Mick “Woody” Woodmansey, the last surviving member of David Bowie’s Spiders from Mars, has described how drugs and the demands of a created stage persona transformed Bowie from a work-focused musician into an ever-present alter ego.
Woodmansey, who played drums with Bowie from the Beckenham days through the Ziggy Stardust era, told attendees at a Bowie-themed gathering on Heddon Street that Bowie increasingly inhabited his Ziggy character 24 hours a day and that substance use blurred the line between the man and the persona. "When he came off stage and he got in the limo, you were in the limo with Ziggy, not with David," Woodmansey said, adding that he believed drug use merged the two and left Bowie unsettled.
Woodmansey recounted specific incidents from the early 1970s as he reflected on Bowie's rise and the pressures that accompanied it. He said that by the 1972 U.S. tour Bowie was travelling with a personal supplier and that the singer fell into cocaine addiction. Woodmansey cited the 1974 documentary Cracked Actor — filmed during a period when Bowie was living largely on cocaine and milk — as emblematic of a deteriorating phase in the artist’s health and public presentation.
He described confusion within the touring party about the presence of a man who "was always around the stage," and only later understood the man was supplying drugs. "It took a bit for the penny to drop," Woodmansey said. He also recalled the make-up and costume regime Bowie introduced for the band and the theatrical shaping of their image, which included disputes over outfits delivered to hotels across the United States.
Woodmansey recounted how the band learned new material and the sudden swings of fame: Bowie composing songs such as "Changes," "Life on Mars?" and "Starman" in short bursts, then using those compositions to secure a commercial breakthrough. He recalled being told not to worry about rent or food when he joined Bowie in Beckenham, and said the singer was intensely driven in the studio and rehearsals.
The drummer said tensions could be brief and dissipate quickly — arguing under the stage before laughing during the first song — but that creative control over the Ziggy character eventually made the backing band expendable. When Bowie publicly killed off Ziggy Stardust on stage in 1973, the decision effectively ended the need for the Spiders from Mars as Bowie reshaped his career.
Woodmansey also described sporadic, warm contact with Bowie in later years. While performing in New York in January 2016, Woodmansey said he was told Bowie might join the show; Bowie did not appear, but did answer a phone call during the gig. On Jan. 10, Bowie's birthday, the singer spoke briefly by phone, asking what the audience thought of Blackstar, his final album. A day and a half later, Bowie’s death from cancer was announced; he had kept his illness private.
The recollections come as the Victoria and Albert Museum prepares to open a new David Bowie Centre at its Stratford Storehouse, a display that the museum says will showcase more than 90,000 archive items from the singer’s career. The centre opens this weekend and aims to present material spanning Bowie’s early years in Beckenham, the Ziggy Stardust period and subsequent reinventions.
Woodmansey’s comments add firsthand testimony to a long-studied arc in Bowie’s life: a rapid ascent to international stardom, the construction and public demand for an alter ego, and the personal and health costs that followed. Scholars, former collaborators and the documentary record have previously traced Bowie’s experimentation with drugs and its apparent impact on his performances and wellbeing; Woodmansey’s account provides further detail from someone who shared the stage with him during the era that defined his global fame.