The Rolling Stones had no scarcity of illicit affairs on the peak of their stardom, so it is no shock that rumors swirled for years in regards to the topic of their chart-topping ballad “Angie.”
But the Goats Head Soup lead single prompted much more salacious hypothesis than the remaining due to the events presumably concerned: David Bowie and his spouse Angie, who claimed to have walked in on the Skinny White Duke in mattress with Mick Jagger.
Angie Bowie (nee Barnett), who was married to the “Ziggy Stardust” singer from 1970-80, stoked rumors of a Jagger-Bowie tryst when she appeared on The Joan Rivers Present in 1990 and mentioned she walked in on the 2 rockers bare in mattress. She reiterated this account in her 1993 memoir Backstage Passes, writing, “I felt completely useless sure that they’d been screwing. It was so apparent, in truth, that I had by no means even thought-about the chance that they hadn’t been screwing.”
Followers speculated that Jagger wrote “Angie” to appease Bowie’s spouse after she caught the aftermath of their romp within the hay. However Jagger refuted her story: “Folks started to say that tune was written about David Bowie’s spouse, however the fact is that Keith wrote the title. He mentioned, ‘Angie,’ and I feel it was to do along with his daughter. She’s referred to as Angela. After which I simply wrote the remainder of it.”
Moreover, it appears unlikely that Angie, who had an open relationship with Bowie and admitted she solely “acquired married in order that I may work [to get a permit],” would have been so horrified by this dalliance that Jagger would have felt the necessity to write a tune for her. She questioned in her e-book why Jagger’s probably fluid sexuality “ought to have been information to anybody who’d paid any consideration to the Stones’ affairs,” and he or she famous that her ex-husband “made a digital faith of slipping the lance of affection into virtually everybody round him.”
Watch the Rolling Stones’ ‘Angie’ Video
But if “Angie” was not an olive department to Angie Bowie, it wasn’t a dedication to Richards’ daughter both. In his 2010 memoir Life, the guitarist recalled writing the tune throughout a rehab stint in Vevey, Switzerland, whereas his companion, Anita Pallenberg, was giving beginning to their daughter.
“Whereas I used to be within the clinic, Anita was down the highway having our daughter, Angela,” he wrote. “As soon as I got here out of the same old trauma, I had a guitar with me and I wrote ‘Angie’ in a day, sitting in mattress, as a result of I may lastly transfer my fingers and put them in the precise place once more, and I did not really feel like I needed to shit the mattress or climb the partitions or really feel manic anymore.
“I simply went, ‘Angie, Angie.’ It was not about any explicit particular person; it was a reputation, like ‘Ohhh, Diana,'” Richards added. “I did not know Angela was going to be referred to as Angela after I wrote ‘Angie.’ In these days you did not know what intercourse the factor was going to be till it popped out. Actually, Anita named her Dandelion. She was solely given the added identify Angela as a result of she was born in a Catholic hospital the place they insisted {that a} ‘correct’ identify be added.”
The precise inspiration behind “Angie” might by no means make certain, however different details are clear as day. For one, the plaintive, acoustic ballad was an astronomical success upon its launch in August 1973, taking pictures to No. 1 on the Billboard Scorching 100 and No. 5 on the U.Okay. chart. It was a second of heartrending readability on an in any other case disjointed, chaotic album that marked the start of the Stones’ downward spiral within the mid-’70s, a interval of all-consuming debauchery from which it might take them years to recuperate.
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Able to journey by way of the previous (darkly)? Take a look at Rolling Stones Albums Ranked Worst to Finest.
