In the 1970s, David Bowie and Jimmy Page bonded over a shared interest in esoteric beliefs, specifically the teachings of occult guru Aleister Crowley, the philosopher, magician, poet and painter who delighted in the title 'The Wickedest Man In The World'.
But the pair's relationship would sour, to the point that Bowie started storing his urine in a fridge as he apparently feared that Page and a satanic coven planned to steal his bodily fluids to conceive the Antichrist.
Bowie and Page first met back in 1965, when Bowie's band, The Manish Boys, hired session guitarist Page, then 21, to play on their cover of Bobby Bland's I Pity the Fool. The pair spoke warmly of one another at the time, but their relationship would take a darker turn in the mid '70s.
On night in February 1975, Page joined Bowie and American singer Ava Cherry for drinks at Bowie's Manhattan townhouse. As recounted in Paul Trynka's excellent Bowie biography Starman, the atmosphere between the two English superstars was "strained" on the night, and only worsened when Page apparently spilled wine on some silk cushions and sought to deflect the blame onto Cherry. At this point, Bowie allegedly decided it was time for Led Zeppelin's guitarist to leave, and told Page, "Why don't you take the window."
Paul Trynka writes, 'The two glared at each other; Page seemed to be invoking dark forces against David, who in turn, says Ava Cherry, "wanted to show Jimmy that his will was stronger."
Bowie was already aware of Aleister Crowley, and had actually namechecked him in the song Quicksand on his 1971 album Hunky Dory. But his fears that Page's superior knowledge of Crowley would give him a more powerful command of the dark arts led Bowie to develop a full-blown obsession with Crowley and a mounting paranoia that ominous forces were about to derail his life, which, to be fair, he was doing quite nicely himself at the time, while existing on a diet of cocaine and milk. As noted by rock critic Casety Rae in his book William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ’n’ Roll, Bowie's cocaine-fuelled delusions actually led him to begin storing his own urine in a fridge in order to thwart potential attempts by Page-affiliated witches to conceive the AntiChrist in some sort of sex magick ritual. Better safer than sorry, we guess.
There is no record whatsoever of any witches ever attempting such sorcery, we should make clear here.
Cocaine: one hell of a drug.
