'Former Blondie bassist and world expert on the occult Gary Lachman talks to David Moats about participating in rituals, Mick Jagger's flirtations with magick, the Freemasons, and why there's more to the occult than being a drug fiend like Aleister Crowley.
'I had known about the occult vaguely from horror films and comic books and things of that sort, but I'd never taken a real interest in magick and the more obvious occult sort of things. But when I was first playing in Blondie in New York in 1975 I was living with Chris Stein and Debbie Harry in this little flat in Little Italy, [and] Chris had this sort of kitschy interest in the occult and black magick and voodoo and Debbie was vaguely into it as this kinda "funny thing". Chris had quite a few books and paraphernalia and there was this one book by an English writer named Colin Wilson called The Occult - a huge history of it from a sort of philosophical point of view. It was very readable and it made it very interesting to me. I was always a big reader, reading tons of books; I just borrowed it and pulled it off the shelf and was fascinated by it.' (The Quietus article).
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