📰 Flying Saucers, Hitler & David Bowie – NME: Feb 1975
- David Bowie
- Feb 22, 1975
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 18
A late‑night hotel‑room conversation with David Bowie spirals into UFOs, media control, occult politics, and the strange psychic weather of 1975.
📰 Key Highlights
• Published in New Musical Express, February 23, 1975
• Written by Bruno Stein
• Bowie interviewed in a U.S. hotel room during the Young Americans period
• Topics include UFOs, Hitler, media power, symbolism, and cultural control
• Includes contributions from Ava Cherry and members of Bowie’s touring circle
• A defining snapshot of Bowie’s mid‑’70s psychological and artistic turbulence
📰 Overview
This NME feature is one of the most notorious Bowie interviews of the decade — a chaotic, hypnotic, late‑night conversation that reveals the intensity of his Young Americans era mindset. Bowie speaks freely about UFO sightings, authoritarian imagery, the power of mass media, and the fragility of modern society. The piece reads like a fever dream of 1975: part philosophy, part paranoia, part performance.
📰 Source Details
Publication / Venue: New Musical Express
Date: February 23, 1975
Section: Thrills
Format: One‑page feature
Provenance Notes: A widely cited example of Bowie’s mid‑’70s esoteric interviews.
📰 The Story
📰 A Hotel Room, A Late Hour, A Strange Atmosphere
The article unfolds in a U.S. hotel suite where Bowie, Ava Cherry, and members of his entourage gather for a drifting, nocturnal conversation.
The mood is:
• surreal
• conspiratorial
• theatrical
• deeply reflective of Bowie’s mental state during the Young Americans period
Bruno Stein captures the atmosphere with a mixture of fascination and disbelief.
📰 UFOs & “Regular Cruises”
Bowie speaks openly about UFO sightings, claiming that he and others witnessed regular extraterrestrial “cruises” overhead.
This wasn’t unusual for Bowie at the time — he frequently discussed alien contact, psychic phenomena, and cosmic symbolism in interviews from 1974–76.
📰 Hitler, Media, and Mass Manipulation
One of the most striking threads in the article is Bowie’s commentary on:
• authoritarian imagery
• the power of spectacle
• the manipulation of public consciousness
He discusses Hitler not politically, but as an example of media mastery, reflecting his ongoing interest in the psychology of crowds and the dangers of charismatic control.
This was the same period when Bowie was exploring:
• occult literature
• Nietzsche
• Aleister Crowley
• the aesthetics of power
The article captures this intellectual turbulence in real time.
📰 The Gospel of 1975 – Bowie’s Cultural Diagnosis
Bowie speaks about:
• societal collapse
• the fragility of institutions
• the rise of new forms of control
• the role of artists in shaping perception
His comments are fragmented but compelling — a mixture of genuine insight and the disorientation of his Thin White Duke era.
📰 Ava Cherry & The Entourage
Ava Cherry, one of Bowie’s closest collaborators during the Young Americans sessions, appears throughout the piece, grounding the conversation with humour and warmth.
Other members of Bowie’s circle drift in and out, adding to the sense of a long, strange night.
📰 A Snapshot of a Transforming Artist
This article is often cited as a key document of Bowie’s mid‑’70s psychological landscape — a period marked by:
• intense creativity
• heavy drug use
• esoteric interests
• identity fragmentation
• the transition from glam to soul to the Thin White Duke
It is both unsettling and fascinating, a window into the mind of an artist on the edge of reinvention.
📰 Visual Archive
📰 Caption
“Flying Saucers, Hitler & David Bowie,” New Musical Express, February 23, 1975.
📰 Related Material
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📰 Closing Notes
This NME feature remains one of the most revealing portraits of Bowie’s mid‑’70s psyche — a moment where brilliance, paranoia, and performance blurred into one unforgettable interview.
📰 Sources
• New Musical Express, February 23, 1975
📝 Copyright Notice
All scans and original text excerpts referenced in this entry remain the property of their respective copyright holders. This Chronicle entry is a transformative, non‑commercial archival summary created for historical documentation and educational reference. No ownership of the original material is claimed or implied.
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