Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Off the Record. I'm your host Jordan Runtug, Thanks so much for listening. Our latest chapter followed David Bowie in the late sixties, a thrilling, colorful time when his creativity soared to new heights. After facing half a decade of near constant rejection from the mainstream music industry, David had started to rebel. Instead of chasing pop hits, he embraced the avant garde arts
scene that was beginning to blossom in London. He famously studied mime under the Great Lindsey Kemp, crucial training that would enhance his skills as an evocative theatrical live performer. Another key figure in this period was Mary Finnegan, David's friend lover and someone unusually his landlord. Their meeting is a touching reminder of the open hearted hippie ethos of the time. David had been visiting friends who lived out
in a sleepy London suburb of Beckenham. Mary, a neighbor, heard David's strumming his guitar and invited him in for a cup of tea. By the time their cups were cleared, she had invited him to move into the spare room of her apartment. It was a warm beginning of their creatively fruitful union. A journalist by day, Mary was deeply involved with the London underground scene, a vibrant community of artists and activists looking to shape the populace out of
their spiritual complacency. Together, she and David formed the Folk Club at a local pub called the Three Tons, transforming the back room every Sunday into a mini hate Ashburrier Greenwich Village coffeehouse. They took their cues from the arts labs for alternative arts centers that had begun in central London, bringing their far out ideas from the capital to the country. David soaked up the stimulating creative atmosphere. It freed his mind.
Innovative new songs began to pour out of him, some of which would find a home on breakthroughs like Hunky Dorry and Space Oddity. More than just searching for his sound, David also sought his spiritual path. He and Mary were both deeply immersed in Tibetan Buddhism and meditation practices. David had studied under the Llama himmy Rimposh and spent time in a monastery in Scotland. He briefly considered becoming a monk, but ultimately the music one out. Mary is still a
writer and still passionate about Buddhism. She most recently published a book called Sex and Violence and Tibetan Buddhism, The Rise and Fall of Sung y'all Riposh. She also recorded her electrifying period with Bowie in a two thousand sixteen memoir, the perfectly titled Psychedelic Suburbia, which I highly recommend. I was lucky enough to speak with Mary recently. I'm grateful for her time, her help, her memories, and her meditation advice.
I hope you find it helpful too. I guess just to begin, tell me about yourself in nineteen sixty nine, you're living and backing them, working as a journalist. How evolved were you with the emerging alternative culture? Very involved. I was absolutely the mainstream journalist in nineteen eight Um. I happen to get caught up when I was undercover
investigating the drug scene in London. I got caught up in a bust and I had a very small quantity of of dope on me in my handbag, which I immediately handed over to the cops and explained why I was there that that was, and nobody really understood what
was going on at the time. The place where I was had a very large dealing scene, with keyloads of everything and thousands of LSD trips, so I was kind of lumped in with these, and I think when I finally came to trial, the judge and the lawyer that I had originally briefed on this simply didn't know what they were dealing with and they couldn't tell the pens between a thirty five millionaiter film canister of grass and the key loads of hash ege that were found in
that house. So I was given a nine month prison sentence, of which I served nine weeks before I got an absolute discharge on appeal. Before I ran to jail, and during and after, I'd made a lot of friends in the notting Hill Gate, West London, North London alternative scene, which was just emerging into all its glory in those days. The freaks they appeased, the wonderful psychedelic era, Yeah, and they were much more interesting than anybody I knew in
journalism much more fun, much more exciting. And so when I came out as a prison I was offered a job at the Sunday Times, and I was offered one of the daily express. The Sunday Times was Fashion, which I didn't want to do, and the dead expressive Future Righting, which I thought would be okay but which actually turned
out to be gruesome. And I lasted about more, maybe six months, and after that I just said, no, thank you, I can't do this, and so I went feelance and basically took a five year holiday from the five day week. And I was by that time very well immersed in the psychedelic culture. One morning, I mean this is all in the book, I was sitting on my patio and my ground floor flat and having ingested some tincture of cannabis, and I heard this wonderful music playing from the top
floor flat, which had a window open. It was March and the weather was quite bal meat for that time of year, and m I sort of called up and said, who's that singing? Playing some very interesting chord changes on the guitar. I thought, this is not your usual strumming sweet chord amateur, and um, this sort of pale slightly snotting those head poked out of the window with a pale of bomb curls around it, and said it's me
and David. How are you? And said I'm married and I'm fine, and I like to all music and would you like to come downstairs and try my teacher of cannabis. So he did, and we had a very nice time together, talked a lot and found that we had a lot in common. And um, in a fit of sort of spontaneous generosity, he said, I've got the spare bedroom you'd like to move in, And he was living with his parents after having split up his girlfriend Hamione. Um, and so if you said yes, please, And so a couple
of days later he turned up on the doorsteps. How did his arrival all to your life? I know in your book? He said, he didn't exactly travel light, No, no, no. Initially it was just him and the case source, rucksack whatever and the twelve sting Gibson, which I think he'd been gifted by Pete Townsend. And about a week later there was a knock at the door and there was a friend of his with the truck parked outside, and
the friend unloaded. Um, some large speakers, some amplifiers, a couple of tape decks and mic stands, and various other boxes of wires and gizmos and peddles and you name it into my hallway to the extent that my kids couldn't actually get from their beddings of the loo um.
You know, this course a little bit of consternation in the family unit, because basically, although I was very altransitive at that time, I was also very bourgeois in the way that I made sure that the kids had a proper family life, and that they went to school and not fed, and that their needs were met. So this created a bit of a problem because really, you know, all this stuff certainly wouldn't go into his room, which
was actually quite small. So we had to have a conference, and it went in what used to be the banning room, which was now a sort of chill out room with mattresses and cushions and their small low table and a big Hi fi and a lot of records, and there was some room in there, so the rest of it went in there. It just, I mean, he had an incredible map of being able to take over with of
actually making me feel resentful, a very charming person. Indeed, in those days I was entranced by him, and the kids liked him too, so they adapted very quickly to this change in our circumstances, and they thoroughly enjoyed it. And David was very productive, and he spent a lot of time writing songs and working them out and playing them and then saying to us in a sort of slightly diffident manner, like, what new song would you like to hear it? And the answer was always yes, pleasingly
and if it was always wow, that was rather good. Um, so it was time it was really nice. Are there any songs that you hear now and you think, oh, my goodness, I remember hearing that when it was just a germ of an idea. Wow, Yeah, that does happen. But you see, I don't listen to that very much nowadays. UM. I have to confess that I am not a huge
Bowie fan. There's a lot of his music that I really like, particularly the early albums, not the first one, but the one he wrote when he was living with us, and Hunky Dorry and The Man Who Sold the World and the Z I like all those, but then asked to that I really kind of you know, I don't
know what it was. There were some wonderful songs that were individual tracks as I liked, but I'm a much more under and grateful Dead Birds West Coast, The Who the Rolling Stones to Be Eating was all that psychedelic era that was much more Crosby Stills, et cetera. All of those were the ones that I really loved. And then I absolutely totally and my David Bowie's expertise in
all areas of his career. I think he was a genius and there's no question about that, but it's whether it actually that particular way of presenting things fix the individual music is very particular, and for me it doesn't. When you knew him and we're listening to him writing songs, did you think that he was destined for for you know, what was to come, this superstartom to come? Or was that not even you know, on anyone's radar at that point. I was certainly not online, but I did realize that
he was a very talented musician. And as you probably know, we started the folk club together at a local pub on or Sunday night. And as soon as he started doing that, so he didn't have any geeks and he didn't have any money when he had a few gigs want or two and my twelve year old daughter roaded for him once when he was doing a king um you know, I blanked so off school for the day um. But he had a lot of time to prepare for the Sunday mats at the Feet Stub and he made
a very very good job of it. It was totally professional and the people that he invited to sort of do the headlining, he always did a long set and
he compared it um uh. And it was almost instantaneously, wildly successful, and we turned it into a psychedelic camping in the back of the pub on back in the high street and if you're I don't suppose you know, back in the the typical South London suburb and um deeply boring really, so this was something that the local community and particularly young ones, were absolutely entranced by and loved it. And it was from about week three it
was absolutely jampacked. It couldn't get in the door and David and I initially did it to have a little bit of money, but we were sharing it with the couple in the upstairs trap were friends APIs and of mine. The four of us did it together, so we were not actually getting more than you know, basically drinks, money and maybe a little bit over for some food, but
certainly nothing spectacular. And then at a certain point said to David one evening, do you think we should turn the Pholt Club into an arts up And he said, not a bad idea, because he was a polymath. He wasn't just a musician, he was an actor. He like he did all the posters for the Sunday most of them anyway, And if he kind of interest in the visual arts so and poetry and literature, he was very
open and curious. And I think that was one of the most remarkable things about David throughout his life, was his insatiable curiosity for new forms of inspiration and pleasure. So anyway, we asked the audience at the next Sunday night would you like this to become an art slab? And they all stood up and cheered and said yes.
And the Conservatory became a showcase for all the local artists, poster makers, puppeteers, beads and jewelry and books and prints and paintings and absolutely everything you could think of, and people came and stood up, and because you know the fact tub tradition, people just turned up. I say can I do a couple of numbers? And it says, well, yes, of course there's there any good they can come back.
If they're not, they can't. Basically, I think between June and oct November it flourished and not just the young people, but all of Beckenham ended up being drawn into it because we used to do street theater on a Saturday morning through the high Street when everybody was doing their shopping. So we were unavoidable, right, these rarely weird, bizarre people dressed in very exchange very strange things and are very
very conservative suburb. And then we did the Free Festival in August and um, it was the most beautiful day that anybody could possibly experience. It was magical and wonderful. And you may know David's memory of the Free Festival do you yes? I do? It was a beautiful song. He was not very happy because his dad had died a few days earlier, so he was in deep mourning
because he loved his dad very much. He was grief stricken. Um, but he played, you know, he was the thorough professional and he did his job, and um, nobody would have known when he was on the stage, but when he was not on the stage, he was a very grumpy and unpleasant person. But we all knew why, and we certainly didn't hold it against How did you first come to write your book? How did you decide the time
was right? It was really um. I was talking to Angie at one stage, I think on Skype, and this is Angie Bowie, David's future wife that your friends with. We've been through periods when we've been good friends, and we've been through period is when we have not really wanted to know each other yet the moment we're are good friend. Once um I said to her, don't you think we should record the time in Beckenham because it was so unique and it was really the crucible where
David refined his talent. It was the arts lab where he first acquired a following and made that following stick with him and made it grow. And of course it was while he was still living in Beckenham that he made his breakthrough with Ziggy and and she said, yeah, not bad idea. What do you want to call it? And I said it would have to be psychedelic suburbia, and she immediately went off the idea because to her it was not that the art side and the psychedelic
stuff that happened before she came on the scene. She did overlap with it. It was the time when she was there and they were all living at Trampton Hall and David wrote A Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory and they didn't sold very well. They're sold, but not reallytely. And then Angie and Freddie Burretti, between them and David with the music, they actually created ZDDY and it was Angie styling that made that happen. It was her way of, you know, just being a little
bit more outrageous than anybody else around. And um, that's the story aroun Angie's life. So the idea that I wanted to focus on that the outside period didn't really work for her, and so she said, that's your idea, you do it. So I did, and I thought, Okay, they've been an awful lot of Barrier books, but nobody has really gone into detail and recorded the time when he moved from Bromley to Beckenham and then onwards and
out into the big wave world. So I'm going to do the Beckenham art snap and that period, and I'm going to make a sort of chronicle record of it so that it's there. And that's why I did it, mostly because it was being ignored. Most of the books and most of the moves, most of the documentaries just get edited out. The art sad they barely mentioned it. It was just seem as kind of like, O, well, you know, he did a hippie thing for a bit, moved on. It was not like that at all, and
so it really discredits it. So I thought I put it on record, So that's what I did. And it's been a very interesting time since that book was published because it got massive publicity because just before you Don't need I was in huge demand to know, do interviews. On the day that he died, I was one of the most intense days of my entire life. Um. But the book is a record of a period which to me has got more significance than pretty well anything that
happened since. Do you remember the last time you saw him? Yes? I do, yes, it was the party that they gave hat happen all after the Earl's Court City concept, and it's had more off he had morphed from being you know, a lad from the suburbs into a major rock star. And the people who came to that party were exactly the sort of people that who would expect right musical executives, the glitterati, and and they were awful. I mean, I just hate being around those people and mean insincere yash
bladder bladder, flapper flapper and darling. And you know, I enjoyed the party. It was really quite good fun. And then when it came time to leave, David was wearing his ziddy costume. Um. He walked to the front boort with us with his arm around my shoulders and he said, oh, you're a wonderful woman there, I Finnigan, I will never forget you, and gave me a kiss and a hug. And that was the last time I ever spoke to him.
Is there a memory that you think of with David that still makes you smile or laugh to the stay? I supposed the seduction was probably the most entertaining bit. I just watched sticks in my mind because I knew that he was going to go there before it actually did, and I was very I was totally willing um, but he did it so beautifully. I've done a shift at the Sunday times and I came back and I was always quite tired because it was very full long, and he had supper for me, a very very nice supper,
which was extremely rare. He normally, you know, I always did the cooking or the kids threw something together. But he cooked a very lovely supper for me, with a nice bottle of white wine and then a couple of nice clifts, and then we went into his room and he put cushions the floor, m in a sort of nest, you know, and he put these two big speakers one either side of me and settled me into this and then played me his favorite music through these enormous speakers.
And I remember the one piece that really got to be was Jimmy Hendrix of the Phasing. I can't remember which album of Hendrix it was, but when it went goes all the way around the room from one speaker to the other and then back again, and I was absolutely I've never heard that before, the really good stereo. And yeah, so yeah, one thing led to another obviously. That was the you know, the seduction. It was delightful.
I wanted to ask you more about David's devotion to Tibetan Buddhism, because it sounds like that was a significant part of his life around this period. I know in later years said that he considered taking his house and going up to the to the monastery in Scotland and becoming a monk. I'm not sure how true that is, but it's true. We talked about Buddhism quite a bit during our firesight chants which were went on into the
Resmall lives. He had definitely was, as always, I think, ahead of the curve, and that he was interested in Tibetan Buddhism before it became trendy, before it caught on, and he met this lama called Jimmy Rimbuchet, and Jimmy talked to Meditation and introduced him to Tibetan Buddhism, and
David took it very seriously. Before I had any knowledge of him, he had been to Samuel in Scotland, which was the first Tibetan center in the West, and he had stayed there for quite some time, and I think the idea of becoming a monk, becoming ordained, had cost his mind. He certainly mentioned that to me, but he never really shook off the music, and he said it
interrupted his meditation. It was with him when he was out walking, and at a certain point he realized that he wasn't being true to himself, and so he just went back to London and picked up his career. And that was before I met him, but I think it was quite soon before I met him, and we talked about it a lot, and it was already resonating for me because the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo the Dol, to give it its correct title, was kind
of required reading amongst the psychedelically leaked. I had already read it and thought that it was magnificent and was interested anyway, and I'd done a bit of zen meditation, so I was very interested in what he had to tell me about this, and I read up a lot more and I met Jimmy. Jimmy came and did a gig with us in the Bromley Arts Center um where we had one sort of avant garde ensemble who played at the few times they played, and then Jimmy gave
a talk on Buddhism. And this was a very posh, very very beautiful house with a garden around it and sort of parquet floors and a grand piano and in a gilt chairs. It was all quite proper, but we managed to pull it off, which was quite surprising considering that by us the three times was a ramble. But anyway, what we were invited back. Meditation is something that I've
really struggled with. I want to incorporated into my life, and maybe people listening do too, But I really struggle with stopping my mind and stopping the thoughts and just quieting everything down. How do you transcend that? Do you have any advice for people just starting out and really struggling with meditation. It's perseverance. You really have to be very kind to yourself and not get frustrated by the
thoughts as they arise. Um and the What seems to work for me is that you have two be aware of whoever thought comes from and where it goes to, and without giving too much away, because you don't want to give people preconceptions about what choice at once you understand that, but there's really nothing. Where had it come from? Where is it going to? You know? There ain't nothing, There's nothing there. They have no solid form, They do not have a base and they do not have a destination.
So once you get the hang of being a little bit more observant of the thoughts, because they will always be there, but you will begin to be able to access the gaps between them, and that's when it starts to get interesting. It's where you find that meditation has some value because suddenly that mental chatter slows down a lot, and you get a sense of calm and you understand how it's possible to act access a different level of energy, and it gets to the point where you want to
be able to do that more effectively. And then you need a really skilled and experienced teacher because very few people can take it any further than that without help, because it is down to the skill and experience of the teacher to guide you through those processes. Because it's very easy to say I can't do this, I've got too much of a busy head, you know, and most people have. But eventually it is possible to have a much less busy head, and the value of that becomes
very obvious when you get the hang of it. Um Now, if you wanted to take this step further, I would suggest looking up Tara Mandala dot org and it's run by my friend Sortier Madrionium Lama sim in um Okay. It's Corpagosa Springs in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. And I don't know anybody who is better at helping people to get started and be motivated than Saltian. Thank you so much for sharing that you're speaking of people's
spiritual journeys. What do you think David was looking for in a spiritual practices and his music, which I'm sure is an extension of a spiritual practices, Well, I think yeah. I mean, the boiler line between art and and and contemplation is so fine, it's like a fine embrane. I think that that David was always looking for something that was so far over into the left field that accessing it was a new inspiration. I think he went through a period in his career when he was very repetitive
and and really didn't bother too much. He just churned out a whole bunch of stuff more or less, you know, because that's what you do when you're a famous rock star. But some of his work, I mean, you can tell from the nature of it that he is really exploring an extraordinary range of dimensions things very influenced by space travel and the cosmos, and very influenced by human quirks and idiosyncrasies and left field. I mean, Lindsay Kemp was
a huge influence on him and very much beloved. And I adored Lindsay and met him through David and he became very good friends. And then he was absolutely totally right out there on the sort of leading avant garde edge of art. I mean, he was a mine and that he was a dancer. He was just a holy and an absolutely totally inspirational person. I mean, I found Lindsay sort of operated in the way that he inspired people and ray as he got French people and they
very stimulated alamos. He was definitely of a different league, a different order, and I think that David was too. Actually, I don't think there are many David Bowie's ever incarnate at any particular moment. I think they're very rare. Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.