Page "David Bowie" Paragraph 27

Station to Stations January 1976 release was followed in February by a three-and-a-half-month concert tour of Europe and North America.

Featuring a starkly lit set, the Isolar – 1976 Tour highlighted songs from the album, including the dramatic and lengthy title track, the ballads " Wild Is the Wind " and " Word on a Wing ", and the funkier " TVC 15 " and " Stay ".

The core band that coalesced around this album and tour — rhythm guitarist Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis — would continue as a stable unit for the remainder of the 1970s.

The tour was highly successful but mired in political controversy.

Bowie was quoted in Stockholm as saying that " Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader ", and was detained by customs on the Russian / Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia.

Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as the " Victoria Station incident ".

Arriving in an open-top Mercedes convertible, the singer waved to the crowd in a gesture that some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in NME.

Bowie said the photographer simply caught him in mid-wave.

He later blamed his pro-Fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his addictions and the character of the Thin White Duke.

" I was out of my mind, totally crazed.

The main thing I was functioning on was mythology ... that whole thing about Hitler and Rightism ...

I'd discovered King Arthur ...".

According to playwright Alan Franks, writing later in The Times, " he was indeed ' deranged '.

He had some very bad experiences with hard drugs.