John Lennon & David Bowie (The John Lennon Story, Chapter 7)

called friends. This is Special Agent Jim Steele with the Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number double oh nine's zero eight zero four nine one. Case subject is Lennon, John Winston oh No. This information pertains to a period ending December. Interview subject as the Jones David Robert a k A. David Bowie Interview number nine Dash nine three day zero eight four day zero one Recall number two December twenty two. John was the omnique pistle I got

to know. Unfortunately it was near the end of his life. I must have made young Americans. It was one of those associations that lost at about the length of the recording sessions, and then we didn't see each other for about a year. But when we didn't reconnect, we started to pick up a woman was quickly becoming a very

instructive and deep relationship. He was from an art school, and a lot of our conversations were about the world of the arts and my an artist wants to do things in the first place, very dramatic and philosophical two

o'clock a morning conversations, that sort of thing. He would rifle through the avant garde, look for ideas that were on the outside, on on the preferey of the mainstream, and then he'd applied those ideas in a functional manner to something that was considered populist and make it work. Can take the honest idea and make it work for the masses. That was like making old work for the

people and for the elite. And the people responded some with adoration humanity, and then they were those who thought the John was the elitist, that he was bamboozling with them. In the response to those people of one person in particular, Al that's the reason why there's so much blood in the tract m Yeah, chapter seven, John Lennon and Deep at Bowie was a monumental year for me because perhaps the most important year in my professional life. Many people

don't know this. You see, most people think I had my act together from day one and it was all calculated that I'm morphed and evolved with ease Major Tom to Ziggy Stardust, Ziggy Stardust to a lad Insane. But I was winging it. I was making chance look calculated. What does it do say in America? Fake it till you make it right by n I couldn't keep faking. I had to make it. So that year everything changed, and it changed because I met John Lennon. Unfortunately it

was near the end of his life. John Lennon took one look at me and new I had something to give. I had to tear it all down start over. So I killed Ziggy Stardust and I drew the curtain on a lad Insane. But the best lesson John gave me it wasn't it just about the music or the character I was playing. It was about the business of arts and the people I was working with. Instructive John looked me dead in the eyes and said, you're being shafted by your present manager. He was talking about my manager,

Tony de three, of course main main management. My relationship with Tony had deteriorated over the years. I had become increasingly concerned that I was being taken advantage of. John knew of all about these sorts of concerns and paranoias, after all that business with the Beatles and Alan Klein philosophical And it was just a month earlier, in December of the Beatles officially dissolved, each of them, untangling himself from the acrimonious web that Alan Klein had spun. Derek

is a true Are the Beatles really finished? No, not until they die. As long as they live and as long as they like each other, anything could happened. And so John saw tony stranglehold on my career is unhealthy. Naturally he over my eyes to the fact that it wasn't just Tony, you see, was the concept of managers in general. There's too much powerful one person. In John's eyes, there was no such thing as good management. All management

was shit. Well, I have one person control every aspect of my career when I could simply in ploy individuals is needed to help me with specific wants. Well, that was the question to talk of the morning conversations. John had been through all that. He was wise, He was like an older brother. Really. He completely changed my perspective

on the business of art. And then we made a song out of the whole atle deal like a middle finger of a song that was directed not just at people like Tony d'free and Alan Klein, but at the intequated notion that an artist must be controlled by someone with business since and we arrived at that song entirely by chance. It was January. I was in New York City Electric Lady Studios. Sessions had resumed for my new album,

Young Americans. I've been introduced to John not long before, I Believe in Los Angeles by Elizabeth Taylor Rule People. She was trying to get me to start in a movie Villa God bless John's on me. Be sure, I want to know. That's another story entirely. I knew that John lived in New York, so I reached out to him. I told him I was planning to record a cover of Across the Universe, that beautiful song of his from Let It Be. I asked if he wanted to come

by the studio and play on the track. It was during the session for Across the Universe that we hit upon this other song. By chance, my guitarist Carlos Alamar was fooling around with this old R and B riff. I think it was called foot stomping, one of the riffs he perfected when he played with James Brown, but

he slowed it down, made it something new. I heard him keep playing it, repeating it, and before I knew it, John was shouting aim in this falseesso hook over the guitar, and that's how fame began, completely organic, out of thin air and rifle through the avant guls. Of course, it wasn't out of thin air. I know that now we're on the outside. We've been talking about bad managers and bad business deals and the whole bloody concept of being famous.

John and I those conversations, along with my change perspective on what became my new reality as an artist and a businessman, there was all fuel that went into the creative engine. Who part those ideas in a functional manner. Carlos was the perfect collaborator. Like I said, he played with James Brown back in the late sixties, and so he had his own personal history with this sort of controlling figure that John and I wanted to rail against.

He left James Brown after James doctors paycheck for missing one of his musical cues. Carlos said, fuck this, I'm gone. Last fame. Funk this, We're gone. That was like making old work for the people and for the elite, because what is fame? After all? Was it good for a good seat in a restaurant? That's about it. People who don't have fame are the ones who wanted. People who have fame are always looking for our way to get

rid of it. It's worth noting that a half year after we released Fame, James Brown himself borrowed Carlos as lick for his song hot I Need to be Loved, Love, Love, Love, and the Carlos ever saw a dime off that as far as the song Fame goes, this would prove to be my first number one hit in America and the people whisper It also redefined who John was as an artist. Fame saved him from becoming some old time rock and roll nostalgia peddler and lifted him into the upper echelon

of the New York City avant garde. The honest idea and make it work for the masters a moment in time, the song, the session, the wisdom might gleaned from John. And that was my turning point. I took the young Americans masters and I locked them in a bankful I didn't want Tony too free touching them. And then I told our CIA that I wanted to go separate ways with Tony, and then I needed the complete support, which

I got. People responded, you know what our CIA said to Tony when they asked him why they were siding with me over him in the split because Tony, they said, you can't see the details of mar Setselman with Tony have been and will always be confidential. You see. But everything that lay ahead for me, station to station, low heroes, Lodger, scary monsters, that was all made with an autonomy and a confidence that I never would have had if it

were not for John Lennon, very instructive and deep relationship. Now, unbeknownst to me, John was continuing to struggle with his own concept of fame. Have fame affected every single as fact of his life, Even in New York City where he could walk down the street and remain relatively unbothered. Fame got to him, It got to others close to him. Another song says fame can take you over, drive you to crime, and even make you the target of others.

One very tangible thing that fame almost always leads to is cocaine. My own daily diet around was coffee, four packs of kit Hans, Bell peppers, milk straight from the carton, and cocaine. John and I shared an affinity for this stuff. It's funny you get access to all these drugs when you become famous, but then it begins to feel as if the reason you're taking the drugs is to forget the fact that you are famous. Cocaine help me cope. It helped me disappear into whatever role I was playing

at the time. It helped me to adjust to the increased pressures, the NonStop schedules, the attention from mainstream. And then when you get used to the pressures and schedules and attention, you don't want it anymore, any of them. That's when cocaine comes in head you once again, when it's lonely at the top. Drugs make you forget that you're famous, the fact that you have the very thing you thought you wanted only to find it's not at all how you are may and it would be personally.

I was entering into what the medical community would probably refer to as cocaine psychosis around this time, not that I knew what there was or that I was experiencing it. I think I called Hitler, the world's first rock star, said that I love fascism, so my analytist wants to do things. I seriously thought that one of my business advisors was secretly a CIA agent, and that one of

my backing singers was actually a vampire. John's grash course in how to take control of my career was invaluable, but I still didn't have control over myself, and John had no control over himself either. Now in John had a lot to be happy about. He had a brand new son, Sean, who stole his heart. His fight against the United States had come to a positive conclusion, which would directly lead to his green card and citizenship. But

good news doesn't tame the beast. You don't walk into a hotel room stuck to the guilt with cocaine and champagne and think, now you know what, I've got a new son and new lease on life. I'll pass now you say I'm up, I've gone next to and pock of the morning, and then you roll up a dollar bill and you make a count. When faced with a party, John party just as hard as the rest of us. He went as hard as some of them notorious figures

who didn't survive the party from law school. But it could have been any of us who didn't survive the party. That could have been John Lennon in Bonzos shoes. Right, Fate rolled the dice, and Fate decided that Bonham will be the one who left the proverbial building. Before that happened, however, the two John's found themselves in the same room in

the same way, both equally tempting fate. In six John and his friend Jesse A. Davis, the guitarist who was so great in taj Mahals Band, walked into led Zeppelin's hotel suite at the Plaza in New York, only to find the greatest rock drummer in the world up to his sinus cavity in Heroin Well. Technically, when John arrived, Bornom was on his knees, hands desperately clutching the cold,

damp toilet, absolutely puking his guts. Out. Johna found himself in similar positions throughout his life, though he didn't have the same herculean stamina as Bonhom. Barnham was a heavyweight in that regard, a man who could take three, four, even five times more than what the average rock star could take before he found himself praying to a porcelain guard on the outside. Bonhom, they've been doing China White

that night. China White was no joke. It was Bonhom great junk, forty to pure rather than the usual ten percent pure smack you'd find on the streets. But even for Bottom it proved to be too much. Every time he'd snort the stuff, he'd be back puking into the toilet. The fact that one of rock and roll's most undefeated imbibers was having a rough go of it didn't face John,

though one bit reply those ideas. In a functional matter, John thought himself invincible, which is another side effect of fame, and no sooner did he snorts of bottom sized snorts of China White that he too was on his knees pushing Bottom out of the way. The two Johns sick as dogs in Zeppelin's suite of the Plaza. We're fighting for air and jockeying for position of the toilet. Instructive and deep relationship. They made it through that moment and

through the night. Bonzo probably walked out of that room and played a show at masin Square Garden in front of thousands. He wouldn't always be that lucky. Lifestyle caught up with him in the end. There he caught up with me too. Across I was seeing things, imagining things, believing things that weren't to be believed. One thing I still believe is that there is an evil in this world. And I'm not talking about shady managers. You don't need to be in cocaine psychosis to know that evil walks

among us. An evil is what would eventually catch up to John, long before his rock and roll lifestyle ever. Could We'll be right back after this world word word. It was the summer of n when I ran into John again Hong Kong. Why I was in Hong Kong, I can't quite remember. Was I on holiday touring? Maybe I was touring with Iggy. Actually, that's all we did for the idiots. His first solo record are produced after

the Stooges broke up. Comical, that's not important. But John was there too, It turns out, in Hong Kong, vacationing with his son Sean, who was only a few years old at the time. They'd stop to explore the city for a few days before they meet up with Yoko in Japan, and so we quickly picked up where we'd left off and bonded over being two Englishmen in Hong Kong. We started to pick up. John continued to teach me

so much without even trying to teach me. I don't even know that he realized what he was doing, but he was continuing to get me free lessons in fame. We'll be walking down the street and someone would stop us and say to John, excuse me, but aren't you John Lennon, And John will give them this confused look, absolutely straight faced, like he'd never received that question before in his life and never in a million years expected to. And then he'd say, no, I'm not John Lennon, but

I wish I had his money. And then the person asking if John was John would realize, well, ship, of course it wasn't John. It was like John had this mind control to make a person doubt their own belief with mere words. So of course I stole that line. It was. It was just too good. It deflected any and all unwanted attention you received out in public. And I swear to God that this happened. Just months later

in New York City. I was walking down the street, so I believe, when someone passed me by and shouted, are you David Bowie, to which I gave the reply, well, no, but I wish I had his money, You lying bastard. The voice shot back of me, you wish you had my money. I thought, wait a minute, I know that voice, so I looked up. Bloody Yeah it was John, honest to God. But back in Hong Kong things got weird more often than not. We had fame to thank for that, not the not the song, but the fact that we

were famous. Because as much as we like to actively try to disassociate ourselves from the spotlight, fame gave us opportunity, like the opportunity to be in Hong Kong at that moment. John would dote on Shaun during the day, showing the sights. At night, you'd often leave him with a nanny who was traveling with them, and then John and I would go and get ripped roaring drunk, obnoxiously drunk, really and

a functional on it. The kind of drunk you get in public only when you're famous, because the fame or the money, whatever it is, it provides a safety net, or an illusion of a safety net. And what's the worst thing is going to happen? We get tossed out of a strip club for being too rowdy? This this is It's not like we're going to lose our jobs because of some drunken shenanigans. We weren't going to cease being famous. Now have we known we were being tossed

out of strip clubs by members of trying gangs. Yeah, maybe we would have minded our men as a bit more. But your most oblivious to the world around you when you yourself are on your way to oblivion. One of those nights, oblivion came calling on the property of the mainstream.

John got a hankering to try monkey brains. I think the whole thing is a myth, perhaps an urban legend, not to mention downright ghastly, But I was both curious and drunk, and I was hanging out with John Lennon after all, so of course I was going We went trotting drunkenly around these backstreets looking for a place that served monkey brains. And we found a place, but it's

been late in the evening. They overclosed, which was probably for the best because we looked in through the windows and saw all these small tables with holes cutting them, and my stomach just knotted up. John was pointing at the tables and explaining how they would put the monkey under the table and stick its head up through the hole.

And while my imagination was just running away with me and I was thinking about what supposedly happens next once you get the monkey up through the table in the hole you want, these two guys in the restaurant walked towards us and unlocked the door. Well, they knew it was John Lennon, and unlike those other times that he denied it, John fessed up. Yes, of course he was that John Lennon. People were sponded their motioned for him to come inside. I tried to follow, but they shut

the door in my face and made me wait. They were talking to John, but they were speaking in Cantonese, and I know for a fact that John didn't speak Cantonese. He was nodding along as if he understood, and then he followed them back into the back of the restaurant, the kitchen. I imagine a few minutes went by. I started to panics. I didn't know who these men were. I didn't know what their plans were, their intentions. I didn't know why they wanted John, if he was being

that to safety or danger. They'd locked the door behind them. Of course, I'm haste and chain smoked downside. What what else could I do? And then we didn't see And then just a few minutes later, John emerged from the back room. One of the men walked him straight to the front door, unlocked it, and led him outside. John was beyond drunk. He was terribly high. He was grinning. He was grinning, but there was a look of consternation behind his smile, almost as if he wasn't happy that

he was happy. I asked him, what had happened? What did what they've done back there? He looked at me. We loved eyes philosophical two o'clock in the morning. His eyes were spinning, His lids were bobbing up and down, like they were on a bungee cord. The snake, he said, and his eyes went wild. They had me drink the bloods of a snake on the periphery of the mainstream. I admit I was a bit jealous about that monkey brains. Not interested blood of a snake. I mean, come on,

sign me up. And as stones as he was, John could tell I wasn't hiding my disappointment. Well, be playing for it. He had returned with a gift. He told me to close my eyes, so I did, and then he told me to open my mouth, which I did. Why don't, he said, And then I felt something insund my mouth. It was cold and moist. I immediately regretted playing along from school. John's hand shoved the gelatinous oval down my throat, so I swallowed, and then I nearly

vomited it all back up. Well the funk was there, I asked, opening my eyes. The taste of sulfur and dirt and ammonia coated my tongue. He of me it was a thousand day old egg. It was just the name. It wasn't actually one thousand days old. But it was an egg that had been cooked in horse urane, coated in manure, and buried in the fucking ground for a few days. Why someone would do. That is beyond me.

And how John knew so many details about precisely how the egg was prepared for men speaking a language he didn't speak is also beyond me. But then John was beyond me. An artist wants to do things in the first place. I may have done well for myself in the years to follow, but I always felt the shadow of John Lennon Loomy over my shoulder, near my feet. Now that was fame, the kind of fame that can be immortal in your mind, even if in real life

it rooves to be deadly. Los Angeles, January six. Mel Evans giant hands dwarfed the little value pills he held in his palm. They were so small, mau was so big. He wondered whether they would even make a difference if he swallowed them. How could something so tiny have any kind of noticeable effect on a man of his size. He'd find out soon enough. Mouth threw the pills into his mouth and chased them with whatever clear liquor was in the glass. And his other hand he felt woozy, groggy,

and that was just the alcohol. Soon those little pills would make their appearance after all, and that would be when everything Mal thoughts said or did just felt gooey. Mal's girlfriend, Fran was worried. Mause seemed more despondent than usual. He wasn't making any sense. She called a friend. Mel picked up his thirty thirty rifle, walked upstairs and barricaded himself inside the bedroom of his rented duplex. That's when Fran called the police. Mal wasn't sure how he'd gotten here.

He was a long way from London, years removed from Beatlemania, though he remembered those days like they were yesterday because he was there just about every day. People called George Martin the Fifth Beatle or Billy Preston, but wasn't Mal Evans, jack of all trades and master of none, the true fifth Beatle. He'd been the Lad's bodyguard, then road manager, then person and little assistant. He helped put together the album cover collage of Sergeant Pepper's Only Hearts Club band.

He sang in the chorus of Yellow Submarine. He rang the alarm clock during the sessions for a Day in the Life. He hit the anvil during the sessions from Maxwell's Silver Hammer. He produced No Matter What, one of Bad Fingers biggest hits for Apple Records. That was then, This was now, and now wasn't so great? Where Mao had once again become a regular companion of his old friend John Lennon during that period of time when John became a lone wolf resident of l A. Now Mao

was alone again. Naturally, John was gone back to New York and presumably back to his wife Yoko. Meanwhile, Mao's wife didn't want him anymore and they were separated. She wanted a divorce. Mau thought that his friend Keith Moon would give him purpose again. Mooney hired Big Mal to produce his solo album, Two Sides of the Moon, but m c A Records fired Maw when it be came a parent that moons wild antics and Mao's excessive drinking

we're going to yield less than desirable results. And so now mal Evans was holed up inside the bedroom at eight one to to West fourth Street in l A. He didn't remember how many value he'd taken, or how many drinks he'd had, or why exactly he was holding the thirty thirty rifle in his hands. He heard voices coming from downstairs. It was more than just Fran, more than just Frand and a friend that she had called. Mal heard four or five, maybe six different voices, and

then Mal heard footsteps. They were coming upstairs. He checked the chamber of the rifle and realized that it wasn't loaded. Probably for the best. Mal Evans may have been a lot of things, but he wasn't the type to shoot a man. The LAPD cops who burst into the bedroom didn't know this about Mao. They didn't know that Mal's rifle wasn't loaded, and also didn't know that Mal wouldn't fire the damn thing if it was. The cops were armed, and there were two of them, and they pointed their

police issued thirty eights at Male's big frame. Put it down, Put the weapon down. They both yelled ultimatum and stereo. Mal just stood there holding the unloaded rifle, his hands gone gooey on the long, cold barrel, his head numbed by pills and alcohol. Mal couldn't feel the rifle in his hands. He couldn't feel anything as he moved his body to one side and absentmindedly aimed the butt of the rifles squarely at the cops. He did hear the

six gunshots as they rang out from the cops. Police issued thirty eights, but he never felt the four bullets center his body. Back in New York City, John Lennon heard about mal evans Is unexpected and untimely death at the age of forty. Like the rest of the Beatles and just about everyone else who knew mal John was gut it. The death of the Beatles manager Brian Epstein in seven have been tragic, especially for John, but Male's

death was more than tragic. It was violent, twisted. John thought back to the day in l a when he himself hid from the L A. P D On the second floor of an apartment. How they had chased him upstairs, shotguns locked and loaded. How close John Lennon's life came to ending in the same way mel Evans's life had ended. It was shocking. But what shocked John even more was the news that he received just days later. The phone inside John and Yoko's apartment at the Dakota Building rang out.

John was no longer paranoid that the US government will be waiting on the line to listen in to his every conversation. Nixon had resigned. John's phones were no longer bugged. In just a matter of months, he'd received his green card and become an American once and for all. John answered the phone. It was Neil aspen All, the Beatles former road manager, personal assistant and later a manager of

Apple Corps, calling from London. John could hear the fear and concern in Neil's voice all the way across the Atlantic as he frantically told John that Mao's remains had gone missing. Mal had been cremated in Los Angeles, after which Harry Nilson had been tasked with mailing males ashes back to his wife and mother in London. Harry put the ashes in the box just like he put the lime in the coconut, and then he sent them on their trip abroad. But they never arrived. There was no

record that they had ever existed. Big Mal had vanished just like that, And Neil Aspinall and John Lennon and all the others were left behind. Wonder what had happened? Why it was that one day someone was here and the next they were gone. And then how just days after that their memory was gone, to the thing they had left behind, no trace, No blood on the tracks. All right, everybody, thanks for listening to Blood on the Tracks.

If you like what you hear, be sure to find and follow Blood on the Tracks on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio, app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. On this season two of Blood on the Tracks, we'll be releasing ten episodes on the Incredible Life of John Lennon, with a new episode every Thursday. You can also binge all ten episodes of season one on the insane story of the notorious record producer Phil Spector right now. It's

available wherever you get your podcast. This episode of Blood on the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundie and hosted an executive produced by me Jake Brennan, also executive produced by Brady sad Story and copy editing by Pat Heally. This episode was mixed by Colin Fleming. Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spreaker. In this episode featured Rob Kendrick as David Bowie. Blood on the Tracks is produced

by Double Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot com on the Blood on the Track series page. If you want to chat about this show or hear more about the other shows, we're making a Double Elvis tap in on Instagram at double Elvis, on Twitter at double Elvis Fm, and now on Twitch where we're streaming three days a week at Twitch dot tv slash double Elvis Podcasts. And finally, be sure to check out disgrace Land, the award winning

music and true crime podcast that I also host. Disgrace Land is available only on the free Amazon Music. To hear tons of insane stories about your favorite musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly, go to Amazon dot com slash disgrace Land, or if you have an Echo device, just say Alexa play the disgrace Land podcast. Rock Am Dad