Inside David Bowie's Complicated Relationship With His First Wife, Angie

By Angie Bowie’s account, things turned sour for her and David Bowie when his career took off. “He was so good … it was fabulous,” she told the Evening Standard. “And he just pissed it away being a j******.” She elaborated in her memoir (via the Chicago Tribune), suggesting that Bowie became consumed with his drug habits and cut himself off from his wife in a long fit of paranoia. For his part, Bowie claimed that living with Angie was “like living with a blowtorch,” per Paul Trynka’s “Starman: David Bowie: The Definitive Biography.” According to Trynka, Bowie almost never mentioned her after their divorce.

Early on in their marriage, the Bowies had a son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones. Per Christopher Sandford’s “Bowie: Loving the Alien,” Angie took off for a holiday as soon as Jones was born, infuriating Bowie and planting a seed of resentment. When Angie filed for divorce in 1977, Jones stayed with his father, who slowly became a more active parent after years of distance. A judge granted Bowie full custody when the divorce was finalized in 1980, partially on account of salacious photos of Angie with a female lover she had inadvertently leaked. But she has since insisted that she didn’t fight for custody because she felt fatherhood would help Bowie settle down.

Angie and Bowie avoided each other for the rest of his life, and Jones chose to disown his mother in the 1980s. They’ve remained estranged, something Angie claims she isn’t sad about. Jones explained his stance to “WTF with Marc Maron,” describing his mother as “corrosive.”