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 relished the moniker ‘The Wickedest Man In The World’.
However, their relationship deteriorated to the point where Bowie began storing his urine in the refrigerator out of fear that Page and a satanic cabal would use his bodily fluids to conceive the Antichrist.
Bowie and Page met for the first time in 1965, when Bowie’s band, The Manish Boys, recruited Page, then 21 years old, to perform on their cover of Bobby Bland’s I Pity the Fool. The couple spoke warmly of one another at the time, but by the mid-1970s, their relationship would take a dark turn.
The night in question was “tense” between the English celebrities.
Page accompanied Bowie and Ava Cherry for drinks at Bowie’s Manhattan townhouse one evening in February 1975. According to Paul Trynka’s excellent Bowie biography Starman, the atmosphere between the two English superstars was “tense” on the night in question, and deteriorated further when Page allegedly spilled wine on some silk cushions and attempted to shift responsibility to Cherry.
Bowie allegedly decided at this juncture that 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 one another; Page appeared to be evoking evil forces against David, while David, according to Ava Cherry, “wanted to demonstrate to Jimmy that his will was stronger.”
Bowie has already mentioned Aleister Crowley in Quicksand from Hunky Dory.
Fearing that Page’s superior knowledge of Crowley would give him a greater command of the dark arts, Bowie developed 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 well himself at the time, while subsisting 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-fueled delusions led him to begin storing his own urine in a refrigerator to prevent Page-affiliated witches from conceiving the Antichrist via sex magick. We suppose that it is best to be cautious rather than sorry.
