For Millennials. By Millennials.
It’s been almost 5 years since David Bowie passed away. However, his legacy has only grown since then. But, there are allegations against Bowie that can tarnish his legacy. And they come with their own issues. These accusations come from two women, who allege that Bowie had sexual relations with them when they were underage girls at the time. Here’s what they said.
According to an article by the Daily Mail, two women have come forward, claiming that they had sexual relations with David Bowie when they were underage girls. The first woman that they speak of is Dana Gillespie. According to the article, she claimed to have slept with Bowie when she was 15 and Bowie was 17 when the two met in 1964. The age of consent in the UK is 16. Gillespie said:
I have never thought of David as someone who liked young girls in particular. He liked bright women. It has been suggested to me that him sleeping with me when I was 14 was ‘statutory rape’ but I have said to writers, look, you can’t put that in because, yes, I was young but we were just having fun.
However, Gillespie is not the only one, according to the article, claiming to have had sexual relations with Bowie as a minor. The other woman is Lori Mattix (sometimes known as Lori Maddox). She claims to have lost her virginity to Bowie when she was 15 and he was 25.
Lori Mattix – another underage girl who claims to have slept with Bowie
Mattix was a famous “baby groupie” back in the 70s. In those days, groupies were girls that would follow famous rock stars or bands around the world as they toured. Mattix claims to have met David Bowie in Los Angeles during his Spiders From Mars tour. After initially turning him down, she claims to have slept with Bowie five months later. She also claims to have later had a threesome with Bowie. And the age of consent in California was and still is 18. She told the Mail:
I don’t think (her age) was a thought for (Bowie) and I don’t think he was hanging out with a lot of underage people. We were young then and he was 25, that is still young as well. David was not a star yet so he did not take advantage of any celebrity with me. I remained friends with him throughout his rise to fame and he would always check in with me to see how I was doing in my life. We were friends.
Moreover, Mattix adds that she never felt she was taken advantage of. These stories came after David Baddiel, a comedian, claimed that a woman told him that Bowie tried to seduce her and her friend for a threesome when she was 16 years old.
Comedian claims a woman told him that David Bowie seduced her when she was 16
Baddiel claims that this happened in the 80s, on the island of Mustique. While talking on the podcast Stalking Time for the Moon Boys, Baddiel said:
This woman was 16 (an underage girl, as age of consent there is 18) at the time and Bowie would have been in his 40s. She and her best friend had one of many drinking nights with Bowie and ended up back at their shack with David. David was clearly keen on a threesome and had put some work in to create it. The way he did this, according to her, was to take all his clothes off and put Let’s Dance on cassette and dance naked. It worked for David as both the girls got naked. There were sexual goings-on but she didn’t sleep with David.
Furthermore, Baddiel also revealed the reason why the girl didn’t sleep with David Bowie and lose her virginity to him, saying:
She replied: ‘It wouldn’t mean anything to him. I didn’t want to do that for him, just one night. Instead, she went outside. David did shag the friend, then came out and tried to make it all right with her because she was a bit pissed off.
The problems with these claims
Despite these claims, there are a few problems that need to be brought into the public light as well. Firstly, Dana Gillespie was not a groupie, but a proper love interest for David Bowie. Gillespie told The Guardian back in 2013 that she in fact met Bowie in 1962. That puts Bowie at 15 years of age, and Gillespie at 13, changing the dynamic of the sexual encounter and making them both underaged at the time.
Furthermore, M. Sullivan Gates wrote a blog on Medium, detailing that there were some problems with Lori Mattix’s claims. Firstly, she maintains that she lost her virginity to Led Zeppelin’s lead guitarist Jimmy Page in 1985, disputing her claim to have lost it to David Bowie. Secondly, she claims to have slept with Bowie as an underage girl before Jimmy Page, when Zeppelin’s tour to California took place before Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust tour. Moreover, she again claimed in 2009 that she was a virgin when she met Page when contradicts her own claims. Moreover, the story of her encounter with Bowie also changed over time. Her other claim of having slept with Mick Jagger also has issues. You can read Gates’s blog here, as he has also attached the sources of his research.
These problems in the claims of course do not disprove that Lori Mattix slept with David Bowie when she was an underage girl. However, it does raise suspicion on the entire matter. The errors are too frequent in her case, which also happens to be the most severe of all. As far as Baddiel’s story goes, sadly he wasn’t able to produce the woman who made the claim. What do you guys think? Is there any truth to these stories? Let us know in the comments below.
