{"id":608605,"date":"2026-08-29T20:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T20:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/608605\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T20:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T20:38:12","slug":"helmets-page-hamilton-david-bowie-may-have-saved-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/608605\/","title":{"rendered":"Helmet’s Page Hamilton: “David Bowie may have saved my life”"},"content":{"rendered":"

When David Bowie<\/a> parted company with legendary long-standing guitarist Reeves Gabrels<\/a> in 1999, he picked up the phone to ask Helmet<\/a>‘s Page Hamilton to join his band for his Hours world tour.<\/p>\n

In order to impress his new boss, guitar prodigy Hamilton practiced for 16 hours a day, learning 30 songs including Cracked Actor, Rebel Rebel and Changes. For that phone call meant more to the Portand-born musician than Bowie could possibly have known.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cReeves, who\u2019s been a friend of mine for many many years, was going through a very difficult time in his life and he and Bowie parted ways after 13 years,\u201d Hamilton recalled in a 2016 interview with Louder. \u201cBowie knew Helmet \u2013 we had met two years earlier at a festival in Germany \u2013 I met him and he was like, ‘Helmet? I love Helmet!’ And I started laughing, like, Yeah\u2026 right. Right! And he says, ‘We go way back!’<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From Louder<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was just a really gracious human being,\u201d Hamilton continued. \u201cJust so nice for a guy that has changed so many people\u2019s lives and influenced so many musicians. In Germany, I tried to get him to talk about Ziggy Stardust<\/a> when he jumped off speakers and broke his leg. He was wearing just his underwear as he was in the middle of a costume change, and I\u2019m like, So what happened? What happened? And he smiled and said, \u2018Oh God\u2026 I don\u2019t remember much from back then.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cHe liked me, and when he later called, I had just left my wife. It was one of the worst times in my life. I was crashing on my manager\u2019s couch and I had got back to the apartment at four in the afternoon. I\u2019d met some chick, been to an after-hours Budweiser pool hall\u2026 it was pathetic. I was a pathetic mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnd I\u2019ve said this before, but he pulled me out of a real shitty time,\u201d the guitarist admitted. \u201cHe might have saved my life. Because I would have continued \u2013 I\u2019d gone out with my buddy Erik Sanko from Skeleton Key and Lounge Lizards who said, ‘We\u2019ve been out for 38 nights in a row.’ And I was saying, Alright! Let\u2019s make it 39! And I\u2019m talking until after sunrise. So it\u2019s amazing that in that state of mind I could have learned thirty David Bowie songs and gone out and played them.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t know how I was living before I got the call, he didn\u2019t know that I was going through a divorce. But Coco, the super-great lady who was with David said to me: \u2018You know, David\u2019s been very happy since he\u2019s been sober.\u2019 At the time he\u2019d been sober for 12 years. I was like, Yeah\u2026 but I\u2019m of Scottish, Irish, Welsh descent with German and Native American in me. I have all the drinking genes. It\u2019s probably not happening for me. But my tribute to David Bowie would be to say: He\u2019s not like you and me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest news, features and interviews direct to your inbox, from the global home of alternative music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When David Bowie parted company with legendary long-standing guitarist Reeves Gabrels in 1999, he picked up the phone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-608605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}