David Bowie was told when he was going to die by a psychic in the late 1970s, according to his former collaborator Mike Garson.
The legendary artist passed away on January 10, 2016 after a battle with liver cancer. He was 69.
A new edition of Clifford Slapper’s biography on Garson – who played on nine of Bowie’s studio albums and regularly played live with the musician – will be published in May by Backbeat Books.
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The updated version of the book, Bowie’s Piano Man: The Life Of Mike Garson, includes one anecdote – which Garson previously referenced in a January 2016 tribute – which claims that Bowie was convinced that he would only live to 69 or 70 after a meeting with a psychic the late 1970s.
Speaking about the anecdote, Garson told Billboard: “[The psychic] told him he was going to die exactly when he died.
“There are a lot of psychics who are out of their minds and full of it, but this one was real. David knew it and didn’t doubt it for a second. He told me about [the reading] with certainty, accepted it and planned his future out based on that. He had 30, 40 years to plan out his life.”
The anecdote has also been previously told by Garson to David Bowie: The Last Five Years director Francis Whately, though this version of the story claimed that Bowie told Garson: “I’ve had a dream that I’m gonna die at the age of 69.”
“It was very chilling because of the way Mike talked about it,” Whately told Vanity Fair. “They talked about it again 20 years later, and David said, ‘I still remember that dream.’”
Last month, it was announced that five classic Bowie albums are being reissued on vinyl.