Former Jethro Tull guitarist Martine Barre recalled the time he tried to hide from rock star egos in an apartment and found David Bowie in the kitchen doing the same.

The party in question took place at some point in the ‘70s, when John Evan was Jethro Tull’s keyboardist. In a recent interview with Raised on Radio, Barre said he’d become “so bored with all the ego going on” with the antics of Rolling Stones members and other “very famous people.”

“We went into this kitchen in this big apartment to have a cup of tea and get away from it,” the guitarist said. “And David Bowie was in there having a cup of tea as well. … We just said, ‘Isn't it awful out there?’ And he said, 'Yeah.’ And me, David Bowie and John Evans, we were in there, I would have to say three hours, just talking about Monty Python, tea, anything but music. And there was no issue going on about [being] the big star – he [was] a person, very down to Earth.”

You can listen to the interview below.

It wasn’t the first time Barre encountered Bowie: They had shared a stage in the south of England in the mid ’60s, before Tull formed and when Bowie was still using his real name.

“We were support band to Davy Jones and the Lower Third,” Barre said. “I don't think anybody knew who they were, but they'd come down from London, and we traveled all the way from Brighton to Bournemouth. … They were like a London band, it was a big thing. … But they were really nice people.”

He added that Bowie “wore makeup” and that he’d “never seen a musician wear makeup in my life.” But, he repeated, “They were just nice. They knew we were pretty naive and green behind the ears, but they were just really nice and supportive of us.”

 

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