In The Studio With

David Bowie

Honestly , no matter how thoroughly I prepare for an interview with a musician , I never can be totally certain of what might be revealed . I’ve been rattled more than once by a revelation from a musician for which there had been no previous report , but none more stunning than the one David Bowie gave me when the recording machine was turned off : according to Bowie , New York City police discovered that his name was next on a hitlist of targets of John Lennon’s assassin , Mark David Chapman .

At the time of Lennon’s December 8 , 1980 murder outside of his Manhattan apartment , David Bowie was starring just blocks away on Broadway in the play “The Elephant Man” . “I was second on his list,” Bowie told me in the New York studio we shared near Madison Square Garden .”Chapman had a front-row ticket to ‘ ‘The Elephant Man’ the next night . John and Yoko were supposed to sit front-row for that show , too . So the night after John was killed there were three empty seats in the front row . I can’t tell you how difficult that was to go on . I almost didn’t make it through the performance .”

The irony is that David Bowie’s first #1 hit “Fame” , from the Young Americans album which preceded Station to Station , was co-written with Lennon who also played guitar on the track  . And it was indeed their fame as rock stars which drew Mark David Chapman to stalk them , and subsequently , to murder Lennon .

-Redbeard