quote given to journalist Tony Parsons some years after the drug arrest in Rochester.

But back in '76, Bowie was coming to the end of the road with the Thin White Duke and was contemplating a move to Berlin to dry out, clean up, and get his head out of the fame and into the art. The drug charge would eventually be dismissed by a grand jury coming to nothing. He was in need of new inspiration, a new muse, hell, even a new canvas. And creatively, he'd get what he needed no matter what. He'd steal if necessary. It wasn't beneath him, he'd done it before.

Authenticity didn't concern him like it did Iggy. Thievery was part of the game. And he learned by watching. One of the greatest art thieves of all time.

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In 1964, Yayoi Kusama was on her way to becoming the highest paid visual artist in the world. She was an innovator in pop art, sculpting with soft materials and working with repetition of images and symbols. Her pieces now go for an estimated $7 million each on average. Her net worth is estimated somewhere north of $20 million and naturally, her work is highly sought after.

In 1964, it wasn't just collectors and curators who had their eyes on Kusama's art. Thieves were circling too, one in particular.

He cased the gallery where Kusama's show was happening that evening. In the open, minimalist space of the Gertrude Stein Gallery was buzzing with women in mod fashions and thin men suited up in thin ties. Cigarette smoke spiraled through the air, downtown hipsters and major art critics zigzagged between gallery rooms, taking in the latest work from the newest movement in the art world, pop art.

Yayoi Kusama's work was staggering. It knocked the thief out. It overtook his senses. Kusama's artistic philosophy of self-obliteration, as she called it, was on full display. As a child, Kusama suffered from hallucinations, the result of which was a traumatic overtaking of her own senses that she now channeled into her art through an applied perspective of what she believed the 1960s would bring. A technicolor vision of cultural subversion, celebrity, and fame.

Her work exploded off of the gallery's walls, its floor, and even its ceiling. Her piece entitled "Aggregation 1000 Boat Show" was immersive and all-encompassing. Yayoi Kusama had papered the gallery with the same tiled image of a rowboat over and over and over again. A larger sculpture of a rowboat anchored the piece in the gallery. It was covered in stuffed and sewn phallic protrusions. The value of the thief's heist would be infinite.

He knew it. He had a plan. A way to procure the goods without damaging or devaluing them. He wasn't like some other thieves, wasn't about to slash a painting from its frame with a razor and then clumsily roll it up. He wasn't brazen or stupid enough to grab a sculpture in his arms and risk dropping and damaging it on escape. No, he had a different method. Creative appropriation. It was safer to just steal another artist's ideas than it was to steal her work. So that's what Andy Warhol did.

Five months later, in April 1966, Warhol's exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery featured a room completely tiled with only one image, that of a cow's head, in pink and yellow, colorful, playful. Warhol's own borrowed contribution to the fast-developing technicolor cultural subversion of the 60s.

When asked where he got the inspiration for such a quote-unquote unique exhibition, Warhol credited an art dealer friend who suggested he play it safe and paint some pastoral cows, but that he himself took the suggestion to this shocking and now celebrated end. Andy Warhol's thievery didn't stop there. Like all great artists, Warhol heartily appropriated into his work the influence of others. This was not lost on David Bowie.

In 1972, Bowie set London on fire with the release of The Rise of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which was a dizzying, up to that point, incomprehensible and seamless melding of a multitude of influences that included Pink Floyd, Elvis Presley, composer Claudio Monteverdi, and French musical fabulous Michael Polnareff, among others. But one year before Ziggy, David Bowie released what is to my ears nothing less than another masterpiece, Honky Dory.

On it, he paid tribute to Andy Warhol with the far out acoustic driving impossibly original track directly titled "Andy Warhol." And Andy Warhol was not impressed.

Which is ironic given that the song and the album it appears on are as original and compelling as any Warhol creation before or since. Like Warhol, Bowie appropriated the works of others. And also like Warhol, Bowie funneled that appropriation through a thoroughly unique point of view into something original. And again, like Warhol, Bowie's originality was not limited to his music and his appearance. His whole approach was unique.

Bowie was obviously eager to meet the man who sold the world, the man from whom he appropriated his habit of appropriation. At his side that night at Andy Warhol's famed factory on Union Square West in Manhattan was his manager, main man Tony DeFreeze. DeFreeze wasn't an ordinary rock and roll manager. He demanded his star client live up to his aspiration of becoming the greatest rock and roll star on this world or any other. So David Bowie did what he was told.

He wasn't dressed in alter-ego Ziggy attire that night at the factory, but he was affecting the persona of a super-famous pop star, which, of course, at least in America, he had yet to become. His records were selling and there was an awareness of who he was and what he was doing, but he was far from the international music sensation he would become a few years later, and in the States, he wasn't even yet approaching the star status he'd already achieved in London.

Nevertheless, he traveled everywhere by limousine and apart from his band, refused whenever possible to avoid leaving his hotel during daylight hours. And when he did, he did so dressed to the hilt. He avoided restaurants and other public places at all costs. He never picked up a bag, an instrument, or even opened his own door, instead adopting a tactic of simply standing in front of every door he encountered awkwardly until someone offered to open it for him.

He was privately doubted by Bob Dylan, who upon seeing Bowie once enter a party, snidely asked George Harrison, "Who the fuck does this guy think he is?" And he was iced out by Paul and Linda McCartney, who, upon a visit to their hotel suite from Bowie and a female guest, did all they could to avoid eye contact and conversation, until it was very clear that they'd rather the up-and-coming space crooner take his freaky presence elsewhere.

Didn't matter. David Bowie was undeterred by the old guard. He had a vision of this new decade, the 70s, and it didn't involve Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney. It involved him and his multitude of creative personalities.

As a young adult, David Bowie watched his older brother, a schizophrenic, struggle to navigate this cruel world with multiple personalities. And he'd of course witnessed firsthand his own struggles as an artist throughout the previous decade, the 60s, where he'd bounced from one musical style and image to another. As a folk artist, a blues frontman, a crooner, none of it worked.

Nothing worked until he synthesized it all into the supernatural multi-image artist named David Bowie, whose first real creation, the Ziggy Stardust persona, would allow Bowie the space to conquer the 70s with an even greater array of creative characters. Unlike the rock stars born from the previous decade who valued authenticity over all else, David Bowie would be a vessel, and he would serve that vessel everywhere, all the time.

all the time. An act that would also distinguish him from the theatrical rock artists to come, Alice Cooper and Kiss, who wore their characters on stage but took the makeup off when the lights came on. Bowie didn't impersonate. Bowie became. So even at a time when he couldn't afford it, he and his manager kept up the rock star ruse and lavishly spent money they did not have. Record label money.

He seldom spoke in public unless there was something in it for him, and when he did speak, he summoned the most proper of British accents. He may not have been an actual alien, but compared to the rough trade avant-garde melding of high and low art at Andy Warhol's factory in '71, David Bowie was clearly not of this world.

He glided across the dance floor. Edie Sedgwick noticed him. Lou Reed didn't care. Flash photo bulbs popped, glittered against the tinfoil-wrapped silver walls. Andy Warhol, the ultimate blank slave, listened to the conversation of others in the crowd. Dressed in black with his slack silver hair, cutting an unimpressive figure compared to, well, everyone. But still, Radian is a disco ball and his role is center of gravity for the night's downtown carnival.

Tony DeFreeze was there that night to lock down Warhol actor Paul Morrissey for a film he was producing. David Bowie was there to kiss the ring. When he met Andy, Bowie awkwardly played him his song, Andy Warhol. It was clear from the silence afterward that Andy hated it. David Bowie, if he was affected by the diss, didn't let it show. He was going to make it in America with or without Andy Warhol's blessing.

Eventually, Ziggy Stardust broke through in the States and with it a mainstream cult of Bowie fanaticism. Fans would come to shows dressed as Bowie's alter ego, faces painted with lightning bolts, hair teased or covered with flaming red wigs to mob their idol in a sea of imitations of this version of himself.

Packed arenas sang along to Ziggy tunes en masse, and the image-first philosophy of Tony DeFreeze was finally paying off. In the summer of 1972, the album had peaked on the US charts at a respectable 75 on the Billboard 200. But by the fall, the massively successful Ziggy Stardust tour had come to the US for the start of its North American leg, and Bowie was playing Carnegie Hall and inviting Andy Warhol and his famed Factory Entourage to come visit his show.

The success, of course, came with perks. To call David Bowie sexually adventurous would not be an overstatement. But more than that, he was a sexual opportunist. The conquests of his wife, Angela Bowie, were as notorious as her rock star husband's and sometimes even too much for him to handle despite their open marriage. Their home on Oakley Street in London had what Angie and David's friends referred to as the pit.

A sunken room with a big bed covered in furs. Plush carpet, perfect for sexual exhibitionism and voyeurism. The orgies of Mr. and Mrs. David Bowie were the stuff of legend.

And there it was, all 12 inches. John Bindon, the infamous London gangster's famous penis. It was every bit as prodigious as Princess Margaret had described. For her, John would stack five pint glasses on top of it, using its strength and girth to keep the glasses from falling. For Angela Bowie, he'd take on five women for the viewing pleasure of her and her friends until, of course, they could no longer stand the sight of it and be forced by their own lust to join in on the fun inside the pit.

But for David, there was no upside in this particular orgy. It was all spectacle, lacking in opportunity. There was nothing to gain from sex with John Benden. There was no magic and therefore no power.

Bowie knew of sexual magic, and he knew of the power it was rumored to summon. The type of power you couldn't find in smart-set orgies or in Andy Warhol's factory. The type of power that brought you closer to the Golden Dawn. The type of power that frightened, drew you into the ragged hole, that tore you between light and dark. The type of power that was found in the occult. Specifically, in the writings of Aleister Crowley. Dark Power.

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The drug gave you a blast of energy only to have you crash for days. It filled you with confidence before hollowing you out with paranoia. Nothing felt more real than the way one felt during nights spent hoovering Escobar's finest, yet made you feel like more of a fraud the next morning. Cocaine. It's a hell of a drug. So real, but so phony. This conflict was very much on the mind of David Bowie when he set out to record the album Young Americans.

Having grown up around musicians as a teenager and a young adult, I have, regrettably, been on the wrong side of 5am in some stranger's kitchen listening to some stoned, talentless moron blather on about the new record they had conceived of that was gonna blow your mind, man. Bowie's Young Americans is what happens when that stoned moron actually has talent, and just as important, ambition.

"Young Americans" is the 5am cocaine concept album come to life, and it's fucking glorious. The album is unlike anything Bowie had attempted before, and in typical David Bowie fashion, it sounded like nothing the world had ever heard. It was Bowie's concept of plastic soul, a modernized, unapologetically Anglo version of 70s soul, and poppy as all hell.

And for the recording session, Bowie brought together a murderous row of emerging talent to record in Philadelphia, with Tony Visconti's trusted production tying it all together. Bowie was in search of that Philly soul sound, and to that end, a baby-faced 23-year-old Carlos Alomar held down the guitar, while a co-writer and vocal arranger named Luther Vandross was overheard singing along in the control room and hired as an additional backup singer at one of his first big breaks.

Bowie had a nose for talent, among other things. Of course, calling his version of soul plastic gave the white musical interloper cover, provided a stylish sleight of hand misdirection to obscure the appropriation.

But appropriation aside, the album truly doesn't sound like anything before it. The songs are so classic now that we take them for granted. Fascination, fame, young Americans. We are so accustomed to hearing these songs as part of our rock and roll lineage, staples of the 70s, that we, especially if we were born after their release, are denied the context from which those songs first hit the airwaves. Nothing sounded like them before. Now they just sound like David Bowie songs, but in 1975, on the radio anyway.

They sounded as alien as Ziggy Stardust had looked in 1972. And we have cocaine to thank for this album. It fueled Bowie during the conception and creation of Young Americans. Just as it fueled one of Bowie's fascinations at the time: occultist Aleister Crowley. The prolific 19th century writer Crowley had declared himself a prophet of a new religion that glorified the self and the pursuit of individual will.

Crowley's deep belief in occult magic meant his vision of freedom and enlightenment included ritualistic orgies and mind-expanding drug experiences. And for Crowley, the most tempting drug was cocaine. Give cocaine to a man already wise, and if he be really master of himself, it will do him no harm.

Crowley said before warning. Alas, the power of the drug diminishes with a fearful pace. The doses wax, the pleasures wane. Side issues, invisible at first, arise. They are like devils with flaming pitchforks in their hands. Bowie sought to explore the mystic depths of Crowley's teachings. He began attending seances where he saw clear evidence of the activation of the dark arts. It freaked him out, and the cocaine fueled his paranoia.

David Bowie wanted to know where the guns were. He was scared. The cocaine had him wired up tight. Paranoia brought on from not just the coke, but some twisted sense of guilt. At least it did during that dark year, 1975. Pulled up in a drug stupor in Los Angeles. 75, LA, fame beyond his wildest dreams. The future was bright, but his head was dark and stuck back in 72.

After Carnegie Hall, after Springsteen at Max's, after the Asbury Park pilgrimage mining the boss's truly unique American gold. It was Philadelphia, the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, Tucker Freud, Holden Caulfield, Picasso, and the pedophiles. It was before Laurie Maddox and the West Coast. And there was no excuse for that one. It was

It burned in retrospect. She was 15, a baby groupie. He was a man. He took her virginity. She willingly obliged. If it wasn't gonna be him, it was gonna be Paige or Plan or Rod or Todd. So gross. A different time, but still so gross. But not as gross as the Ben Franklin in Philly back in '72.

Caruso, that Jersey Shore goddess, straight out of Wild Billy's backseat. Greasy sheets, greasy lake, down on the dark side of Route 88. City of brotherly love, generosity, freak show, a true walk on the wild side. Lou would approve. The hotel's sweet doorbell rang. His security answered. He went to see what the fuss was about. And there it was.

His security guards were shocked into silence. So was he. They just stared at it. The fan who brought it up to the suite stood wild-eyed. When the fan spoke, he filled the room with a dark insanity that was palpable. "See what I did for you? You deserve this. You're Bowie, man. This is yours. Take it. It's for you. For sex."

David was immediately nauseous. There in a suite, just inside the door, a gurney. On it, a dead body, still warm. He quickly retreated back to his hotel suite bedroom to hide under the covers with Caruso. It was horrifying. He asked her, why would someone do this? Who do they think I am? Who do they think I am? Who do they think I am?

The memory still gripped him. It was a bridge too far. A bridge that he was still connected to. Through the dark power of Crowley, cocaine, and sex magic. He tripped some invisible wire. He knew it. That now his whole world was unraveling. Dark power conjured haphazardly or neglected can run amok. It can consume you. Become you.

David Bowie's cocaine-induced obsession with Crowley and the occult led him around some dark corners, particularly to fascism. He stayed up into the early morning hours getting high and viewing old reel-to-reel Nazi propaganda films. He was fascinated by the imagery, the narcissism, the occultish symbolism, the pageantry. It had little to do with the politics. It was all style, gall, hubris. The theater of it all gripped him.

This around the same time he'd recorded and released the Black-inspired Young Americans, an album widely accepted by the Black record-buying public, an album that led to him being the first white musician to appear on Soul Train. Magic, power, they work in strange ways. They can consume you, yes, and propel you, sure, but they can also defeat you. Bowie knew this, and it's what had him freaked the fuck out in his Los Angeles home back in '75.

David heard his name whispered at night. From out of nowhere, he saw things in the sky that weren't there. Ghostly visions of Aleister Crowley. He felt cold air blow through the sweltering summer nights. Tasted nothing. Sustained himself almost entirely on milk, jalapeno peppers, cocaine, and cigarettes. He had lost touch with himself. Whoever that was, anyway. Who do they think I am? The power was clearly in the hands of someone else now. David knew this.

So again, he wanted the guns. His friend/BFF/Potonic lover/sometime roommate/Coke buddy Glenn Hughes of Deep Purple was no help.

Glenn was smart enough to not tell Bowie where he kept the guns, but Bowie needed something to fend off the demon, the very real demon living among them, possibly within him, along with his many other alter egos, jockeying for position within the vessel that was David Bowie. His ego, his super ego, Major Tom, the Laughing Gnome, Ziggy, the Thin White Duke, all battling it out in subservience to his unfettered id. Without guns, another solution was needed.

So Bowie commenced to have an exorcism in his backyard to rid the demon who'd taken up residence in his swimming pool. Glenn didn't believe him at first. Who would? It was crazy. But he saw it with his own eyes, or at least he saw what he believed to be the work of the devil. There they stood, Bowie, Glenn, a priestess, another witness, in Bowie's backyard.

Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. The water in the pool was still. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. Then a ripple.

And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host. The water started to roll slowly. Bowie's stomach churned with fear. Glenn felt his jaw come unhinged. By the power of God thrust into hell, Satan. Now the water in the pool began to boil, to thrash. Small waves crashed into and around each other. And all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.

And with that, an intense thunderclap, a blinding flash of light. Instinctively, they covered their ears with their hands, ducked and looked away. They turned back to the pool and it was once again still. A sense of relief washed over them all. David Bowie knew it then. He needed to pull his head together, pull himself together, regain his sense of self, clean up, dry out, and exercise his own demons or he'd be dead before the end of the decade.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a late 19th, early 20th century secret society set up shop in Great Britain.

Toward the end of the 1800s, their influence was so great that members of the Golden Dawn could be found in every class of Victorian society. Celebrities of the day included: poet William Butler Yeats, actress Florence Farr, and of course, the occultist renaissance man himself, Aleister Crowley. Strong, dynamic personalities, all their writings, rituals, and transgressive behavior would come to dominate the imaginations of many.

The allure of a new kind of power attainable through occult magic, drugs, particularly cocaine, and gloriously hedonistic sociosexual ritual that encouraged bisexuality and polyamory was, to put it mildly, wildly subversive for the time. Which is kind of the point, subverting conventional society and norms. It wasn't all that dissimilar to popular thinking in the 1960s.

England's progressive pull from the establishment that began in swinging London and America's new hippie utopia that sprung from beatnik coffee shops and college campuses started with the best of intentions. But by the time the 1970s rolled around, that idealism had been obliterated by excess nihilism and narcissism.

and David Bowie was most definitely aware of the Hermetic Order. He explicitly spoke of the Golden Dawn on Hunky Dory's quicksand, and his dedication to the philosophy and its focus on the needs of the individual over all else nearly broke him. Do what thou wilt is all well and good when you are servicing one individual, but in Bowie's case it was many. Ziggy, the Thin White Duke, Little Davy Jones, etc.,

What began as a creative assortment of alter egos had become a schizophrenic secret society run amok in his own mind. Fueled by cocaine, mad for sex, and completely subverting his sense of self, it propelled him toward madness.

We all answer to many masters, or what one guru called the many eyes. We think we are one, a singular being charting our course in life, or our daily rituals, as innocuous in comparison to David Bowie's or Aleister Crowley's as those rituals may be, but the reality is, we are many people at once. We think of ourselves in the singular, I am, I want, I do, etc., but the reality is, we are constantly conflicted by our true desires, our true selves,

our many true selves. You go to bed at night and pledge to get up at 6 a.m. to exercise. You not only set your alarm, you even lay your workout clothes out and get your coffee maker ready. But that alarm goes off, and despite your best intentions the night before, the morning version of you hits snooze, grabs that extra hour of sleep, and pledges to work out the next day.

You commit to reading more nonfiction to educate yourself. Put 20 pages into that new Eric Larson book on Churchill and you're reaching for the remote to binge The Floor is Lava on Netflix.

Are you a hypocrite? Are you weak-minded? Schizophrenic? No, of course not. You're human. We all are. And we are not singular beings. We are many eyes, all with competing agendas. It's our great challenge to unify our desires, our thinking, our beings, and attain some sort of conscious peace. A proposition that was nearly impossible for David Bowie, for his many eyes were incredibly strong manifestations of his wild imagination and creativity.

Next time you're struggling to get out of bed for a 6am run, imagine trying to do so with Ziggy Stardust in your head telling you to give it another romp with the two models lying next to you, while the thin white duke chimes in that in order to do that, more cocaine is needed. Stat. And oh, by the way, the tin man is calling and Lazarus refuses to be ignored and Major Tom is floating around your bed in his tin can.

But David Bowie eventually silenced them all. He ended the 70s by drying out with his friend Iggy Pop in Berlin and completing a trilogy of great long players, Lowe, Heroes, and Lodger. He then conquered the age of video in the 80s, a medium he was uniquely suited for, and continued throughout the 90s and early 2000s to release compelling music up until his passing in 2016 with the release of his final album, Blackstar.

But before passing from this world to the next, David Bowie had some unfinished business. He knew his death was coming, but it wasn't the end. It was the beginning. Transcending this life to the next, passage on the astral plane is not a given, for any, and definitely not for many. Unification was necessary.

Major Tom had ascended some years ago, untethered, yes, but forever bound to Bowie. Ziggy Stardust had descended, not of this world too charismatic to ever fully fade. And the thin white Duke had pillaged his way to control, only to be excommunicated, but forever capable of ruling in exile via proxy.

They were still all there with him in the end, despite their diminished capacity and influence on his life and career over his last few decades. They were all still there. And so too was Crowley, in canting an occult ritual on the title track from Black Star in the first verse from David Bowie's final creative contribution. Bowie sings about the Villa of Ormond in a solitary candle.

Solitary. Singular. David Bowie was tying together loose ends. Unifying.

The symbolism of Blackstar in its lyrics and its video, released two days before David Bowie died, is filled with references to Bowie's many eyes, not to mention to the occult. It was directed by self-proclaimed Crowley fanatic director Johan Renck. The Blackstar title itself a reference to the occult concept of the midnight sun or the spirit of man shining through the darkness. Bowie sings about something happening on the day he died and about Meter traveling through light.

The length of the path traveled by light. The midnight sun. Man shining through the darkness. The Black Star. Major Tom, way past 100,000 miles, 47 years later, finally located dead in a spacesuit on a distant planet, as portrayed in the Black Star video. The skull in Major Tom's helmet is no ordinary skull. It's ornate. A gift from the royals. A parting acknowledgement of defeat from the Duke. The Thin White Duke.

a priceless artifact of the gods, of one god in particular, the rock god, Ziggy, a god whose influence on his subject of one had finally ceased. Bowie emotes near the song's end that it was somebody else who took his place. He sings, "I'm a black star, I'm a black star." Finally, David Bowie had reconciled his alter egos, unified, one, absolute. Or as he said, "I'm the great, I am, I'm the black star."

A conscious peace at last. Unity. Fuel for the astral plane. Far from this world. Far from disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com.

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