According to Aslan frontman, Christy Dignam, David Bowie was apprehensive and worried he was going to get shot by a sniper when he played Slane in 1987. Aslan were supporting the late icon during his show at the Co Meath venue that year.
According to The Belfast Telegraph, Dignam said they were not allowed to go anywhere near Bowie because he was “paranoid” about performing a show in Ireland. Owing to Troubles in Ireland at the time the singer had taken extra measures to make sure he was safe.
Christy recounted the event, “At the time he didn’t want to meet us because he was over here as an Englishman in Ireland during the Troubles and John Lennon had also been shot just a few years prior to the visit. He was real paranoid. When he was preparing to go on stage we were backstage and he went on in a military formation.”
“There was about 12 or 16 of them in the band and they were all in grey boiler suits, so if there was a sniper there they could not have picked out which one was Bowie.”
Bowie was also said to be worried about his own safety after the death seven years previous of his good friend John Lennon who was killed at his residence in New York. Meanwhile, Christy, who has been fighting cancer, said he was feeling well since having to stop chemotherapy a few weeks ago.
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