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Since David Bowie died on the 10th of January 2016 there have
been tributes and speculation that might not have appeared in
his lifetime because he protected his privacy fiercely. There
have been new biographies and memoirs, praising and fondly
remembering him. But there have also been accusations in
online discussions. One recurring topic presented for
investigation is David Bowie’s relationship with Lori Mattix, a
young groupie who claims to have lost her virginity to the rock
star in 1973. Lori Mattix and her friend Sable Starr visited clubs
in Hollwood’s Sunset Strip, hoping to meet major rock stars.
She was underage at the time. David Bowie apparently realised
the error of his ways and did not have a long term relationship
with Lori Mattix. There seems to be no other such incident in
David Bowie’s past. The other topic discussed online is David
Bowie’s obsession with Nazism.
From a 1971 interview with his publicist Dai Davies,
‘One of the reasons, probably the main reason, that the Nazis
were trying to build up a race of supermen was to combat the
homo superior when he arrives and stop him taking over the
world. The whole Nazi thing was given the image of a mission
by their very effective publicity machine, and it really appealed
to the youth of an entire nation. The leader that’s going to take
this country over will have to be a lot more youth orientated
than Powell. It’s the youth that are feeling the boredom most,
they are crying out for leadership to such an extent that they
will even resort to following the words of some guitar hero’.
‘I fell for Ziggy too. It was quite easy to become night and day
with the character. I became Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie went
totally out the window. Everybody was convincing me that I
was a messiah, especially on that first American tour. I got
hopelessly lost in the fantasy. I could have been Hitler in
England. Wouldn’t have been hard. Concerts alone got so
enormously frightening that even the papers were saying, ‘This
ain’t rock music, this is bloody Hitler! Something must be
done!’ And they were right. It was awesome. I’d be an excellent
dictator. Very eccentric and quite mad.’
David Bowie later apologised for his comments, saying that it
coincided with his excessive cocaine use.
Oliver James, drawing heavily on Pete and Leni Gillman’s
biography ‘Alias David Bowie’ has made an assessment of
David Bowie’s life from a psychologist’s point of view. But
like the Gillman’s he did not meet Terry, let alone get to know
him. He is, like psychiatric staff sometimes do even when the
patient is alive, when the patients is uncommunicative or
unreliable, working from third hand information that can
change with each telling. Now that Aunt Pat has been
diagnosed with Alzheimer’s diseasei, there are fewer people
left to tell Terry’s story. Angie Bowie and Kristina Amadeus
remain to remember Terry and both have spoken about him in
Dylan Jones posthumous biography, ‘David Bowie A Life’.
‘Ms Amadeus said: ‘She was in Poland when war broke out
and returned to Britain in distress. ‘She was emaciated and had
lost her teeth, rambling of torture and screaming constantly.
We never found out what had happened to her husband.
Without consulting the rest of the family, her elderly mother,
unable to cope, had Nora lobotomised. In this day and age,
Nora would
have been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder.’
Aunt Vivienne became depressed after marrying a US air force
officer and developing a sense of isolation as they moved from
base to base.’
‘They interviewed his aunt, Pat, who told them of her sisters’
insanity, but Ms Amadeus said her testimony was unreliable.
“There is no hereditary mental illness or history of suicide in
David’s maternal ancestry,” she said.’
Kristina Amadeus,
‘To publish this kind of assumption is irresponsible to say the
least, and extremely hurtful to me and other family
members. Does she not remember that he has
agrieving teenage daughter? And a new grandson who will
have to deal with potential bullying from peers? If it is
true that Ms Jones and David were ‘good friends over
decades’ (although he never mentioned her as a friend to
me) and that David loaned her his home in Mustique as a quiet
place to write, then I find it truly disgusting that she would
repay his kindness with such a callous conjecture just to hype
her poorly written and badly researched book.’
Dylan Jones says that Ms Amadeus’s research went against the
accepted narrative of Bowie’s life. “This is the first time I have
come across a conflicting report [against the story first told in
Alias David Bowie],” he said. “Kristina was incensed by the
way that his past had been
misrepresented, so I’m inclined to believe her.’’
Jones said that Terry’s schizophrenia was “beyond doubt” and
could suggest an inherited condition, but said that the
revelations about Bowie’s aunts meant that the weight of
evidence
was much lighter. He said that he now found it more likely that
Bowie’s remarks about inherited madness were ‘not informed
by genuine fear so much as a desire to play up to an exotic
image at a time when he was releasing his third album, The
Man Who Sold the World, in 1971.’It’s certainly true that
Bowie used the possibility that he had a slightly complicated
and perhaps exotic genetic disorder to beguile journalists and
he certainly used it in his music.’’
But if there is a hereditary or sociological chance that a child
or future child could suffer from schizophrenia, surely it is
better to prepare a coping strategy, as David Bowie did in case
they become ill. David Bowie believed his art would help him.
In an interview with Radio 1 in 1993 David Bowie said,
‘One puts oneself through such psychological damage in
trying to avoid the threat of insanity. You start to approach the
very thing you are scared of. It had tragically afflicted
particularly my mother’s side of the family. There seemed to be
any number of people who had various mental problems and
varying states of sanity. There were far too many suicides for
my liking, and that was something I was terribly fearful of . . .
I felt I was the lucky one because I was an artist and it would
never happen to me. As long as I could put these psychological
excesses into my music, and into my work, I could always be
throwing it off.’
‘If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing now,’ Bowie remarked in
another interview, ‘I’d either be in the nuthouse or in prison.’
Seven years after Terry died David Bowie said,
‘I often wonder how Terry’s life would have changed if he
were, by nature, artistic, if it would have released some of the
demons.’
Whatever the truth about the family and the history of mental
illness, and I believe that I have enough knowledge of
psychiatry and David Bowies music to present as accurate
account as is possible more research is needed to help sufferers
of schizophrenia.
I can understand why someone would be fiercely protective of
their relatives but Kristina Amadeus seems to be in well-
meaning denial. The mental health service is in crisis, any
endorsement of arts therapy would help patients struggling in
the community, often in isolation, squalor, and harassed by
locals who believe the gutter press stereotype that unfairly
describes patients as some sort of threat, when they are no
more likely to offend than anyone else except when drink and
or street drugs are involved. In fact patients are more likely to
be victims than offenders. Day resources have been shut down
where previously patient’s needs could be identified before
they escalate into an incident. David Bowie showed the world
that he could overcome his drug induced psychosis by
channelling his creativity into his work. Those suffering from
schizophrenia can do similar to a certain extent, as artists like
Arthur Wallis and Thomas did in pre medication and physical
treatment days, treatments that those who suffered from
mental illness in David Bowie’s family had to endure. No-one
is saying that arts therapy is a cure, but it has shown that it can
help for over a hundred years while other therapies have been
discredited, as I explain in my booklet, Art and Schizophrenia.