Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell has revealed his personal story of a number of “tragic” mistakes when it came to his relationship with David Bowie. The singer once gave away the icon’s phone number and email address.
Farrell recently worked with Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti on his new album ‘Kind Heaven’. But speaking to the NME Farell opened up about his ‘tragic’ relationship with Bowie when the Janes Addiction frontman was younger.
“I had a tragic relationship with David Bowie. I kept screwing up as a young man. I would do stupid things like one time I left my cellphone in a cab. The cab driver got a hold of it and started texting him, ‘Yo David, what’s up?’ in my name. Then he would be like, ‘Perry, what are you doing?’ This guy was constantly texting him and trying to get hold of him.”
Farrell continued that Bowie was sort of ok about the incident:
“He wasn’t mad at me, but he was annoyed by me. Then another time, somebody had approached me to do a bit of charity work to try to stop DuPont from polluting the waters. It might have been up around North America. So I thought ‘I do want to help this person, and I’m going to get David Bowie to help me too!’ I forwarded the text to David and it had maybe a chain of 200 people saying ‘I will help you’.”
Farrell explained: “I didn’t understand about blind CC’ing in those days, so I effectively gave like 200 people access to David’s private email. Again he text back saying, ‘Perry! What are you doing?’”
Farrell was hoping to resolve things with Bowie at a tribute show – but sadly the icon passed away before he had chance.
“Tony Visconti was going to be the musical director and I jumped at the chance and thought ‘This is it, I’m gonna make up with David and he’s gonna know me to be a sophisticated young man’, right? And then he passed away. So I never got a chance, but I did meet Tony at that time and that’s how I made that connection.”
Farrell concluded: “I never use the term ‘dead’, because I do know that the afterlife people are very much conscious – so maybe I’ll have the chance to catch up with him some day and thank him for being such an amazing artist that I really studied and aspired to be.”
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