On March 26th 1976, 47 years ago this week, the one and only David Bowie was arrested for possession of marijuana and got his mugshot taken afterwards. Fellow superstar Iggy Pop was arrested with him, as was Chi Wah Soon, a 20-year-old who Bowie invited to party with him that night.
After not telling anyone about that fateful night for four decades (out of respect for her family) she shared the whole story with Democrat and Chronicle back in 2019.
Bowie was performing in Rochester, New York and Chi was in the front row watching it. At the end of the concert, she was handed a note from someone in Bowie's team inviting her to meet David at a bar.
The bar was packed and it took a while, but eventually, she was with David, Iggy Pop and a few others in a hotel room. She didn't know it at the time, but in a few minutes she would be in handcuffs.
"We sat at the edge of the bed and I remember he apologised about the chaos, he said 'now we can calm down', and he brought a joint with him," she recalled. "He passed it on to me and I said 'I don't smoke', and right at that moment - we were literally six, seven feet from the door and it went knock knock knock."
"We didn't pay any attention and again it happened within seconds. By the third time, the knocking had become more rapid and that's when he stood up and this is my view: Sitting on the edge of the bed, six feet away from the door, the door is open this wide," she says, holding her hand several inches apart.
"I see three faces and boom! The door flew and hit him on the cheek. I was devastated, he hit the back of his head on the wall and the door hit his face. I said 'do you know who he is?!' I remember vividly: 'It's okay lady, you're all under arrest'."
A few days later they were in court and Chi received some scary news.
"We were approached by an immigration officer and told if we were found guilty both of us would be on the slow boat back to China and England and I envisioned myself paddling away like 'oh no!'. At that point we were charged with Class C felony - in 1976 it was a felony."
Eventually, though, Bowie and her got off with no charges. David would never perform in Rochester again, while Chi managed to keep the tale under wraps for decades.
