On Sunday, December 1, 1974, David Bowie closed out his Diamond Dogs world tour at the 16,000 capacity Omni Coliseum in Atlanta, Georgia. Post-show, the English superstar hosted an end-of-tour party in his suite at the Hyatt hotel, next door to the venue. In his 2024 memoir Guitar: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Tell-All, American guitarist Earl Slick, a newcomer to Bowie’s live band, remembers the party being “a wild scene” with “local cuties” joining the band and crew to party into the wee small hours. “Obviously, there was blow all over the fucking place,” Slick recalls in his book.
“Then, out of nowhere, a bunch of guys broke down the door, shouting with handguns drawn, threatening us,” Slick writes. “We didn’t know who they were. They weren’t in uniform, and they sure didn’t act like authorities of any kind. They looked dirty and scruffy, in street clothes no self-respecting person would be caught dead in. Along with everyone else in the room, I found myself face against a wall, with my hands above my head and my legs spread, next to Eric Barrett, our tour manager. Eric had been Jimi Hendrix’s guitar tech, so he’d seen some things. We looked at each other and said almost in unison, ‘I hope they’re fucking cops’.”
Amid all the confusion, the guitarist was very, very aware that he had a ‘doggie bag’ of cocaine, siphoned off from the main stash, hidden in his sock, and could be facing a stay in the local jail if this was discovered. But after receiving a cursory frisking from the unidentified intruders, he and the other party guests realised that it was Bowie who was being targeted in the raid.
“Before they found him in the bedroom, he had time to get rid of the mountains of blow he had back there,” Slick recalls. “Or most it, at least. The guys did turn out to be cops, and soon enough found enough drugs to satisfy themselves that somebody was going to get arrested.”
Slick’s memory of the night is that Bowie’s bodyguard Tony Mascia took the rap for his boss, telling the cops that the cocaine was his, ensuring that Bowie walked away from the raid an innocent man.
“With all the money and lawyers and such that MainMan had on retainer, Tony was out of jail in a day,” Slick notes. “David’s manager, Tony DeFries, had a way of making things like that disappear, as any good manager back in those days could. I’m sure the cops were frustrated by the way it went down because in 1974 it sure would have made somebody’s career to bust David Bowie in Atlanta, Georgia, on cocaine possession charges. The funniest part of it was once we realized the guys with guns pointed to our heads were cops, we were relieved, and even happy.”
Within 48 hours, Bowie and Slick were in New York, putting the finishing touches to the Young Americans album with producer Tony Visconti. Released on March 7, 1975, the album would become Bowie’s breakthrough in the US, reaching number nine on the Billboard chart, with it’s second single, Fame, becoming Bowie’s first US number one,
