The night John Lennon, Paul McCartney and David Bowie nearly formed a supergroup

13 March 2024, 11:04

Rock 'n' roll myths are sometimes too unbelievable.

Given the excesses that fuelled the golden era of rock music, you can never quite rely on the hazy memories of those involved.

That's likely the first thought when David Bowie revealed that one night, he nearly started a supergroup with none other than John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Holed up in New York's Pierre Hotel for a few months in 1974, having briefly escaped the maelstrom of Los Angeles where Bowie steadily decayed from his cocaine-addled lifestyle, there was a knock at his hotel door one night.

The last people he expected to pay a visit were two former members of The Beatles, especially Lennon, who he cited as a boyhood hero.

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You'd understand if it turned out to be a drug-induced hallucination, but Bowie revealed his astonishment at the two icons standing before him, in a later interview.

"It was New York, around 1974, and I think it was around the first time they had gotten back together again," he told Marc Riley on BBC 6 Radio Music, referring to John and Paul.

"And I got a knock at the door at the Pierre Hotel where I had taken over a suite for months and months. It was about three in the morning and John was there, and he had Paul with him!"

"The two of them had been out on the town for the evening. And John says 'you won't believe who I've got here', and I said, 'wow I thought you two had…' and he said, 'oh no, all that's going to change'."

"It was great! We just spent the evening talking. That must've been the first evening they were back together since the big bust-ups," referring to The Beatles' acrimonious split four years earlier.

"They actually asked me if I'd join the two of them and become a trio with them, and we'd change the name to something like David Bowie and The Beatles because they liked the idea of it being DBB."

But like many fanciful conversations over several bottles of wine and copious mounds of cocaine at six in the morning, their mooted creative venture didn't come to fruition.

Talking to Riley, Bowie sighed: "But, you know, the next morning it just never came to anything."

John Lennon talks about David Bowie

As soon as the idea of Bowie collaborating with his musical idols came into being, it dissolved as soon as the hangovers wore off.

It wouldn't halt him from working with Lennon however, as the 'Imagine' legend joined Bowie to co-write and provide backing vocals for his 1975 plastic soul single 'Fame', which appeared on the album Young Americans.

The amount of reverence Bowie had for Lennon was clear, later revealing: "He was one of the major influences on my music life. I just thought he was the very best of what could be done with rock 'n' roll, and also ideas."

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"I felt such akin to him in that he would rifle the avant-garde and look for ideas that were so on the outside of, on the periphery of what was the mainstream and then apply them in a functional manner to something that was considered popularist and make it work."

"He would make it work for the masses and I thought that was so admirable. That was making artwork for the people and not making it elitist."

The experience of meeting and working with an artist who had such a profound influence on him clearly resonated.

Though 'The DBB' didn't work out, Bowie's dream of meeting musical heroes nonetheless became a reality.