In a new interview with NME, Jayne’s Addiction icon Perry Farrell shared the story of a series of “tragic” mishaps in which he gave away David Bowie‘s phone number and email address.
Watch our full video interview with Farrell above
Farrell worked with Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti on his new album ‘Kind Heaven’, something that meant a lot to him after admitting that he “holds him up higher than anybody” as an artist. However, they had a few rather unfortunate instances together before he passed.
“I had a tragic relationship with David Bowie,” Farrell told NME. “I kept screwing up as a young man. I would do stupid things like one time I left my cellphone in a cab. The cab driver got a hold of it and started texting him, ‘Yo David, what’s up?’ in my name. Then he would be like, ‘Perry, what are you doing?’ This guy was constantly texting him and trying to get hold of him.
“He wasn’t mad at me, but he was annoyed by me. Then another time, somebody had approached me to do a bit of charity work to try to stop DuPont from polluting the waters. It might have been up around North America. So I thought ‘I do want to help this person, and I’m going to get David Bowie to help me too!’ I forwarded the text to David and it had maybe a chain of 200 people saying ‘I will help you’.”
Farrell continued: “I didn’t understand about blind CC’ing in those days, so I effectively gave like 200 people access to David’s private email. Again he text back saying, ‘Perry! What are you doing?'”
Sadly, Farrell was hoping to make amends with Bowie at a tribute event – but he sadly passed away before he had chance.
“Tony Visconti was going to be the musical director and I jumped at the chance and thought ‘This is it, I’m gonna make up with David and he’s gonna know me to be a sophisticated young man’, right? And then he passed away. So I never got a chance, but I did meet Tony at that time and that’s how I made that connection.”
He added: “I never use the term ‘dead’, because I do know that the afterlife people are very much conscious – so maybe I’ll have the chance to catch up with him some day and thank him for being such an amazing artist that I really studied and aspired to be.”
Farrell also spoke to NME about his plans to bring the iconic Lollapalooza festival to the UK in the next few years, and his unfortunate meeting with Tony Blair.
Watch our full video interview with Farrell above where he also opens up about his new solo album ‘Kind Heaven’ as well as Jane’s Addiction, ageing, his legacy, playing with Dave Grohl, and much, much more.