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Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 5 The Story of David Bowie ...................................................................................... 9 Interview with Angie Bowie ............................................................................... 55 Interview with Herbie Flowers ........................................................................ 73 Interview with Woody Woodmansey .......................................................... 85 Track-by-Track Analysis ..................................................................................... 105
Introduction
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ctor, producer, arranger, audio engineer, writer, director, artist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter – sometimes it’s easy to forget that David Bowie is first and foremost a singer. Shooting to stardom in the early 1970s, Bowie has been described as a musical chameleon, adapting himself to fashions and trends along the span of his lengthy career. Such criticism, however, is for the most part unfounded, as it is Bowie himself who has demonstrated a remarkable skill for perceiving musical trends and fashions, starting them rather than jumping on the bandwagon. Influenced by a range of artists, including Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Syd Barrett, and even Little Richard, it has been this admirable ability to change with the times that has prolonged Bowie’s musical career to nearly 40 years and counting. Even when 5
he was considered out of fashion in the 1980s and 1990s, it’s clear for all to see that Bowie has remained one of the most influential musicians alive, sparking the likes of electronica, goth rock, new romanticism, and new-wave into life along the way. With a career album sales total of more than 136 million units, Bowie is one of the biggest-selling recording artists in history, and certainly one of the biggest-selling male solo artists of all time. Bowie’s musical career falls into distinct stages, due to changes in both his influences and artistic direction. The text that follows, therefore, mirrors these trends and also falls into convenient chronological sections. It explores his influences from the beginning of his early career, with his early forays into popular music with his folky, eponymously titled first studio album, and then investigates his more successful outings ‘Space Oddity’, ‘The Man Who Sold the World’, and ‘Hunky Dory’, before ‘Ziggy Stardust’ shot him to worldwide fame in the summer of 1972.
Click the above photo for a video link Bassist Trevor Bolder discusses the emergence of Ziggy Stardust. 6
More glam rock was to follow, with ‘Aladdin Sane’ and ‘Pin Ups’, before he took another musical turn, this time to reimagining himself through Philly soul and R&B, taking on the persona of the Thin White Duke with studio outings ‘Diamond Dogs’ and ‘Young Americans’. From there drugs, depression, and excess were to influence The Berlin Trilogy, a collaborative effort with the father of modern ambient music, Brian Eno. A period of superstardom was to follow as we moved into the 1980s, with Bowie appearing in movies, directing music videos, collaborating with the likes of Queen and Mick Jagger, and releasing successful studio albums ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’ and ‘Let’s Dance’. A couple of flops also began to surface, as ‘Tonight’ and ‘Never Let Me Down’ became widely renowned as the worst outings of his admirable career. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw Bowie forming a regular band called Tin Machine, which released two studio albums with Bowie at the helm before the chameleon of pop morphed once again, this time into the hip-hop-influenced ‘Black Tie White Noise’ in 1993, the ambitious concept album ‘Outside’ in 1995, and the drum-and-bass-tinged 1997 studio outing ‘Earthling’. Finally, we bring the story up to the current century with a number of commercial ups and downs. Nineteen ninety-nine’s ‘‘hours…’’ proved a chart flop, but 2002’s follow-up ‘Heathen’ came out a moderate success. Bowie has slowed down somewhat in recent years due to heart problems and interests in other areas, in spite of the release of 2003’s ‘Reality’, but with things still in the pipeline, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in the bag from 2006, the Bowie legend continues to live on and on and on. For this book, I have endeavoured to include transcriptions of interviews, reviews, and more, taken from the likes of Rolling Stone, Melody Maker and Q magazine. It’s an incredible ride, and tough to squash into just 20,000 words. You’ll note that 7
any musical analysis is kept to the bare minimum; that has been reserved for the track-by-track listing that follows the main text. I hope you enjoy David Bowie’s amazing musical journey as much as I did. Matters Furniss
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The Story of David Bowie
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n 1947, in Brixton, London, a little baby boy named David Robert Jones was born to an Irish-Catholic woman and a man from the deepest depths of Yorkshire. An only child, David would live and grow up in South London until he was six years old, when his family would up sticks and move to Bromley in Kent. Educated at Bromley Technical High School in his hometown until he was 18, David Jones was a prolific, often precocious child, and was highly influenced by the dramatic arts that he studied towards the end of his time at the school. Ranging from avantgarde theatre to commedia dell’arte, David became most interested in the medium of mime, and originally considered it as a possible career. 9
Spreading his wings a little further, at the age of 17 David Jones was interviewed on BBC television’s Tonight show as the founding member of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long Haired Men. There was little doubt that this London-born boy would prove to be something special. Whilst at school, Jones also suffered an injury to his eye that would almost blind him, and would eventually lead to one of the trademarks for which he is most well-known to this day. Jones got into a fight with a friend over a girl, and the fellow suitor, who was wearing a ring on his finger, punched him in the eye. He was forced to stay off school for a full eight months so doctors could conduct operations to repair the potentially blinded left eye. His vision was, thankfully, saved, but the doctors could not repair the damage fully, leaving him with faulty depth perception, colour blindness of sorts, and a permanently dilated pupil. As time progressed, Jones would find his feet in music as well. He told of a childhood love of black music, and Little Richard in particular, in an interview with Record Collector in May 1993, saying, ‘The first artist I really sort of dug was Little Richard when I was about eight years old. I found it all very exciting – the feeling of aggression that came through the arrangements. It was like breaking up the sky – his voice broke out of the skies – an extraordinary voice. That’s what triggered my interest in American black music. That led me to the blues, John Lee Hooker and all those guys, and for a number of years I worked with rhythm and blues bands, and my participation in them formed my own black ties in that area of music.’ In an Interview on Australia’s 60 Minutes with Charles Wooley in 2002, Jones went a step further and talked of his earliest musical goal being becoming the saxophone player in Little Richard’s group, recollecting, ‘When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire. I thought, wow, what’s this got to do with me or London or… But I want a piece of that. That’s really fantastic. 10
David Bowie – We Could Be Heroes Limited Edition On Blue Vinyl
In 1990 David Bowie found himself in need of artistic rejuvenation, and felt that in order to have a clear shot at reinvention a clean break with his past was required. From this revelation came the Sound+Vision Tour – a final farewell to his longstanding back catalogue of hits, after which Bowie promised they would disappear forever from live performance. This record features the highlights of those swan song performances, and captures the unique moment in music history that was the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour. Side 1 1. China Girl 2. Sound and Vision 3. Ziggy Stardust 4. Young Americans Side 2 1. Heroes 2. Modern Love 3. The Jean Genie/Gloria 4. Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide
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And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire-purchase plan.’ Playing his saxophone in various bands in and around London, Jones was discovered, quite by accident, as a singer when he replaced a vocalist gone AWOL in a little club. Initially singing and playing with various blues-influenced groups, such as the Mannish Boys and the King Bees, Jones was always one to adapt his style and public image to fit the musical trends of the time, something for which he would soon become famous in his career proper, during the next 40 years and counting. Now an aspiring rock star, Jones decided he needed a different stage name to avoid confusion with the Monkees’ Davey Jones. Choosing ‘Bowie’ in reference to the hero of the Alamo, David Bowie was born. This is his story. Bowie released his first solo album in 1967 with Deram Records. Simply – and unremarkably – entitled ‘David Bowie’, this first studio outing was an odd mixture of Syd Barrett-esque fairy tales, Beatles psychedelia, folk music, show tunes, and easy listening. It’s an odd mix indeed, but an admirable example of both Bowie’s creativity and distinctive voice. In the summer of 1967 music newspapers The Disc and Music Echo reviewed the album, describing it as a ‘remarkable, creative album’ sung with a ‘sufficiently fresh interpretation to make quite a noise on the scene’. In the same year Bowie also had notable success with another artist, having penned the third single for Oscar, which gained much media attention, as it satirised a series of highly-publicised breakouts from British prisons around the same time. However, it wouldn’t be until two years later that Bowie would flirt with some fame of his own with the 1969 release of his hit single ‘Space Oddity’. Supposedly released to coincide with the first moon landing, it was to be the first introduction of Bowie’s famed 13
character Major Tom, an astronaut who becomes lost in space, and is revisited through Bowie’s 1980 hit ‘Ashes to Ashes’. The single’s corresponding album was quickly released off the back of the record’s relative success, and was lauded in numerous music publications. In the November 1969 issue of Music Now!, for example, the album was described as ‘Deep, thoughtful, probing, exposing’ and ‘gouging at your inners’. Famed British music publication Melody Maker was also quick to praise the album it its 28 March, 1970 edition, describing it as ‘ultra dramatic’, and heaping praise on the single ‘Space Oddity’ in particular, stating that, ‘It is more than probable five or six years ago “Space Oddity” would have been given an icy reception and even banned as being sick’. Bowie has always been nothing if not good at timing his releases to perfection. A week before this Melody Maker review, Bowie was also in a celebratory mood, as he married Mary Angela Barnett in Kent. Call her Angela. She was to be the inspiration for many of Bowie’s hits before their divorce years later. Later the same year Bowie released his third studio outing. Rejecting the acoustic-led sound of his previous two albums and replacing it with a heavy rock backing provided by future longtime collaborator and guitarist Mick Ronson, ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ gained as much media attention for its album sleeve as for the music contained within. Depicting Bowie reclining on a couch in a dress, it was to be an early venture into the androgyny he explored more fully in such later albums as ‘Ziggy Stardust’, and ‘Aladdin Sane’. With much of the album being typical of the British rock movement that was going on at the beginning of the 1970s, ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ also touched upon the likes of glam rock and Latin sounds – sounds that Bowie would use more and more over the next few years. Bowie’s follow-up to ‘The Man Who Sold the World’, ‘Hunky Dory’, would come out only a year later, and saw a partial return 14
David Bowie – Sounds & Visions Limited Edition On Grey Vinyl
In 1990 David Bowie found himself in need of artistic rejuvenation, and felt that in order to have a clear shot at reinvention a clean break with his past was required. From this revelation came the Sound+Vision Tour – a final farewell to his longstanding back catalogue of hits, after which Bowie promised they would disappear forever from live performance. This record features the highlights of those swan song performances, and captures the unique moment in music history that was the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour. Side 1 1. Space Oddity 2. Changes 3. Rebel Rebel 4. Ashes to Ashes 5. Starman Side 2 1. Fashion 2. Life On Mars? 3. Blue Jean 4. Let’s Dance
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the folkier sound of ‘Space Oddity’, such as ‘Kooks’, as well as more harrowing tracks such as ‘The Bewlay Brothers’, ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’, and the Velvet-Underground-inspired ‘Queen Bitch’. ‘Hunky Dory’ was a major foray into showmanship, something which Bowie felt was incredibly important for a pop singer of that era. Speaking to Rolling Stone in early April 1971, Bowie asserted, ‘I refuse to be thought of as mediocre,’ adding, ‘If I am mediocre, I’ll get out of the business. There’s enough fog around. That’s why the idea of performance-as-spectacle is so important to me.’ In spite of neither the album nor its first single, ‘Changes’, making a huge impression on the charts, they certainly laid the foundations for Bowie’s ascent to the top of the pop world, a world that would give him four Top 10 albums and eight Top 10 singles in the United Kingdom in eighteen short months spread over 1972 and 1973. In an interview with International Musician magazine in December 1991, Tony Horkins introduced one of his questions in this way, ‘… it was definitely a reaction to late ’60s seriousness, and the real murky quality that rock was falling into. I think a bunch of us adopted the opposite stance. I remember at the time saying that rock must prostitute itself. And I’ll stand by that. If you’re going to work in a whorehouse, you’d better be the best whore in it.’ What he was talking about, of course, was Bowie, and in particular the character of Ziggy Stardust, for it was the concept album of ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ that would come next for the former David Jones. Taking his androgyny a step further, the character of Ziggy Stardust was a boyish man-alien with red hair and a pale face. Returning to the rocking sound of ‘The Man Who Sold the World’, Bowie revelled in the glam rock trappings of the era, essentially making the sound his own, with his lighter and faster versions of the typical T. Rex fare. 17
In an interview with Charles Wooley in 2002, Wooley described the album as being the point at which Bowie’s career really took off, and inspired others, stating, ‘In the course of events, it was one song that changed David Bowie’s life. The release of “Space Oddity” in 1967 saw his career lift off. But it was the landmark “Ziggy Stardust” album of the early ’70s that launched Bowie into the stellar orbit of rock superstardom. So began a crazy, drugfilled ride that was to redefine modern music. Along the way, the strangely androgynous Bowie invented glam rock, helped launch heavy metal and disco, and even inspired punk.’ The album also garnered much praise at the time, with Richard Cromelin of Rolling Stone giving the album rave reviews in the 20 July, 1972 issue of the magazine. Describing it as Bowie’s ‘most thematically ambitious, musically coherent album to date’, Cromelin also recognised that Bowie had united the major strengths of his previous works, as well as introducing some ‘great rock and roll’ with the newly acquired Spiders from Mars backing band. Bowie himself, however, failed to see that the album was particularly theatrical, stating, ‘I didn’t really think any of them were that experimental. I was always thwarted by the presumption that the Beatles had done everything anyway, so you might as well just get into the fun of it. It wasn’t until later that it became apparent that some of things we’d done were actually quite innovative in their own way, even the choice of musicians. That was essentially eclectic, to say the least.’ In an interview with NY Rock from February 1997 he rather amusingly added, ‘I think that [Ziggy] would probably be fairly shocked that, one, I was still alive and that, two, I seem to have regained some sense of rationality about life and existence.’ The tour backing the album would be, as all of Bowie’s later tours turned out to be, wild and excessive. With the character of Ziggy Stardust central to the 1972 tour, the Spiders from Mars 18
David Bowie – Under the Moonlight Limited Edition On White Vinyl
In 1990 David Bowie found himself in need of artistic rejuvenation, and felt that in order to have a clear shot at reinvention a clean break with his past was required. From this revelation came the Sound+Vision Tour – a final farewell to his longstanding back catalogue of hits, after which Bowie promised they would disappear forever from live performance. This record features the highlights of those swan song performances, and captures the unique moment in music history that was the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour. Side 1 1. Ziggy Stardust 2. Life On Mars 3. Changes 4. Starman 5. Space Oddity 6. Suffragette City Side 2 1. Heroes 2. Sound and Vision 3. Ashes to Ashes 4. Let’s Dance 5. Modern Love
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were also ever-present. The album hit number three in the UK album charts, and thanks to its success the previous album ‘Hunky Dory’ also entered the Top 10, actually managing to eclipse ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and peaking at number three in the charts. Taken from the 15 July, 1972 Record Mirror review of a Bowie gig at the Royal Festival Hall, Charles Webster described the electricity of Bowie’s performance on the night, even going so far as to prophetically state that, ‘David Bowie will soon become the greatest entertainer Britain has ever known’, adding that his performance was a ‘triumph for the showmanship as well as music’, something about which I’m sure Bowie would’ve been most proud. Finishing off the review in another show of Nostradamuslike prophecy, Webster pronounced that Bowie’s ‘talent seems unlimited and he looks certain to become the most important person in pop music on both sides of the Atlantic.’ As well as fast becoming the biggest star of the early 1970s, Bowie also began to produce and promote his own personal rock and roll heroes. Lou Reed, formerly of the Velvet Underground, released his breakthrough solo album with the help of production by Bowie and Spiders guitarist Mick Ronson. As well as this, The Stooges, featuring future running mate Iggy Pop as the band’s frontman, also signed on to Bowie’s management and recorded the album ‘Raw Power’, which Bowie later mixed with great success. Following the success of breakthrough album ‘Ziggy Stardust’, the Spiders from Mars came together once again in the recording of 1973’s ‘Aladdin Sane’. Another conceptual album, this time the concept was that of a disintegrated society. It proved to be Bowie’s first-ever UK number-one album chart topper. The album was, interestingly enough, written almost entirely on the road, during Bowie’s American Ziggy Stardust tour, and the cover, depicting Bowie as a shirtless Ziggy-esque character with a lightning bolt across his face, fast became one of the most famous album covers of all time. The Spiders’ renowned pianist Mike Garson also joined 20
Bowie on ‘Aladdin Sane’, with his performance on many of the tracks making his inclusion one of the major highlights of the piece. In a review, Ben Gerson of Rolling Stone described ‘Aladdin Sane’ as being ‘less manic than “The Man Who Sold the World”, and less intimate than “Hunky Dory”, with none of its attacks of self-doubt. “Ziggy Stardust”, in turn, was less autobiographically revealing, more threatening than its predecessors, but still compact.’ He added that the album revealed Bowie as ‘more mastermind than participant’. The album was toured, in essence, on the back-end of the Ziggy tour, and was filled with much theatrics and the occasional moment of shock, including Bowie stripping down to a sumo-like loincloth and simulating oral sex on Mick Ronson’s guitar. Bowie dramatically retired the character of Ziggy Stardust on-stage at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in 1973, famously announcing, ‘Not only is this the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do.’ Also amongst the hustle and bustle of 1973 came another Bowie album, or in this case I should probably say the first non-Bowie Bowie album, as he released ‘Pin Ups’, a collection of cover versions of 1960s hits from the likes of The Who and Pink Floyd. During this time it can be argued that it was Bowie’s stage persona, his androgynous stage and public persona, that sold records, but its popularity in gay culture and the emerging gay rights movement also created controversy both in Britain, where homosexuality had only been legal since 1967, and America. ‘Diamond Dogs’, one of Bowie’s most ambitious albums up to that time, was released in 1974. Including a spoken-word introduction and tracks that bled into one another, ‘Diamond Dogs’ is actually the product of two distinctly different ideas. It is primarily a musical based on a wild future in a post-apocalyptic city, and secondly a re-imagining of George Orwell’s famed novel 1984 to music. 21
As well as the album, Bowie also made plans to develop a Diamond Dogs movie. Unfortunately, he didn’t get particularly far, although Bowie himself has claimed there is some footage of completed scenes lying around somewhere. He’d also had designs on writing a musical of 1984, but his interest waned after encountering difficulties in licensing the novel, so the songs he had already written ended up on ‘Diamond Dogs’. The album did well, both commercially and critically, and it was the primary example of Bowie performing every single instrumental part on an album. As he himself explained in an interview with NY Rock in February 1997, ‘That was the first time that I played all the instruments myself on an album. I had just broken up the Spiders and didn’t really want to entrust my music to another set of musicians at the time. So I tried everything myself on the guitar, drums, saxophone and synthesizers. And so it has a peculiarly idiosyncratic style. I find it very endearing, kind of remote and a bit scary.’ Elaborating on the theme in International Musician magazine in December 1991, Bowie also talked of his first links with soon-to-be collaborator Brian Eno. ‘I played a great percentage of everything on “Diamond Dogs”,’ he recalled, ‘apart from the odd lead guitar, and the bass and drums. But most of the other lead guitars and the rhythm guitars and the keyboards, and saxophones, were just me. That was real playhouse stuff. I just had a ball, with the late Keith Harwood, who was the producer and engineer on that and who was a great buddy. I remember we were running backwards and forwards with Eno, who was in the studio next door doing “Here Come the Warm Jets”, and we were dashing in and out of each other’s studios. We hadn’t worked together then, but little did we know…’ Embellishing further still, Bowie added of Eno and ‘Diamond Dogs’, ‘We both had the same ideas – that everything was shit, and we should fuck it up some more. The main thing was to make 22
David Bowie – From Station to Station Limited Edition On White Vinyl
In 1990 David Bowie found himself in need of artistic rejuvenation, and felt that in order to have a clear shot at reinvention a clean break with his past was required. From this revelation came the Sound+Vision Tour – a final farewell to his longstanding back catalogue of hits, after which Bowie promised they would disappear forever from live performance. This record features the highlights of those swan song performances, and captures the unique moment in music history that was the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour. Side 1 1. Station to Station 2. TVC15 3. Stay 4. Be My Wife Side 2 1. Suffragette City 2. Panic In Detroit 3. White Light, White Heat 4. Pretty Pink Rose
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rock and roll absurd. It was to take anything that was serious and mock it. “Diamond Dogs”, as I remember it at the time, was trying to accomplish some great mockery of rock ‘n’ roll. It seemed to be part of my manifesto at the time, I don’t know why.’ ‘Rebel Rebel’ was the major hit single from the album, and Bowie also talked at length about this track. In a NY Rock interview, for example, he mused, ‘“Rebel, Rebel” is just for me the funniest song. I can’t, I just can’t conceive how I wrote that now. I mean, I really must have felt that at the time but… Hot tramp, I love you so, don’t give me grief. I mean it’s really – it’s so flippant.’ Once again the album sleeve is also worth talking about. This time it featured a painting of Bowie as a half-man, half-dog hybrid by French artist Guy Peellaert. The original version of the painting was actually banned from the sleeve, as Bowie himself explained in NY Rock, ‘They airbrushed the genitalia from the dog. It was by a French artist called Guy Peellaert, who was extraordinary. He put out a book called Rock Dreams in that period, which was a great take on his vision of rock artists. Unfortunately, that particular dog, the Diamond Dog, got castrated. It got returned now that it’s out on Rykodisc – he’s with equipment.’ The tour of the double concept album came hot on the heels of its release, and proved to be Bowie’s biggest up to that point, lasting from June to December 1974. A lavishly produced affair with high-budget stage production and theatrical special effects, the Diamond Dogs tour was more of a show than a simple musical event, and broke with contemporary practice for rock concerts. Bowie, however, soon tired of the whole opulent affair, and when the tour resumed after a summer break in Philadelphia to record material for the upcoming album, the Diamond Dogs show no longer made sense, and several changes were made to it, including band changes and cancelled dates. Bowie was fast moving towards a new sound. This new sound would come in the form of a new album, ‘Young 25
Americans’. Ziggy Stardust was no longer, and in his place came the Thin White Duke, as Bowie explored funk and Philly soul, although he himself ironically referred to the sound as ‘plastic soul’. Containing his first number-one hit in America, ‘Fame’, ‘Young Americans’ was another considerable success for Bowie, in spite of being a significant change in direction. Bowie recognised the shallowness of this Philly soul period, yet it still didn’t affect his being applauded during this period as a white artist doing what was effectively black music well, as he was invited to appear on the ever-popular Soul Train. Another, violently paranoid appearance on The Dick Cavett Show at this time seemed to cement the rumours that Bowie was heavily into cocaine during this period, something that would greatly affect the next few albums that were to follow ‘Young Americans’. In terms of reviews, ‘Young Americans’ did well, with Janis Schact of Circus pronouncing that the production by Tony Visconti was flawless, with ‘just a touch of old-fashioned slap-back echo to give the tracks some added mystery’. Marc Bolan of T. Rex would also talk of the parallels between both his and Bowie’s career paths after ‘Young Americans’ was released, stating, ‘We’ve both gone through similar periods and we’re both into American black music. There was a time when we were both influenced by Syd Barrett and a period when we both copied Bob Dylan and it’s been a bit like the surrealist movement in the 1920s with all those painters living and working together. David and I are into the same thing. It was him who told me to front the band myself in the way I am now and to stop the fantasy that T. Rex was anything other than Marc Bolan.’ In 1976 Bowie’s soul persona became even darker, as the Thin White Duke became more and more prevalent. ‘Station to Station’ was something of a transitional album, combining both the Philly soul of ‘Young Americans’ with an introduction to the synth-led Krautrock of the Berlin Trilogy that was to follow. 26
David Bowie – LIFE FROM MARS 4 CD Set
This four disc anthology brings together the legendary radio and TV broadcasts which helped propel David Bowie to superstardom. The astonishing Berlin oeuvre is represented by the broadcast live in Japan and his greatest hits are recalled by the very best of the worldwide series of live broadcasts in support of The Sound+Vision Tour. Also featured are the last embers of glam rock with The Spiders from Mars, duets with Marianne Faithfull and Cher, proto-punk with Iggy, the surrealist theatricality of his work with Klaus Nomi and the industrial rock he created with Nine Inch Nails. Disc 1 – The Greatest Hits 1. Space Oddity 2. Scary Monsters 3. Rebel Rebel 4. Ashes to Ashes 5. Starman 6. Fashion 7. Life On Mars? 8. Blue Jean 9. Let’s Dance 10. China Girl 11. Sound and Vision 12. Ziggy Stardust 13. Young Americans 14. Heroes 15. Modern Love 16. The Jean Genie/Gloria Disc 2 – Bowie and Nine Inch Nails 1. Subterraneans 2. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) 3. Reptile 4. Hallo Spaceboy 5. Hurt 6. Look Back In Anger 7. I’m Deranged 8. The Heart’s Filthy Lesson 9. The Voyeur of Utter Destruction 10. I Have Not Been to Oxford Town 11. Outside 12. Andy Warhol 13. Breaking Glass 14. The Man Who Sold the World 15. Nite Flights 16. Under Pressure Disc 3 – NHK Tokyo 1. Warszawa 2. Heroes 3. Fame 4. Beauty and the Beast 5. Five Years 6. Soul Love 7. Star 8. Hang On to Yourself 9. Ziggy Stardust 10. Suffragette City 11. Station to Station 12. TVC15 Disc 4 – Star-Spangled Broadcasts 1. Sorrow 2. Everything’s Alright 3. Space Oddity 4. 1984/Dodo 5. I Can’t Explain 6. Time 7. The Jean Genie 8. I Got You Babe 9. Black Tie, White Noise 10. Fame 11. Sister Midnight 12. The Man Who Sold the World 13. Strangers When We Meet 14. Can You Hear Me 15. Life On Mars? 16. Ashes to Ashes 17. Nite Flights 18. Stay 19. The Heart’s Filthy Lesson 20. Funtime
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He was at this time heavily dependent on cocaine, and the album was almost a mirror to his soul, with Richard Cromelin of Circus magazine offering that ‘Station to Station’ ‘offers cryptic, expressionistic glimpses that let us feel the contours and palpitations of the masquer’s soul but never fully reveal his face. If his R&B venture was a sidetrack, he now rejoins the main line’. Adding to this, Cromelin saw the album as a combination of the ‘density of “The Man Who Sold the World”, “Hunky Dory”’s pop feel, the dissonance and angst of “Aladdin Sane”, the compelling percussion style of “Young Americans”, and even a trace of the youthful mysticism of the early “Wild-Eyed Boy from Freecloud”.’ Co-producer Harry Maslin also talked about the album in a spring 1976 interview, stating, ‘I don’t think he had any specific direction as far as whether it should be R&B, or more Englishsounding, or more commercial or less commercial. I think he went out more to make a record this time than to worry about what it was going to turn out to be.’ Thanks to his drug intake and escalating fame, Bowie’s emotional disturbance reached such a fever pitch that he refused to relinquish control of a satellite, booked for a world-wide broadcast of a live appearance preceding the release of ‘Station to Station’, at the request of the Spanish government, who wished to put out a live feed regarding the death of Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco. In spite of this, Bowie still toured the album in the summer of 1976 on the Station to Station World Tour, which was stark and dramatic in nature – an huge contrast from the Diamond Dogs tour that had come before it. Yes, Bowie was at his commercial peak, topping the charts on both side of the Atlantic, but mentally he was a mess, badly affected by his cocaine intake, upon which he overdosed numerous times, and which widely influenced his next three album releases – the Berlin Trilogy. Spanning four years from the mid 1970s until 1980, Bowie’s interest in the growing synth-led German music scene, as well as 29
his sizable addiction to drugs, prompted him to move to Berlin to attempt to turn his life around, and also to produce some of the most exciting music of his career. As well as co-producing three albums of his own, he also co-produced a couple of Iggy Pop’s (who was Bowie’s housemate at the time) solo albums – ‘The Idiot’ and ‘Lust for Life’. He also toured alongside Iggy Pop, performing both backing vocals and keyboards for the former Stooges frontman. Talking about his love of collaborations in a Livewire interview in 2002, Bowie rather immodestly stated, ‘I’m pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people. I believe that I often bring out the best in somebody’s talents. To not be modest about it, you’ll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I’ve worked with have done their best work by far with me. You only have to listen to their other work to see how true that is. I can shine a light on their own strengths. Get them to a place they would never have gotten to on their own. There are exceptions, of course, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Robert Fripp to name two.’ The first of the Berlin Trilogy, and some would argue the best, was 1977’s ‘Low’. Recorded, as were follow-ups ‘“Heroes”’ and ‘Lodger’, with ambient magician Brian Eno, ‘Low’ also featured the admirable production of Tony Visconti, something which Bowie felt wasn’t recognised widely enough, as he stressed in 2000, ‘Over the years not enough credit has gone to Tony Visconti on those particular albums. The actual sound and texture, the feel of everything from the drums to the way that my voice is recorded is Tony Visconti.’ Visconti himself said at the time that, ‘Bowie wanted to make an album of music that was uncompromising and reflected the way he felt. He said he did not care whether or not he had another hit record, and that the recording would be so out of the ordinary that it might never get released.’ 30
David Bowie – The Collaborator 4 CD Set
The genius of David Bowie as a musical collaborator is the thread which runs through this powerful review of his classic radio and TV broadcasts. Bowie could produce astonishing results from the most unlikely sources. As a risk taker extraordinaire he was willing to engage with a bewildering range of musical partners. Collected together in this powerful four disc anthology are the tracks which demonstrate the highs and lows of Bowie’s output as a collaborator. More often than not he succeeded brilliantly, but there were also a few disastrous failures; both extremes can be experienced in this, the ultimate review of Bowie’s work as collaborator. Disc 1 – Ziggy’s Last Floor Show 1. Sorrow 2. Everything’s Alright 3. Space Oddity 4. 1984 5. I Can’t Explain 6. Time 7. The Jean Genie 8. I Got You Babe Disc 2 – Tokyo Collaborations 1. Warszawa 2. Heroes 3. Fame 4. Beauty and the Beast 5. Five Years 6. Soul Love 7. Star 8. Hang On to Yourself 9. Ziggy Stardust 10. Suffragette City 11. Station to Station 12. TVC15 Disc 3 – Industrial Collaborators 1. Subterraneans 2. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) 3. Reptile 4. Hallo Spaceboy 5. Hurt 6. Look Back In Anger 7. I’m Deranged 8. The Heart’s Filthy Lesson 9. The Voyeur of Utter Destruction 10. I Have Not Been to Oxford Town 11. Outside 12. Andy Warhol 13. Breaking Glass 14. The Man Who Sold the World 15. Nite Flights 16. Under Pressure Disc 4 – TV Collaborator 1. Young Americans (Medley) 2. Fame 3. Can You Hear Me 4. Stay 5. Five Years 6. Heroes 7. Funtime 8. Sister Midnight 9. Life On Mars 10. Ashes to Ashes 11. The Man Who Sold the World 12. Nite Flights 13. Black Tie White Noise 14. Strangers When We Meet 15. The Heart’s Filthy Lesson 16. China Girl
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The album was heavily influenced, as previously mentioned, by the likes of Kraftwerk and Neu!, as well as by such more minimalist work as that of Steve Reich. The initial album was a simple, minimalistic, stripped-down affair, a pervasive response to punk rock, revelling in instrumental pieces and using silence as much as sound. Renowned as being way ahead of its time, Bowie denied that the album had been heavily influenced by drugs, stating in a 1997 interview with NY Rock that ‘Low’ ‘was a relatively straight album. It didn’t come from a drug place. And I realized at the time that it was important music. It was one of the better things I’d ever written – “Low”, specifically. That was the start, probably for me, of a new way of looking at life’. He then added, ‘The first time it happened to me that I got a real drubbing was on an album called “Diamond Dogs”, and I think I was terribly knocked by that, at the time, because everything had been positively glowing up until that point. And it really felt like
Click the above photo for a video link A period news clip details the reaction to Bowie in the media. 33
the end of the world to me, I think – which was a pretty immature reaction to it. But looking back at it, three or four years later, I realized what a good album it was. And the same thing happened again in the mid-seventies with “Low”, which went on, of course, to be probably one of the most important albums that I ever made.’ Bowie also pronounced that the album came from a different Bowie to previous years, stating in an interview with Adrian Deevoy from Q magazine in June 1989 that, ‘I was a very different guy by then. I mean, I’d gone through my major drug period and Berlin was my way of escaping from that and trying to work out how you live without drugs. It’s very hard,’ elaborating with, ‘It’s a very tough period to get through. So my concern with “Low” was not about the music. The music was literally expressing my physical and emotional state… and that was my worry. So the music was almost therapeutic. It was like, Oh yeah, we’ve made an album and it sounds like this. But it was a by-product of my life. It just sort of came out. I never spoke to the record company about it. I never talked to anybody about it. I just made this album… in a rehab state. A dreadful state, really.’ ‘“Heroes”’ was similar to ‘Low’ in many respects, yet slightly more commercial in nature. Fitting in and around the Cold War period, the title track of the album still remains one of Bowie’s more famous compositions, and has oft been heralded as his pièce de résistance. Talking about the composition of the album with NY Rock magazine, Bowie explained, ‘At that time, with the [Berlin] Wall still up, there was a feeling of terrific tension throughout the city. It was either very young or very old people. There were no family units in Berlin. It was a city of extremes. It vacillated between the absurd – the whole drag, transvestite night-club type of thing – and real radical, Marxist political thought. And it seemed like this really was the focus of the new Europe. It was right here. For the first time, the tension was outside of me rather than within me. 34
The Starman Bowie for Chamber Orchestra New CD Release
‘The Starman’ is a major new release featuring the powerful highlights from Bowie’s amazing career arranged for chamber ensemble. A glittering array of highpoints include ‘The Jean Genie’, ‘Space Oddity’, ‘Life On Mars’ and ‘Ashes to Ashes’. The outstanding quality of Bowie’s music can be found in the brilliant combination of melody and form which underpins his work and which also allows his music to be presented in a challenging new shape. ‘The Starman’ is the ultimate proof of the genius of David Bowie. 1. Starman 2. Rebel Rebel 3. Ashes to Ashes 4. Space Oddity 5. Let’s Dance 6. Oh! You Pretty Things 7. Young Americans 8. The Jean Genie 9. John, I’m Only Dancing 10. Changes 11. Life On Mars
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And it was a real interesting process, writing for me under those conditions.’ He then added, ‘There’s something about Berlin. Always throughout the 20th century, it’s been the cultural crossroads of Europe… There’s an artistic tension in Berlin that I’ve never come across the like of anywhere else. Paris? Forget it. Berlin has it…’ In terms of critical success, ‘“Heroes”’ was another hit for Bowie, with Franc Gavin of Rock Around the World magazine pronouncing that ‘“Heroes”’ was both ‘sweepingly majestic’ and at the same time also ‘unbelievably depressing’. Going on to describe it as a ‘flawed masterpiece’, Gavin finished by stating that if ‘“Heroes”’ ‘isn’t the truth, it ought to be’. Recollecting his working alongside Eno at the time, Bowie stated in an interview with Tony Horkins of International Musician magazine in December 1991 that, ‘The problem with Fripp is that he doesn’t have a way of abandoning his own style. I’ve got to be
Click the above photo for a video link Bassist Trevor Bolder recalls the creation of the ‘Pin-Ups’ album. 37
terribly careful about this because I have an incredible respect for him as a player, but that’s the difference between him and Reeves. Eno is the bridge between the whole thing in that way. Eno knows how to stop his flow in a certain direction and create new channels, whereas very few musicians know how to do that. Once they’ve got a link with their abilities it’s all over in a way; they have a style. It’s a style that they’ll mature with, but it will keep representing itself. Other than Eno, Reeves is one of the few people who knows how to change his streams of thought. He’ll present himself with his own obstacles – he doesn’t need me to give him obstacles.’ With an extensive world tour following the release of ‘“Heroes”’ to promote both it and ‘Low’, Bowie also released a live album of the tour. In the same year Bowie also famously narrated Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, still widely regarded as one of the best recordings of the book. In 1979 ‘Lodger’ followed the two previous outings, and completed the Berlin Trilogy in some style. Featuring the singles ‘Look Back in Anger’, ‘DJ’, and ‘Boys Keep Swinging’, ‘Lodger’ contained no instrumentals at all, a stark contrast to both ‘Low’ and ‘“Heroes”’. Bringing new musical ideas into the mix, ‘Lodger’ included pieces mixing up both New Wave and Arabic music. This was also to be the last album that Bowie would work on with Eno until 1995’s murder/art concept album, ‘Outside’. ‘Brian and I,’ Bowie explained, ‘had set ourselves the goal of completing a trilogy of albums in the late ’70s – “Low”, ““Heroes””, and “Lodger”. We achieved that and we parted most amicably, and then we didn’t see each other for fourteen years.’ ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’ came next. A more commercially viable album, integrating both the ideas of the Berlin Trilogy and his previous outings, this 1980 release was considered by critics to be much more musically and lyrically direct. Having divorced his wife Angela and undergone withdrawal from the 38
cocaine that had partially made up the persona of the Thin White Duke, the music had turned about face once again, and included collaborations with the likes of The Who’s Pete Townshend and King Crimson’s Robert Fripp on guitars. At the same time, Bowie also began a three-month run on Broadway starring as the Elephant Man. Bowie really was fast becoming a multi-faceted superstar. In 1981, Bowie worked alongside Freddie Mercury and Queen on the chart-topping single ‘Under Pressure’. In the same year he made yet another cinematic appearance, this time in the German movie Christiane F. Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. His music also features prominently in the film, and contains a version of megahit ‘“Heroes”’ sung partially in German, and re-titled ‘“Helden”’. His biggest commercial release to date, ‘Let’s Dance’, hit the charts running in 1983. Showing Bowie’s talent at moving with the times, and predicting the direction in which music was going, this slickly produced dance album was an enormous departure from ‘Scary Monsters’, and revelled in the 1980s dance music scene. The title track went straight in at number one on both sides of the Atlantic, and heralded a slew of other hits from the album. Talking about the album in a February 1997 interview with NY Rock, Bowie explained, ‘A number of people have said that album has in spirit the same feeling as the “Young Americans” album. I would agree, but I think the balance has changed somewhat. On the “Young Americans”, I was so overwhelmed by the Philadelphia sound… that I was writing songs specifically to point out the rhythm & blues and soul elements.’ He went on to add, ‘This time around, in “Let’s Dance”, I thinks it’s far more a case of my working with rhythm & blues to enhance the songs themselves. The approach is kind of the other way around from that of the “Young Americans” period.’ Off the back of the album’s success, Bowie went on the Serious Moonlight Tour, supported by Earl Slick, after original support act 39
Stevie Ray Vaughan pulled out over a pay dispute. An enormous success, one single performance alone at the US Festival earned Bowie a cool one million dollars. Talking about Bowie’s performance at the Brussels Voorst National Festival in the 25 May, 1983 issue of the NME, Charles Shaar Murray spoke of Bowie’s first tour for five years, pronouncing his voice to be as good as ever, and no sustainable damage to note to his skills, presence, or charisma, adding that ‘Bowie has created a show that lives up rather than down to expectations. Not on the basis of his legend or his publicity, but on the strength of this show, Bowie is the finest white pop performer alive. I’ll be very surprised to see any of Bowie’s alleged peers produce anything remotely this good for quite some time to come.’ Rushing out another dance-influenced follow-up to ‘Let’s Dance’ with 1984’s ‘Tonight’, there were signs that Bowie was running out of ideas. Collaborating with Tina Turner and churning out a substandard cover of The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’, Bowie was slated in the media for this lazy effort. He himself stated, in an autumn interview with the NME’s Charles Shaar Murray, ‘I suppose the most obvious thing about the new album is that there’s not the usual amount of writing on it from me. I wanted to keep my hand in, so to speak, and go back in the studio – but I didn’t really, as if I had enough new things of my own because of the tour. I can’t write on tour, and there wasn’t really enough preparation afterwards to write anything that I felt was really worth putting down, and I didn’t want to put out things that “would do”, so there are two or three that I felt were good things to do and the other stuff…’ He went on to add, ‘What I suppose I really wanted to do was to work with Iggy again, that’s something I’ve not done for a long time. And Iggy wanted us to do something together. We’re ultimately leading up, I hope, to me doing his next album. We’ve been talking about it for a year or so and we’ve got him off the 40
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road. He’s not on the road now and he won’t be going back on the road for a while.’ It was indeed with Iggy Pop that Bowie co-wrote both ‘Neighbourhood Threat’ and ‘Tonight’, both off Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life’, that were remixed as dance versions here. Bowie finished by somewhat arrogantly stating, ‘The interesting thing about rock is that you never think that it’s going to go on for much longer. Then when you find that it has… I’m 37 going on 38 and I find myself thinking, “I’m still doing it!”’ He soon changed his tune, however, as he pronounced only three years later in an interview with i-D CONFi-DE’s Tricia Jones that ‘Tonight’ had been a mistake because, ‘taken individually the tracks are quite good, but it doesn’t stand up as a cohesive album. That was my fault because I didn’t think about it before I went into the studio.’ In 1985, Bowie performed a number of his biggest hits at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid. A video promo for yet another collaboration was also let loose at the event, as Bowie performed a duet with the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger on a version of ‘Dancing in the Street’, which went straight in at number-one on the week of its release. As well as contributing the theme song to the flop movie Absolute Beginners, Bowie also starred in the children’s fantasy drama Labyrinth in 1986. Portraying the Goblin King, Bowie also wrote and performed a number of tracks for the movie, some of which became singles for the seemingly timeless pop singer. In what proved to be the final part of a trilogy of sorts in Bowie’s dance period, ‘Never Let Me Down’ proved to be the worst of the bunch. More hard rock, with a dancey edge, the 1987 release was poorly received and actually garnered some of the worst criticism of Bowie’s career. Even Bowie himself openly apologised in an interview for the album’s quality, or lack thereof, stating in Q magazine in June 42
1989, ‘I thought it was great material that got simmered down to product level. I really should have not done it quite so studio-ly. I think some of it was a waste of really good songs. You should hear the demos from those albums. It’s night and day by comparison with the finished tracks. There’s stuff on the two albums since “Let’s Dance” that I could really kick myself about. When I listen to those demos it’s, How did it turn out like that? You should hear “Loving the Alien” on demo. It’s wonderful on demo. I promise you! [laughs]. But on the album, it’s… not as wonderful. What am I meant to say?’ He then laughed again. Intended to promote the album, the Glass Spider Tour opened in the spring of 1987, visited countries all over the world, included dancers and guest musicians aplenty, and proved to be one Bowie’s most lavish tours of all time. It was, actually, so lavish that critics even managed to come down hard on the tour as well as the album, describing it as ‘overproduced’ and ‘pandering’ to
Click the above photo for a video link Ex-wife Angie Bowie explains how drugs impacted David Bowie. 43
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the masses’ perception of what a concert should be, essentially describing the whole affair as Bowie going through the motions. Continuing his career on the big screen, Bowie also appeared in Martin Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, portraying Pontius Pilate, as the 1980s fast turned into the 1990s for both Bowie and his braying fans. Then, for the first time since the early 1970s, David Bowie formed a regular band. Unlike the Spiders from Mars, however, the Bowie-led Tin Machine were a hard-rocking quartet, and their premier album, ‘Tin Machine’, released in 1989, was a considerable success, finding its place at number three in the UK album charts. Their critical reviews were a mixed bag, with Paul Du Noyer pronouncing in the May 1989 issue of Q magazine that the eponymously titled first album was ‘a racket’ and the ‘loudest, hardest, heaviest effort of his whole career’. Du Noyer also gave Bowie credit for veering ‘dramatically off the circular, selfabsorbed, pedestrian path he’s trudged across the past two or three LPs, and revives his energy levels and all-round excitement quota by recalling some of the bolder moments of his musical history – “Width of a Circle”, “The Jean Genie”, the most jagged edges of “Ziggy Stardust” – and cops a feel off hard rock inspirations such as Jimi Hendrix and, perhaps, prime time Sex Pistols.’ ‘I guess,’ Bowie himself explained, ‘it’s not as obviously melodic as one would think it would probably be.’ He then added, ‘It’s a demanding album. There’s no compromise. It demands your attention,’ and summed things up with, ‘This, for me, is kind of like catching up from “Scary Monsters”. It’s almost dismissive of the last three albums I’ve done. Getting back on course, you could say.’ Bowie and the band also toured the album that same year, in spite of Bowie being somewhat unhappy that many of his ideas were either rejected or changed by the rest of the band, and by guitarist Gabrels in particular. 45
Heralding in the 1990s with the solo Sound and Vision tour, where he played mostly his biggest hits, the aging superstar seemed to be almost putting a full stop on his career. Still, Bowie wasn’t one to bow out either gracefully or disgracefully, as he has continued to produce music right up until the time this is being written. In 1991 came the less successful second Tin Machine album. Simply entitled ‘Tin Machine II’, the album gained a lot of negative media attention thanks to its album sleeve, which featured naked statues as its cover art. The music itself was also mostly panned, in spite of seemingly being a precursor to the mainstream grunge movement started by Nirvana only a year or so later. Bowie, however, had tired of the experiment and finally disbanded Tin Machine to work on his own terms once again. Over the next few years Bowie would produce some of the most musically diverse offerings of his career, the first of which would be 1993’s ‘Black Tie White Noise’. A mixture of jazz, soul, and hip-hop, ‘Black Tie White Noise’ reunited Bowie with the co-producer from ‘Let’s Dance’. Critically it was received well, although commercially fans were still somewhat unsure whether they could trust a Bowie release once more after the abysmal outings of the late 1980s. Often considered one of Bowie’s oddest records, he himself said of the album in a May 1993 interview with Record Collector, ‘A lot of it’s just very impressionistic. I think “Black Tie White Noise” refers to the very obvious – the radical boundaries that have been put up in most of the Western World. It also has a lot to do with the black and white sides of one’s thinking.’ Unaffected by the public’s response to ‘Black Tie White Noise’, Bowie took on another new musical direction through 1993’s TV-series soundtrack album ‘The Buddha of Suburbia’. Mostly a twisted version of alt rock, the album’s success could be deemed a touch odd, especially considering it barely had any press coverage 46
or reviews dedicated to it. Still, Bowie has often hailed the album as being his most original piece of work in recent years. 1995 heralded the introduction of the industrial-sounding concept album ‘Outside’. Proposed as the first of three volumes of a non-linear narrative of art and murder, ‘Outside’ returned Bowie to the mainstream thanks to a couple of admirable single releases. Ingrid Sischy described the forthcoming album in an interview with Bowie in September 1995, touching upon him working alongside Brian Eno once again. ‘You worked together so much in the ’70s,’ she noted, ‘and did such incredible things, and then you went your separate ways. Now, you’ve recorded a new Bowie album called “Outside”, which involved working with Brian again and which is coming out in September.’ Bowie responded in part by explaining, ‘Everything that came together on this album came about through accident and synthesis and through Brian’s take on cybernetics – that you take systems and, in destroying them, you recover the pieces that seem to work and make them into something new. Brian is a born cybernetician. He will take the most unlikely juxtapositions and philosophical ideas and throw them together into this kind of conceptual stew of his and produce this unfathomable, but fascinating animal.’ Critically, the album was viewed as experimental rather than anything more concrete, with Tom Boyle of Review magazine calling it ‘dense and uncompromising’, but ‘imaginatively sparking with life’. Bowie, it seemed, was back to his creative best, even if the result was more than a little – odd. Bowie toured the album in the autumn of 1995, with Tin Machine’s Gabrels joining him on lead guitar. Bowie chose Nine Inch Nails, fronted by the ever-controversial Trent Reznor, as the co-headline act. Although initially a success, the tour was cancelled early on due to poor sales and negative media reaction. Barry Walters wrote in the San Francisco Examiner on 23 October 1995 that the tour’s Shoreline Amphitheatre show was ‘pretentious 47
and nearly tuneless’, stating that the ‘unfamiliarity of the material mixed with its melodic limitations worked against him’. In spite of this negativity in the press, Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the prestigious eleventh annual induction ceremony on 17 January 1996. In 1997 Bowie turned 50. To celebrate, he and a contingent of superstar guests rocked out Madison Square Garden in New York. With a supporting cast consisting of Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, Robert Smith of The Cure, and Lou Reed, to name but three, the show was a huge success, with Cook Young of NY Rock describing it as ‘a startling blend of rock and cabaret’, noting that Bowie ‘has a presence that captivates and seduces. Although his movements do appear choreographed, they are executed smoothly nonetheless, with a sense of timing that is nearly perfect’. A new studio outing, ‘Earthling’, also hit the stands in 1997 and earned Bowie some of his strongest critical response since 1983’s ‘Let’s Dance’. Experimenting mainly with jungle and drumand-bass, the album has been described as being one of the more listenable drum-and-bass records of all time, thanks to Bowie’s strong songwriting skills. Bowie himself stated in 1997 that ‘It’s very important for me to be artistically successful first. For me, that means that every album that I make really should be fulfilling artistically. Even before it’s released, if I feel negative about it, it’s already a failure. If it’s artistically pleasing to me and I play it a lot, then I know it’s a success and the commercial aspect of it – that is something else entirely. I’ll do all the commercial things. I’ll do interviews and make videos and everything else that’s necessary. But when I’m making the album itself, my priority is that it really pleases me and on the occasions that it hasn’t, it has left me very despondent and feeling sort of as if I’m treading water.’ He then noted in regard to this most recent drastic change in 48
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direction, ‘For me, taking a new and exciting artistic avenue has always been my priority. I want to be able to continually surprise myself as an artist. I think if that element is not there, then things dissipate and you get into a sort of regularity of concept that becomes vegetating, if you’re not careful. I think for me, personally, I have to really shake myself up musically every now and again to find out what it is that drew me to working with music in the first place.’ In 1998 Bowie was also essentially commemorated on the silver screen, as Tod Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine both drew its title from a Ziggy-era Bowie song and contained numerous events that paralleled Bowie’s own life in the 1970s. To top it all off, its poster’s tagline, ‘The rise of a star… the fall of a legend’ clearly recalled the name of Bowie’s most infamous, and breakthrough, album, ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust’. Featuring one track whose lyrics had been entirely written by a fan, 1999’s ‘‘hours…’’ came as something of a mixed bag, including songs originally used on the soundtrack for a computer game, as well as a number of songs written for, and dedicated to, Bowie’s new wife, supermodel Iman. During this time Bowie also wrote a novel, launched an internet service provider (BowieNet), and introduced a successful fund-raising scheme to raise cash on the strength of future royalties, called Bowie Bonds. He was certainly nothing if not a busy boy. Plans for a follow-up to ‘‘hours…’’, entitled ‘Toy’, failed to come to fruition, leaving a number of tracks, some still unheard, on the cutting room floor. A new album, however, called ‘Heathen’, did surface in 2002. A continued productive collaboration with Visconti, ‘Heathen’ was particularly notable for its dark and atmospheric sound, and was Bowie’s biggest commercial success for years. Live Wire described the album as ‘a dark, yet engaging album that tugs at the hem of his own past, while looking ahead towards a somewhat uncertain future’. 50
Bowie replied that, ‘We didn’t know where we were going, but it was a joy when we got there. I had a sense of the sonic weight that I was after, a sort of non-professional approach, a kind of British amateur-ness about it. And I mean amateur in that dedicated fashion you find in a man who, only on Sundays, will build a cathedral out of matchsticks – beautiful, but only to please himself and his family and friends. I went in very much like that. I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music. I wanted to bring about a personal cultural restoration, using everything I knew without returning to the past. I wanted to feel the weight and depth of the years.’ Around the same time Bowie was also interviewed by Charles Wooley for Australia’s 60 Minutes, with Wooley commenting that, ‘His lyrics are still dark, but at 55, Bowie is rich, comfortable, and in remarkable health for one who was once so hopelessly addicted to cocaine and alcohol.’ He also touched upon Bowie’s new softer, family-man side. ‘He rose to fame as the fabulous illusionist of rock,’ he added. ‘Ever-changing, always outrageous, and more bizarre by the moment. But these days, David Bowie has morphed again, this time into a new, more down-to-earth role, that of a happily married, middle-aged dad.’ Bowie released another studio album only a year later. ‘Reality’ hit the world in September 2003, and was relatively well-received by the press, with Ingrid Sischy summarising it by noting, ‘Your new album, “Reality”, really captures this moment in history. I know that when it comes to information, you’re a real picker – you’re always deep into all kinds of books, pouring over newspapers from around the world, digging around on the internet.’ Bowie responded by stating, ‘This album is a counterpoint to the idea of a spiritual search. It started off as a random collection of songs – just whatever I was writing at the moment – that express how I feel right now, in this time. But afterwards, reflecting on the 51
work itself, there are recurrent themes – the sense of anxiety about the times that we’re living through and a strong sense of place.’ Bowie also suffered a misfortune of a different sort during this time, however, as his best-selling tour of 2004 was cut short after he suffered chest pains whilst performing on stage in Germany in the summer of 2004. Originally thought to be a pinched nerve, it turned out that Bowie had, in fact, suffered an acutely blocked artery, and an emergency angioplasty was performed in a Hamburg hospital almost straight away.Released towards the end of the summer, Bowie failed to pick up the dates where he left off, and decided it would be wise to recuperate in his then home town of New York City instead. Still recuperating from his angioplasty, Bowie spent the next year or so working offstage and relaxing from any studio work for the first time in what seemed like decades. Featuring on the soundtracks of both Shrek 2, and The Life Aquatic, however, he was still keeping busy. Despite hopes for a stage comeback and a resumption of the Reality tour, Bowie announced that he wasn’t going to perform at all in 2005. As he recorded vocals for yet another movie soundtrack, this time Stealth, rumours surfaced about a possible new album, but no official announcements have, as yet, been made. In spite of opinions to the contrary, Bowie did return to the stage in 2005, as he performed alongside Canadian alt rockers Arcade Fire for the nationally televised event Fashion Rocks. The resulting performance has since been released as an EP on iTunes. Since that time, Bowie has made the occasional appearance on radio shows, and has even appeared on a couple of album releases. He contributed backing vocals on TV on the Radio’s song ‘Province’, made a commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio and joined with Lou Reed on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir’s 2005 album ‘No Balance Palace’. On February 8, 2006, David Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 52
and in November of the same year, he performed at the Black Ball in New York for the Keep a Child Alive Foundation alongside his wife Iman and Alicia Keys. As for the future? Well, in May of this year Bowie will curate the Highline Festival in the abandoned Highline Railway Park in New York City. He will select various musicians and artists to perform at the event, and, you never know, he may even choose to make an impromptu appearance himself. With so many strings to his bow, there is no telling in which direction Bowie will go next. Will he choose to produce? Will he write a novel? Will he finally release the rock opera of graphic novel The Watchman that has long been talked about? Or even release a new studio album? No one knows but him. However, one thing that is for certain is that Bowie must be considered one of the most significant male solo artists to be on the pop scene for the last 40 years or so, if not in the history of
Click the above photo for a video link David Bowie muses upon his creative process in 1973. 53
popular music. Yes, you can look at the likes of Elvis, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton, to name but three, but surely no one has had quite the longevity and commercial appeal that Bowie has had, constantly updating both image and music (or sound and vision, one might say!), not to go with trends, but rather to set them, in what has been one of the most remarkable music careers of all time. Bowie, simply, is an inspiration.
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Interview with Angie Bowie Q Can you describe how you first started out on the music scene in London? Okay. Well I was in London to go to college in 1967. I went to college in 1966 when I was 15, to Connecticut College for Women but I was expelled from school for having an affair with a girl so that kind of clipped my wings a little bit! Then I went to England with my Mom and was waiting to go to Kingston Polytechnic to take an HND in Marketing and Economics. Anyway, I was going to the hairdresser at Leonard’s and this big tall man called Lou Reizner got into this tiny little elevator and by the time we’d gone up a few floors he was really driving me crazy to go to dinner with him. I thought he was an old fart because he must have been at least 28 or 29, you know how that is! Then he got 55
my mother on the phone – he was really good with mothers! He was telling her about his record company (he was the Director of Mercury Records in Europe) and how he was so respectable, so my mother of course said to me, ‘Why don’t you go out to dinner with this man? I don’t understand, the first time a boyfriends probably got a dime or two in his pocket?’ So I said well he’s ancient and he’s probably got real bad intentions, mom. And she said, ‘That’s up to you not him. Go to dinner and be a lady’. So I did and while I was at dinner I met a gentleman called Dr. Calvin Mark Lee. Dr. Calvin Mark Lee was this A&R man and he had long straight black hair and a big love jewel in his forehead and this purple, turquoise or pink fitted velvet suit. Well he was a lot more interesting than Lou Reizner, so I thought this isn’t so bad. Clever mom! I thought maybe I could figure out what it is they were doing and I went out to dinner with them a few times while I was at college. Lou was also extremely well educated. He was at the University of Chicago at the music conservatoire so I have to give him credit, he was very supportive and they would send cars for me, I would get a special message that the Mercury guys were coming and would I go to London and have dinner with them and then they would send me cars to go back and this went on for two years. Be totally assured that I was scheming for a job. Being stuck in England and not being able to work! All I wanted to do was work! I thought if I could just work, I’d have my own money and it would be so cool! During this year and half or two while I was at college and watching what was going on at Mercury Records a lot of things happened. Lou was very artistic and he also wanted to be a vocalist. He was also a very good producer. Calvin was also having a problem closing this supposed deal he had set up for a young artist called David Bowie so Calvin said to me let’s see if you’re really a promoter now. We’d been invited to go to the Roundhouse to see a band called Feathers which had David in it, his girlfriend Hermione, and a guy called Tony Hutchinson. 56
So I went to see the show. Hermione was wonderful. She was exciting! Very tall. She had a great voice so when she’d chime in it was exciting but when she started cavorting it was pretty intense. David was okay. They were a threesome and you know how trios are, he was kind of keeping the songs together and singing his part but it was good. They were interesting. We met them after, went to dinner and I closed the deal. So I said to Calvin, ‘Now look Calvin, that’s a freebie, but you’ve got to help me get a job’. Calvin was very closely associated with a band also signed to Mercury called The Fool who were the designers for Apple. That was fun. He talked about a two year internship in promotion and marketing in the music business, he took me everywhere… we went to radio stations, television stations all of it. Finally David broke up with Hermione. At first I didn’t know anything about this as I was still going to college. Calvin called me with a brilliant idea. ‘Angie, come to dinner with David he’s so upset, he broke up with Hermione.’ So I said, okay sure. We went to dinner in China Town at the Dumpling Inn and after that we went to a club. It was terrific, we danced and had fun and we talked about bisexuality. I told him about the story of getting expelled from Connecticut College for Women for having an affair with a girl because I promised my father I wouldn’t get pregnant or go to bed with a man until I was 18, which seemed perfectly straight forward to me. So the first time I saw David was in Feathers. It was fun! We had a really good time… Q What were your first impressions of David? My first impressions were that he was obviously well respected amongst his peers which for a 23 or 24 year old was kind of interesting and he didn’t seem to have any bad habits. He didn’t drink too much; I thought he was very nice. One day he called me and said he was very sick and would I come down to Beckenham to see him and I said sure I would come down to 57
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Beckenham, another adventure right? I got to Victoria Station and I saw a man from Tibet in big orange robes striding through Victoria Station and he walks up to me and says, ‘You must be Angie’. ‘And you are?’ ‘Jimmy Rim… Nice to meet you! You’re going to see David?’ ‘Yep.’ ‘Oh well give him my love, I hope he feels better.’ I got on the train and thought ‘Who is this person?’ When I arrived at David’s house he looked terrible! He looked like he was about to die but his room was exquisite. He’d had the strength to tidy it all! I told him about Jimmy R and he asked how did you know it was him? I said I didn’t know it was him! He walked up to me and David kind of looked intense. He said I’ll have to tell you about the Tibetans. I said, yes I’m sure you will. Ok! So what he’d done was set up his whole room like a listening room. He played me the whole album, the ‘Space Oddity’ album. So I listened to those songs and then we just started talking and he told me all about the Tibetan Lama in Dumfriesshire. Bear in mind I’m a lapsed Catholic at 15 I’ve been expelled for having an affair with a girl, I’m pretty sophisticated, I knew exactly what was going on in the world, this person explaining his life to me and I thought you just need a marketer buddy, you need somebody to get this shit out there so they know you, and that was basically all I was thinking and he was very welcoming and pleasant and nice. Q What did you make of ‘Space Oddity’ when you first heard it? I thought ‘Space Oddity’ was a good song. Kind of a gimmick song but I still thought it was a good song it had a good melody and he used all these stylophones and stuff like that. Calvin and I as marketers wanted it to go on Top of the Pops. It was just antiAmerican enough to get those audio boys at the BBC to put it on play list. I always knew he had the talent. For me it’s real important to 59
know that somebody is respected professionally so when I saw those people the way they treated him at various clubs, I’d heard the music I knew the music was good, now the question was whether he would let us do with him what needed to be done. Don’t misunderstand I didn’t start this, Calvin started this. Calvin influenced him a great deal. I was attracted to him but I don’t think it was for any good reason. I was bad! Because I waited till I was 18 to have sex with anyone except women I had an attitude basically, totally unlike how you were supposed to behave in those days. He was a piece of ass Calvin had already had him I thought okay watch this buddy, I’ll slip right in there and I did and then I kind of thought he’s not impressed enough! I expected people to be really impressed if I went to bed with them he wasn’t impressed and then I threw some drama in but that didn’t faze him a bit. After that, I didn’t know if I could work with Calvin to promote him but then David decided that I was probably as brilliant as everyone said I was because Calvin of course told him that I had persuaded Lou Reizner to actually allow the contract to be signed, so after that he started thinking I was probably more useful on his side than not. That’s how he lured me in and he pursued me by the call to come to Beckenham to see him to talk about all his shit. It’s like when people meet with an advertising company. He was schmoozing me. Gave me the lines. Now at this point in answer to your question was I attracted to him? Yes but he was trouble. Already. Q How did your relationship develop? Just through necessity. I don’t take no for answer. David couldn’t get people to agree with him or help him change things. I did. I found a place for us to live called Hatton Hall and we moved in. Then he started talking about getting a band. Who would be a good person to organise that? Moi! 60
Q Tell us about the band. This was the next problem. I don’t know where we found Roger Fry. I really don’t… Oh, I do remember he came to the Three Tongues pub in Beckenham one night and then we started talking. I said, ‘Do you know any bands that are absolute killer rock and roll bands’, and Roger Fry said, ‘I sure do! I just came back from Yorkshire had a run in with my old buddies got a band called The Rats. They kick ass.’ I said, ‘Do you think they would be interested in doing something in London?’ Of course everyone would be interested in doing something in London. I thought this is looking good so I said, ‘Would you tell David about them? See what he thinks.’ Roger started talking to David and David looked up and he went, ‘From Yorkshire, well of course they’ll be fantastic’. So we went to Yorkshire which is where we got to meet Mick’s mom and dad and Trevor’s mom and dad and I wish I could remember the name of the first drummer he was really nice and we talked with them about coming to play with David and they knew Roger so it didn’t seem so bizarre it didn’t seem that weird and they said sure and then I had to assure everybody’s parents and all their sisters and families that they were going to be safe. I said, ‘Look, I’ve got this big Victorian house with a balcony that goes all the way around the mezzanine and everyone can sleep up there and I’ll cook’. To Mrs Ronson I said I will iron Mick’s shirts he will not go out looking tatty trust me. So that was the deal. They came to the house and started rehearsing downstairs, Tony Visconti was there as the bass player so that was a little bit before Trevor because that first drummer and Mick came and Tony Visconti played bass and then Tony Visconti got busy with the production side of things. Then they brought Trevor and Woody Woodmansey in. I think the other drummer had another gig. They were very, very nice and I liked their folks which I guess is where it all starts and I promised I’d looked after them, which I did. 61
Q What do you think was the secret to their success? Back up a minute. The thing about them was that the first couple of shows were just so boring but the songs were great. After the show I said I to them, ‘You know guys I think it would be really cool if we could get a little more theatrical’. David was like, ‘Well, I don’t know Angie it’s an idea though’… The boys from Yorkshire were looking at me and I said, ‘Listen guys it will be cool, you don’t have to wear anything you don’t want to, you don’t have to dress up anyway you don’t want to. You have to choose how you want to look if you don’t make a choice I’ll make it for you’. Everyone was cool about it. Our first drummer said he wanted to look like a cowboy; he had all fringes and boots and looked terrific. Tony Visconti decided he was going to be a super hero – Hype Man! I said to Mick, ‘How about a suit?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t want to look ridiculous when everyone else is wearing costume’, so I said ‘How about a gold lame suit?’ ‘Ooh, I don’t know about that, Angie, that’s Elvis isn’t it!’ I said ‘Come with me to a shop I’ve seen one it’s gold but it’s not lame’. It was like tiny, tiny thin corduroy but gold it was shiny gold. Mick loved it. ‘Ooh, I look fabulous in this.’ So because of that it worked. I designed some stuff for David but it looked homemade. I felt so bad. It wasn’t good enough. Mick looked great. The suit was beautiful. The drummer looked fabulous in all his cowboy stuff. Tony Visconti looked great as Hype Man, he looked ridiculous but he didn’t mind. But David I felt bad for because I put something together but we really needed a designer. This was going to be full time. One day we went out dancing to the Sombrero club in London on Kensington High Street and at that point we met Freddie Burretti. I kept thinking to myself I must be really lucky because I wished for it and this designer appeared and David fell in love with him so it was even easier. David was saying how wonderful he was and I thought hurry up Freddie get down here I want to ask you how long it’s going to make 14 suits for the tour! 62
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Q What was it like on tour? It changed. It suddenly got good. After Freddie came on board, they played the Purcell Room. I don’t know what happened. They got good. Suddenly everyone was comfortable. They were in their spotlight. There were only four of them on stage but there was no time to be jealous or be mad at each other because there were just four of them interacting and it started to really work. They were so lucky, they played all around England. And then it seemed within six months they played Carnegie Hall. They played a bunch of shows in the States but within six months they played Carnegie Hall. Already they were established as a really important band. It wasn’t really that they were that important in terms of sales, but we were just damn fine promoters. Please don’t think that’s me having sour grapes it’s not. In every book they say, ‘How could he have been so important when they didn’t sell any records?’ Because Tony DeFries talked RCA out of the tour support that helped
Click the above photo for a video link A period news clip discusses the roots of The Spiders from Mars. 64
keep them going long enough for the record sales to catch up so it wasn’t that they weren’t good or anything like that or that they couldn’t sell records it was because the audience had to catch up and grow up and understand what was going on. Q Do you think they were ahead of their time? Yes, I suppose they were a little ahead of their time because it was… well no not really when you think about pop music no they weren’t ahead of their time. For David it was such a change. David was finally in his time because he had been writing kind of jingles, ‘The Laughing Gnome’, those kind of songs when your manager is saying to you write a nice song that they’ll use in a commercial and that’s not the kind of encouragement a person wants, you don’t want to be asked to take your talent and do it so it fits into that. So all we were doing was everything he had done so far he hadn’t been satisfied with, so I thought the best thing to do was say, ‘Look, we don’t care what you do, you’ve got an album out, are you going to promote or not?’ If you’re going to promote it, how are you going to do it and then we were able to build it around that? Q What about Tony Visconti? Tony Visconti was just a drop in player because he was busy being a record producer. By the way Tony Visconti refused to produce ‘Space Oddity’. He thought it was so utterly and totally without merit. He just couldn’t bring himself… but I do have someone who could do it for you, Gus Dudgeon does that kind of stuff. It’s funny now. The egos. ‘I couldn’t possibly produce them!’ Q Was Tony Visconti important later on? Oh, he was fantastic. He was important then! Because he had done the first album he had set the tone but he got Gus Dudgeon to do those two tracks. ‘Space Oddity’ and the backing track. 65
Q What did you think of Trevor Bolder, when he joined the band? When Trevor joined the band it got interesting. We already had Freddie on the costumers! Freddie was now set up ready to go. I would go to the East End markets and then I would go to Regent Street and Liberties where all the great fashion stores are and there were some incredible Indian ones in the back of Wardour Street and I would go and buy all the fabrics and take them back. Freddie would say, ‘Oh, this looks good on so and so, and do you like this?’ He would make a suit out of it and when Trevor arrived I was kind of relieved that Tony wasn’t the bass player anymore and he was back to being the producer because Tony had done karate and to try and get Tony to do anything with anyone else was impossible, it offended his Brooklyn sensitivity. To try and get Trevor to do something that was in keeping with what Freddie was designing now and what David wanted was easy because Trevor was new, he was a young guy and he was really short! I wondered what we were going to do about this, but finally we got Trevor into platforms, and then we got Freddie to make his pants real long! They had another extra four inches for the platforms and he looked really tall. He was thrilled. Q What about Mick Ronson and Woody Woodmansey? They were both wonderful to work with. I loved Woody. I really did. Woody was an absolute dream. I think when you tour with people internationally you really get to know them. That’s when I really got to know the guys. I didn’t tour a lot. We did a couple of shows and they went off and they did more down in Florida and then I saw them again on the east coast when they played Carnegie Hall. The played out of New York City gigs first then they went down to Florida. They were moving forward.
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Q What did the Americans think? The Americans were crazy about the band. That was what was so dumb. Tony DeFries had a plan. DeFries’s plan was that David was a building. He had to get rid of the band as quickly as possible. Make David a solo artist so that way his plan would work. And obviously that’s what David wanted or he wouldn’t have gone along with it so even though he got rid of Tony DeFries he followed Tony’s plan so in the long run that must have been what David wanted, to be a building! Q Looking back, what are your views on MainMan Productions? If I were to do a cost analysis on the performance of the company I would say David was paying for a lot less than he was getting and he had a very good reason to be miffed. David worked all the time; albums were recorded with Ava Cherry, Mick Ronson, Jane County, Eddie Pop and the Stooges. The Lou Reed album was different because David produced that and that made money but all this other stuff was peripheral. There was a disparity. David had every reason to be really upset, he was working, working, working, he never had any money, we didn’t have a house and he kept saying where’s my money going? Who are we spending it on? Why don’t I have any but then he got rid of DeFries so I assumed he was coming to his senses, you know about sorting it out so he wasn’t upset about it. Mick stayed involved with MainMan when we became MainMan in New York. We didn’t really become MainMan in London because we had Laurence Myers’ Gem Management which kind of covered Tony’s operation there and so Mick Ronson stayed, Woody and Trevor were cast off and that’s it. They had already banned me. I was banned from the MainMan offices; I was banned from the Gem Management offices as well. 67
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Q What was the marriage like? It was funny because the first two or three years I guess is what confused people because we were happy and excited to have found someone we could talk to or work with so I guess we acted married. In those first three or four years it must have been confusing to people because it seemed like we were a normal young couple with a small child but that’s not really what was going on because in the end I had no emotion left so as not to be hurt by David’s behaviour. I managed to do it for three or four years, I could handle his behaviour which was really unprofessional and very difficult to work around, but then I didn’t care any more after that. From then on I knew he was my enemy; I knew he was trying to destroy me he was trying to drive me crazy my father warned me he said, ‘Be very careful, you’ve a big mouth. You’re really smart and people are going to hate you and when they hate you they will try to destroy you’. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He said, ‘You’ve got to wake up to reality’. I stayed and stayed and stayed and tried to make it work but in the end I gave up. I just threw my hands up one day and I thought I can’t do this anymore. He hates me and I’m hanging on because I think I’m owed a part of his business but if I’m in a mental institution because they have driven me crazy what profit is that? So I just ran away. I said okay I’m out of here. I’m gone. The drugs were what caused him to be unbearable to work with. He wasn’t god awful when I met him. He really wasn’t, he was charming. The drugs in America caused him to be completely uncommunicative. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t put two words together. Throw him on the stage he could do the whole show; he’d come off and he’d be a blithering idiot. I’m sorry I wasn’t in awe of what he did on stage I’ve seen better people on stage. What I was interested in was whether we were delivering quality material. I know it sounds camp but I’m serious I’m really that old fashioned. I really wanted to know it was a great show and the 69
music was as great as it could be. I couldn’t accomplish any more as after that he wouldn’t talk to me. I was persona non gratis; all he wanted to do was to get rid of me. That was hard because I was used to being cherished because of my ability to make things happen so when you take away cherishing somebody and you expect them to still make things happen I was able to survive for three of four years in that kind of void but I was so unhappy, I was so miserable, my life was just awful. Q What did you think of the music? I loved the music. My most favourite was ‘Five Years’. ‘Five Years’ was a song that I kind of requested that they write. I knew we needed something rousing, a big anthem at the end. When they wrote ‘Five Years’ I felt they’d got a show that was musically an entity because with that song at the end you could kind of really crank the audience up! ‘Space Oddity’ was always fun to hear.
Click the above photo for a video link Ex-wife Angie Bowie recollects the creation of the hit ‘Five Years’. 70
People liked it. They liked the chorus ‘Floating in a tin can’. It’s cute! All little kids liked that so some songs were more important than others because they aroused the audience. I like songs that arouse an audience. I’m a director so when I see them getting jazzed those are the songs I want. The only one thing that did piss me off every now and again was that David would never even consider playing anybody else’s song. I suggested when they were doing some shows that they do Tony Visconti’s song ‘Skinny Rose’ which was on an album he’d just done. It was a fabulous song. Well David had a friggin’ fit, it was like, ‘It’s my show, my show’, he didn’t say that, please forgive me, I’m taking the piss but you know what? One song from Tony, ‘Skinny Rose’, it’s a cute song! It would have been funny as heck! I think that’s why Mick’s frustration was so bad because Mick was a prolific song writer as well, so even though he got to play, he got to travel, he got to do some things that were cool, he did not get to play his songs, he did not get to do anything until after they’d been fired and then he was kept on almost as this almost deeply compassionate move on the part of MainMan. I don’t think so! Q What did you think of the artwork used on the covers? I thought they were interesting and David has such a background in advertising that if they hadn’t been forceful and dynamic it would have been pretty stupid. We got our friend… I wish I could remember his name! He’s a great cartoonist! Anyway, he did this incredible album cover which is so rare now. I guess they lost the artwork and so when they wanted to do the compilation of the catalogues and show the original American artwork they couldn’t even do it, they didn’t have it. ‘Changes’ is always a big favourite. ‘Kinks’ was cute. ‘Eight Line Poem’ was sweet. Funny, he wrote about a cactus – isn’t that bizarre. I was listening to it the other day. Somebody asked me if I would talk about ‘Five Years’ because they’d heard me say I 71
thought it was great for audience participation and they asked me about that album and I listened to ‘Eight Line Poem’ and I thought what a bizarre little song that is. It was a great album. I liked ‘Changes’. I thought ‘Hunky Dory’ was sweet. Everyone was writing nice things and being encouraging at that time. It was a good time. Q If you could go back what would you change? If I could go back what would I change? I wouldn’t have got kicked out of Connecticut College for Women and I would have become an Interpreter for the UN that sounds really exciting doesn’t it! I’m kind of glad it didn’t happen!
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Interview with Herbie Flowers Q Herbie, what do you remember of the ‘Space Odyssey’ session, I presume that was the first time you met David Bowie? The session was great. I was booked by Gus Dudgeon who was the producer because I had a stupid name! It was the late 1960’s and Tony Visconti had asked him to produce the record. When ‘Space Odyssey’ was recorded there was only David who was doing acoustic guitar and vocal, Terry Cox on drums and myself on bass guitar. About a year later someone phoned up and said, ‘Oh, I recognise your slippery kind of bass playing on that record “Space Odyssey”’. I don’t really remember much more from that day other than going home and saying to the wife, ‘God! I’ve just met this 73
really nice young bloke that in this song was going on about the earth being blue and all that from space’, I was a bit knocked out by that! Q Did you know Gus Dudgeon well? What kind of a person or producer did he strike you as? Well Gus Dudgeon started out like most tape ops or sound engineers, taking a job for work experience in a studio and then learning the ropes, learning how to edit and probably going up to singers and saying. ‘Oh, if you need an engineer…’ and within a couple of weeks they’re producing records. Once Gus had done ‘Space Odyssey’, he was flavour of the month and started producing stuff for Elton John, and goodness knows who else: and because he’d had luck with us lot we would then phone up and says, ‘There’s this young guy called Elton John, we’re doing a record called “The Tiller Man”’, and I went and played bass – still in this crazy style because I was a lover of jazz and I’d not long had this electric bass (which I still can’t play properly), it was a style that probably worked on one or two percent of the records, but on the other 90 percent there’s this busy, unconnected bass player. A guy from a band called The Future Sounds of London phoned me up and said, ‘Could you come and play bass on a record’ and I’d say, ‘Well, why me? Why not someone your own age?’ and he said, ‘Well because I’ve listened to “Space Odyssey” and what you’re doing on bass guitar bears no relation to the song whatsoever, and that’s what I’m looking for’. That’s nice! But in a way, as the producer would say; ‘That’s exactly what I’m looking for, something different’. So, if you’re a little bit different, you probably stand a little bit more of a chance of finding a little niche in the business. As Mr B has done, the biggest change – what you are and who you are and having this grand vision and this great literary talent, the man’s a genius. 74
Q I don’t know how much you’ve listened to the ‘Space Odyssey’ track, or how much you remember it, but in my mind it’s very different to what was being done at that time. Do you agree with that? I think when people start out in their careers they don’t actually have a definitive way of doing things. I think David had done a few things at Decca, like ‘The Laughing Gnome’ and this and that, and a bit of Anthony Newly-type singing, but somebody had said, ‘You’re not going to go very far with this’. A couple of years before that had been ‘The White Album’, the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’, all this lovely kind of orchestrated, adventurous sounds. Producers like Visconti and Gus Dudgeon were actually saying, ‘I’ve got freedom here. This song, “Space Odyssey” it’s about a guy, an astronaut, suddenly wanting to pull the plug on everything and going off…’ What a marvellous opportunity. But I think everything David’s ever done is totally different. That’s why Bowie’s loved all over the world. Q After that album, when was the next time that you saw Bowie? I saw him not long after that on a few other projects. But the big one was about 1973 which was ‘Diamond Dogs’. Mind you, it wasn’t ‘Diamond Dogs’ when it started; David wanted to work on a project called ‘The 1984 Floor Show’. For some reason, maybe the George Orwell estate didn’t want him to use 1984 and all that, but it became ‘Diamond Dogs’. All the tracks for ‘Diamond Dogs’ were recorded at Olympic Studios in about four days. I played on all of that, I was there with David, Alan Parker, Tony Newman – the drummer who used to be in Sounds Incorporated, my best friend – it was my idea that we used Newman. Q Those sessions with Tony, how did you get the gig, do you remember? I’d done all sorts of bits and pieces. Like most men of my age I 75
actually can’t remember what I did on any one particular Tuesday morning 40 years ago. I can vaguely recall epic moments, for example if it was a session with Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, David Bowie or Marc Bolan but, half the time we were booked to roll up, play the bass and go home. As soon as you’d done your bit, you were out the studio thank you, there’s other things to be done. Q Was David producing at that point in time or was he just the artist? Do you remember what impression you had of him? I was 32 when I was asked to do a recording at Trident for a singer/ song writer called David Bowie. I was more fascinated with the way he looked, I thought, ‘Oh, he’s got a glass eye’, but when he played and when he sang, he had this rich voice and this huge jumbo acoustic guitar. I thought how much like Peter O’Toole he looked. Basically with us studio musicians, we are ‘work for hire’. We probably recorded four tracks in three hours that morning, and then went somewhere else. A lot of the work I did was for Gus Dudgeon. I did do a little project for David as well though. He asked if I would produce a song called – ‘Holy, Holy’ – which we did and I made a complete ass of myself; it was the worst… I totally lost it that particular day. I’d booked the wrong players and I put the kitchen sink on the track, I said to David, ‘Oh that bit of melody will come in…’ and I talked my way out of the producers door, you know. I’m not really a record producer. It didn’t really damage my association with David, but it stopped me ever taking on a producer’s project again. The bass I can cope with – one instrument at a time, but having to do with 24 instruments – you need brains for that. Q I’ve never heard ‘Holy, Holy’… Well there are two or three different versions of it. I know David re-recorded it, I don’t know if David produced it. I’m not sure what 76
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producing means; if you have four or five people in the studio and Tony Visconti asks Gus Dudgeon to come along and do it because he couldn’t be there because he’d double-booked himself to be somewhere else, or, to get Rick Wakeman in to do some keyboard – all of us are pretty strong personalities – so the producer really is the one that the record company, or the artiste, ask to produce it and often the greatest producers don’t go to the session. The art of production is to put the right people together, with the right material and to say ‘I’ll be back at five o’clock’. Q Well, is that kind of what happened with the ‘Transformer’ session? When we did the ‘Transformer’ stuff, David had booked Mick Ronson, myself, and a couple of others and let us get on with it; for the very reason that, what does a producer do if the control box is upstairs and you’ve got four musicians and a writer running songs? Ken Scott, on the mixing desk, knew when to have the red light on, because, ‘Oh, this bit’s happening’, that’s good engineering, that’s not good production. The production was somebody saying to David, probably it was Lou Reed that might have said to David, ‘I’ve just left the Velvet Underground, got any career move suggestions?’ and David saying, ‘Well why don’t you come down to London? I know some good players that might sort something out for you’, or might not it was just a lucky, a lucky thing. Q What did you think of Lou Reed? What do I think of Lou Reed? I love him, I mean, he’s not a grumpy old man; but he is a poet, and he is a New Yorker. I spent quite a lot of time in New York because my daughter and her family live there, and, I think the long, long tour that we did for Bowie, the Diamond Dogs thing in the early 70s, gave me quite a taste for America – good and bad – and the music side, good and bad; and Lou, I just loved that anarchic thing of leaving a 78
successful band, I mean Lou must be in his mid-Sixties – and they’re still doing it. What I would love to do, this is totally aside of anything else, I read in The New Yorker magazine which I get every week, that Lou Reed, only recently, did Berlin. That’s an album that he recorded after ‘Transformer’ that bombed out a bit, but at least he’s sent out a signal that he’s prepared to go out and re-run some early material. I would drop everything if Lou decided to get me and one or two of the original players – those that are still on the planet – to go out and do ‘Transformer’, as work. The highlight of my career has been doing things for Lou Reed, and it was David that suggested to Lou that he used me. Q So did you jump at the chance to go on the tour? Did I jump at the chance of doing the Diamond Dogs tour – yes! But that’s because when I was 17 and in the Royal Air Force, I went out to Singapore for three or four years. I’m a good traveller and the idea of doing a tour of America was my idea of a dream holiday. I blew it a little bit because I was kind of bolshy and you know, just thought about myself too much instead of the company. I didn’t do as well as I thought I was going to do; I refused to fly – why I don’t know – so I travelled with the crew. I think the tour was particularly difficult for David because he was breaking new ground, I mean imagine a bit of eyeliner, the costumes and heading down south to Nashville or wherever, to do that kind of music. It was a brave thing to do. I was a bit scared, and very frazzled and a bit guilty because I’d left a wife and two young children at home thinking that’d pay the mortgage off, but… if I had my time again, I’d do it again, but I’d do it properly. Q When you say properly, what do you mean? Did Tony DeFries kind of cock it up for you guys? I mean you weren’t paid properly were you basically? 79
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Tony DeFries, he was no doubt a good manager to have put together such a project. As to not getting paid properly – yes we did, of course we got paid properly. We were given wages and whatever the wages were, whatever figure I said now you’d say, ‘Cor, is that all?’, but in those days studio musicians would go out for £20 a day and work all day never mind who for, and none of that bothered me at all. What I was concerned with really was, it was a big band and quite unmanageable and I knew how much David had risked to do it and I don’t think I co-operated as much as I could’ve done. Being older than all the others I perhaps should have said to everybody, ‘Here fellas, we’ve got to be here on time, we’ve got to be together, let’s spend a bit of time having a look at this that and the other’; instead of that I was saying, ‘What are you doing? What do you mean you’re recording the live album?’ I took on the role of being a lefty trade unionist, imagining that we might have been ripped off when in actual fact none of us were ripped off, at all; we got paid, when I look back it was a very good – I paid my mortgage off. Q I thought you were paid two years later. Some money came two years later because that’s how royalties are collected. Like a residual payment for something. If I do a jingle for Mars Bar and the Mars Bar jingle doesn’t get shown, or it gets shown in China, the money goes all back round and it takes two years. I mean I’m still getting tiny little royalties for things I did in 1964! Only the odd five quid, or £27 if I’m lucky. Q Did you have to wear anything in particular on stage for the Diamond Dogs tour? The costumes were brilliant, yes. They called me the ‘deck chair’ it was blue and white stripes, and when we got home from the gig I wore it once to a friend’s house and everybody ignored me at the party, it was a bit over the top. I’d never do it again. 81
Q Were you all supposed to be a gang or punks or something, what was the concept? There was a dance space on stage, the musicians were in a semicircle, drums, guitar, bass, keyboard and the brass players were at the back up on a stand, and I think there might have been muslin in front of them to disguise the fact that they were there, otherwise they would’ve looked odd because the stage was skyscrapers and we were the minions doing the music. But David needed all the space that he could get, like when he did ‘Space Odyssey’ this big crane lowered him down, it was quite a remarkable sight. Then there was this huge hand about 20 foot across and there’s David standing in the middle of it. I’m amazed as to what it was, pure fantasy, I love it you know; you’ve got to experiment haven’t you. At least, someone as beautiful as David could do it. I mean you couldn’t have someone like Roy Wood doing it or Slade, or Robbie Williams… you’ve got to have class.
Click the above photo for a video link A news clip examines Bowie’s stage attire in 1973. 82
Q Yes, he started off in mime didn’t he? Yes, as far as I know. Q And what about the Marc Show, because you were on the show then with Bowie, it was the last show wasn’t it? Yes. Marc’s last show of that short sweet series, David came along as a special guest, and Marc had slipped and hurt his ankle beforehand and David came on and sang ‘“Heroes”’, in the wrong key! He said to me, ‘What key is it?’ and I said E and it wasn’t, it should have been in D, and a lot of people thought I did it on purpose but I’m not that much of a mischief maker! Marc I think was in quite a lot of discomfort because they ran the credits along the bottom so you couldn’t see the bandage around Marc’s foot. He didn’t jump and he wasn’t pushed, it was just a slight mishap. I mean in the music business I’m surprised there are not more accidents. It’s not as dangerous as rugby or football but you can fall off the stage or get pushed off. Q David and Marc were great friends weren’t they? Yes. I think often great friendship is based on a deep respect and kind of a camaraderie, which I enjoy. I mean all my friends I’m falling out with all the time, except the woman I love, a creative relationship must be like that. Q Finally, what stands out most in your mind when you think of David Bowie? What do I think of mostly about David? I rue the fact that when we did the Diamond Dogs tour I had a little bit of a barny with him about the live recording, which I have to say to this day is a masterpiece. I don’t think many people think that, they say that like all live records it’s untidy. Well of course it’s untidy because there’s no over-dubbing, instead of taking a year to make the record it took two hours. But a couple of hours before the concert 83
I went up to David’s room and said, ‘Look, you’ve got to sort the money out’ and that was, for me, a cardinal sin and a grossly amateur thing to do. You know, if anybody did it to me just before I played a gig, I’d think of that bloke, ‘Oh, leave it out; people are here because I’m here’. I’ve always wondered if, because of that event it’s the reason I haven’t seen David in over 30 years. I think about him a lot because when you’re actually making music like the sort of music he makes, when you’re doing that together, despite the fact it’s all his, there’s an incredible intimacy and you bare your soul to each other and I feel I betrayed that a little bit. But I’m glad I did it because it stopped me doing it time and time again. I made up my mind after that I would stay away from trade union matters, I would never sign anything, just be the buffoon. I’m still working but, I’m very, very proud of the fact that I worked for David and what came out, because of all the parties it got me taken to!
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Interview with Woody Woodmansey Q So how did you get into drumming? I was fourteen when I got into drumming. I used to play football with my mates after school – there were five of us – in the middle of Yorkshire, in an agricultural area. We had this little space where we played football and in one corner of this sort of field was an air raid shelter from the war which was all overgrown on the outside and we’d never really noticed it. Anyway, I kicked the ball, missed the goal and it flew over to the air raid shelter. When I went over to get the ball, I looked up at the door of the air raid shelter and it had the words The Cave painted on it and I could hear music coming out. I said to my mate, ‘What’s that?’ and he said, ‘Oh 85
it’s my brother, he’s in a rhythm and blues band and they practice in there’. So I said, ‘Can we go in and listen?’ And he said, ‘No you don’t get in there, it’s like secret society type thing’. Two weeks later I was still pestering them and they let us go in and watch one song. So we walked in and it was pitch black, just a red bulb on and a stage at one end and they were playing a Muddy Waters song, the atmosphere was incredible and I was just like mesmerised. I stood there and thought, ‘This is what I gotta do. I gotta play music’. It just made me feel stronger, bigger, more me, in front of a live band. I was fairly shy as a kid. So we said, ‘Right that’s it, we’re forming a band’ at school and we bought three guitars off the Salvation Army for, I think it was 10 shillings – 50p a guitar – and we said ‘First rehearsal on Friday’. I took my guitar home and I just sort of held it every night. I just didn’t really know what to do with it, I don’t know what I imagined would happen. Anyway, I just
Click the above photo for a video link Drummer Woody Woodmansey reflects upon his early years with Bowie. 86
couldn’t get the hang of it, so in the end, one of my mates pulled a pair of sticks from behind his back and said, ‘You’re the drummer!’ So that was it. I got a drum kit for I think it was fifteen shillings, again off the Salvation Army, and it was painted bright yellow and it had real animal skins on it that had been sewn up. It sounded atrocious but to me it was beautiful, so for the first few months, that’s what I did every night, just practice. So in those first few months I was buying albums and sitting listening to them, now as a potential musician, and watching bands on TV. It made me think, ‘Maybe this is my thing’. And then I tried to figure out what the drummers were like in the big bands that were around at that time. What the technique is, what the sound’s like, how do you get the same sound as John Bonham, how do you get the same sound as Ginger Baker, how does he play, how does he hit it, how does he tune the kit, to get the exact thing. So I went through all those drummers until I could play like those drummers and people would come up and say, ‘Whoa, I closed my eyes and I thought it was Ginger Baker’, ‘I thought it was John Bonham’. And at first you’re like – yeah, I’ve made it – and then you think, ‘Hang on a minute, I’m not John Bonham’, I’d rather they were saying, ‘You are really good’. Q So who were your influences then? The first one was really the early sixties band The Hollies, a guy called Bobby Elliott, who was just so precise in his playing and was the first one playing who I noticed was using rudiments, although I didn’t know what rudiments were at that time, I knew he had some, he was doing something that other drummers weren’t doing. And then it was Keith Moon in The Who really, just as a showman. He really seemed to have so much fun when he played and I thought, ‘Mmm, I fancy that’. Then John Bonham, Mitch Mitchell, Ginger Baker, Simon Kirke from Free, the solidness there, and I guess you take on little influences here and there and 87
you take them on and make them your own. I remember when we did ‘Ziggy Stardust’, the track, I’d been listening to King Crimson Schizoid Man and there’s one fill that starts at the beginning of the bar and comes in half way through two bars on. It’s just odd and when I first heard it, it was like, ‘What is that? How the hell did he count through that?’ you know. I sat and learned it so on ‘Ziggy’ I put a similar fill but that’s where I got it from, I want to create that effect and it fits you know. Q On ‘Kooks’, who played trumpet and how does the arrangement contribute to the mood of this song? Trevor played trumpet on ‘Kooks’ – he was in a brass band when he was at school and we found out about it and said, ‘Right, you’re playing trumpet’. I think it’s only one little bit but it’s really cool and it was a bit kitsch, you know, a bit cheeky. You don’t really expect that on a serious song, but it’s really cool, just a nice touch. ‘Kooks’ was an odd one because it didn’t really need much drumming. As a song it was very simple, singing about when he has a kid, so you couldn’t really interfere that much, you were really just backing it up with a beat. Q ‘Queen Bitch’ – why does it work in musical terms? Tell me a bit about the history. ‘Queen Bitch’ was a song that David wrote, I think it was after ‘The Man Who Sold the World’, after we’d done that album, Mick and I went back to the north of England and put another band together and we were out playing the northern clubs Liverpool Cavern and places like that. We were looking for a singer and David wrote that one for us basically, but our singer was a big, bearded, hard-looking man and one of the lines in ‘Queen Bitch’ was ‘In your bibbedy-bobbedy hat’ but he just couldn’t make it his own, he couldn’t sing it, it was just not right coming out of this sort of American hillbilly type guy. 88
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Q What did the drumming bring to ‘Queen Bitch’? I think, I remember the drumming on ‘Queen Bitch’, being a tough one. I’m just trying to remember why, I think it was because the, it seemed like the drum intro needed to be like one of the old Tamla Motown type fills. That’s really where I got it from, it just seemed the perfect drum fill to bring the whole track in and kick it off so it started rocking. Then it changed to a meatier part as it built up to the chorus, so I had to double up on the snare, which was a tricky manoeuvre to keep it still grooving in the same vein and build it up. Q What was the song about? Some dude in New York, having a hard time I think. Q ‘Five Years’ – how does this song develop in musical terms? Well, ‘Five Years’ starts with a drum intro. That was really just setting the mood for the piece really, getting that hopelessness into a drum beat that was interesting at the same time as ‘everything’s hopeless and we’re all going to die’ I guess. Sounds very deep what you can actually do with a drum kit but you can do it. The idea was to stay on that, no matter what, no matter where the arrangement goes, and it does get quite embellished on the way through, more desperate, the drum beat still has that apathetic, hopelessness about it all the way through. It was good playing that, it was like being the stable point through all this mayhem. Q ‘Starman’ – why does the acoustic rhythm in the intro work so well? On ‘Starman’, I think the guitar is a perfect intro really, because it’s nice sounding, but it’s really not what you want, it impinges on you because it’s like ‘Come on get on with it!’ That was the idea when the rest of the band kicked in, you had that relief of ‘Oh, thank goodness, the band’s kicked in and it’s gonna rock’. 90
Q And the drumming – is there anything that stands out? Was it complicated or simple? Fairly simple. The intro fill I like, I still like playing it, it’s sort of a flam on two toms onto a snare and it’s just not something you would normally do. I’ve not heard anybody else do it and it just really kicks in nice. Q ‘Suffragette City’ – in musical terms what makes this such a great rock song? ‘Suffragette City’ just kicks butt basically! It starts and it doesn’t let up. You’re in a rock and roll city, you’re in a rock and roll lifestyle and that was the intention of it – this is rock and roll and get on board or sling your hook! Q How did it make you feel playing it? Brilliant. Especially live. It just went down so well every night. People couldn’t sit down basically. You knew when that was on they would be up on their feet, just from the rhythm of it and the whole atmosphere of it. The drumming on ‘Suffragette City’ is very simple, but it was finding a groove that was streamlined, that wasn’t your normal rock and roll beat, it was moving, you had to get sort of real motion into it and then it’s the halted bit where he does the wham, bang, thank you ma’am and then you had to be back in on the same level, even though there was a gap there in the guitar, bass and drums, you still had to be back on the boil, as it were, when you came back in again. Q ‘Ziggy Stardust’… Is it archetypal Bowie sound do you think? Yeah, I think ‘Ziggy’, as far as the track goes, really sets the mood for that whole album. It’s really like a clichéd rock and roll band that can play, and we pull it off basically. That track’s a big part 91
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of it, just the lyrics, there was always the twisted lyrics through a lot of the songs that I guess gave it that ambiguity all the time. It’s always good to give that, you give the expected but then you put in the unexpected to counterpoint that. David was good at that lyrically. Just when you thought you knew what it was about, it changed direction on you and put a little knife in the back or a little twist to it. I think musically we mirrored that. The trick and the art were making it seem like it belonged even though it shouldn’t really be there. I think that was a big part of the sound and ‘Ziggy’ was one like that really. Q ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’ – what are the musical hallmarks of the song and was the Mick Rock film the first modern pop film? Yeah I think ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’ was recorded while we were in the middle of an American tour. I think it was done in RCA Studios in New York. That was the first time I think I had ever overdubbed drums. I played a really straight, heavy rock beat and then the tom fills; I overdubbed them all just to get as much power that I could possibly get into the toms. It was like, forget about the feet, forget about anything else, just hit those toms as hard as you can possibly hit them. And it worked. It was another strange one, it was a strange song that didn’t really follow the normal patterns of rock songs, I guess. It had little twisty bits in it, we were never conned. Q Mick Rock’s film – what did you think? Yeah, Mick Rock did a film for ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’ and I’m pretty sure if I remember, that was because we were on tour and couldn’t get back to do a TV show which may have been Top of the Pops. So as Mick was on tour with us taking photos every night, he shot the video as well. It probably was the first real rock/ pop video done but I don’t think we get the credit for that because 93
I think Queen got that for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. But ours was first! Q What was it like filming? It was filmed in a little dark studio with hardly any lights, just to create the strange atmosphere basically. I remember lots of smoke blown across just to get that real sleazy atmosphere and then we had a friend that was on tour with us who looked a little bit like Marilyn Monroe but more hip, and we had her prancing about. Q How long did it take to shoot? Oh it was shot in about half a day, the whole thing. I mean it was very low key, equipment wise – but it did have a good feel about it which is what communicates it. Q What did you think of the finished product? I thought it was brilliant, I still like watching it now. It looks like ‘Ooh, I wanna watch this band. I wanna be there’ you know. Q And what do you think of Mick Rock’s photos of you guys? Mick Rock had a knack of capturing the particular action shot that was the one that was unusual. He just had a good eye for seeing something that hadn’t been shot in rock and roll before. Whether it was the angle of the body or if just the positioning on stage was different, he was able to shoot and shoot through the whole gig, through the whole tour, but got a lot of really good shots. Q What kind of style does he have? I think he shot in both black and white, and colour. He’s just got such a good eye for a shot. When we did Japan, we’d been to see a Japanese theatre company and they had the dragons, all the wild red hair and make-up, and the white masks and all that and this 94
was right in the middle of a worldwide tour and it was like ‘Whoa, that’s weird man’ you know. Then we had the opening night, I think it was in Tokyo, and Trevor had long hair then so we got a hairdresser to come in and do him a samurai hairdo, and he had the big bamboo sticks or whatever sticking out, Japanese make-up, Japanese costume, and we all wore something a little bit Japanese and it looked very strange playing the sort of space rock music. I’d bought a little book in this theatre and it showed different hand movements and things that they used in theatre so I showed some of them to David and he said, ‘Ooh, I like that’. So he went on stage that night and did one of them. Mick didn’t know he was gonna do it and got the shot and I think that went worldwide, and in all the music mags the next week. That was just from going to a little theatre! Q ‘The Jean Genie’ – is this Bowie’s best single? Ooh, that’s a good question. I think he’s done a few singles that are classic singles. I thought ‘Starman’ was the perfect single to really kick off, career wise. And I thought ‘The Jean Genie’ was equal to that. We’d come up through rhythm and blues and that’s very much a sort of a howling wolf type track and we just approached it like that, we understood that music, but David’s lyrics and vocal approach to it was completely off the wall for that time. But the two fitted together even though they shouldn’t really have fitted. Mick’s guitar solo in it was not what you expected in a track like that either. It’s still one of my favourites. Every time I hear it on the radio it’s like, ‘Yeah, I like that. It’s good’. Q What was the drumming like on this track – simple or complicated? It was quite simple really. The drumming on ‘The Jean Genie’ was just that simple rocking out 4-4 approach, with just a little slight variation on the chorus so that it lifted into a normal rock chorus 95
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then back to the rhythm and blues for the verses. It was more feel than anything which is why it works so well. If you were going to get work in a rhythm and blues band, you really had to be able to play the blues and you had to feel it, you had to really like believe in the blues to pull it off. I think that ground work in rhythm and blues helped you to be able to get the emotion out of a song or figure out what the emotions should be for a song even though it wasn’t a rhythm and blues song. You learned that there has got to be some emotional content here, there’s got to be some meaning and message that you’re trying to put across for you to be able to do a good part. Otherwise it’s just throwing notes together and throwing drum fills in and figuring a beat that you want to play. That’s really not where it’s at. I guess you had to duplicate in the music what the writer had written. The blues helped us get that, get inside the song and be that song and ‘The Jean Genie’ was a good example of that.
Click the above photo for a video link Bassist Trevor Bolder discusses the hit song ‘The Jean Genie’. 97
Q Why does ‘Drive-In Saturday’ work so well do you think? ‘Drive-In Saturday’ is another one of my favourites actually. I think it’s just a futuristic rock song that isn’t pretentious. I think we’ll see more of that track in the future, I think it’s been passed over for some reason. I love everything about it, the weird do-wappy backing vocals; the concept of the song is probably more current for nowadays than it was when it was written. It’s a good song. Q And drumming? The drumming was again, a simplistic approach, it was just really let the arrangement come through and everything else ride on top of this groove. You can’t really break it down or mess about with it. It was again the stable point. Q ‘Diamond Dogs’ – was this a disappointing album in your opinion? I loved it. I mean, we’d done some tracks earlier, before the album was recorded as a proper album, like ‘1984’ we did. It was desperate, it was a desperate album in content but I thought it was incredible in setting a whole scene up of desperateness and the ‘1984’ approach. I think it was brilliant in that context. Q So what do you think made it different to the previous albums? It was different musicians. I wasn’t on that one. I think also it was maybe a little bit too far out; it stretched people a little bit too much… I think it stretched audiences just a little bit too much in the image and the content. Probably up to that point the stretching was as much as they could actually tolerate. It stretched them but it didn’t overstretch them and I think that ‘Diamond Dogs’ just pulled it a little bit into the – ooh, don’t know if we wanna go there – in my opinion. 98
Q What was it like when you were on stage playing with Bowie? What were your feelings? What was going through your head? On stage? I guess the image of the band and the concepts of the album was that the band didn’t come from earth, so I guess we played that part to some degree, like an actor. We seemed to communicate well with the audiences; we used to get fan mail, lots of fan mail where people actually did believe that we were actually the images we portrayed on stage. Q What were the fans like? Brilliant, yeah, I mean really cool. The fans I spoke to, loved what we were doing – it seemed to open a door for them to create, to experiment with clothes. We made it sort of ok to do things whereas they hadn’t thought about it before. This was I guess so wild and odd that they probably thought ‘I’ve got odd ideas’ and ‘I’ve always wanted to do that but I didn’t know’ and so that was a good aspect of it. Q ‘Rebel Rebel’ – good as the previous singles do you think? I thought it was good. Neither Trevor nor I played on that one but most people assume we did because it seems to have that same approach; I think that’s probably the only other track without us that sounds like us. Whether that was intentional I don’t know but it’s definitely a good single. Q Do you think ‘Pin Ups’ was a wise move for Bowie? I’d venture to say it was probably the only option, to do ‘Pin Ups’ at the time. I mean, we’d always talked about doing an album of our favourite tracks but it was more a whim, more a – ooh wouldn’t it be quite nice to do that – and I think the trials and tribulations of being on the road and not being able to just consistently sit at home and write, got him to a point where he didn’t have much written. 99
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I think ‘Pin Ups’ was probably really the only option at the time because we’d been basically working more or less non-stop for a couple of years. We’d have Christmas Day off and that was about it, so the luxury of sitting at home like he did in the early days and just write, and write, and write, wasn’t really there – he wrote some on the road and on the bus sometimes but there wasn’t, another album’s worth written and I think ‘Pin Ups’ was, obviously an album which was needed by the record company. Some of the tracks I think worked, others would have been better left, most of them. Q ‘All the Young Dudes’ – should Bowie have kept this? In honesty I would say ‘All the Young Dudes’ was one of his classic songs. I guess we were a little annoyed that we didn’t have it out as a single at the time because you could see the potential of it but he was helping Mott out so that was cool, they were about to break up if they didn’t have a hit single and that was definitely a hit single from the first moment you heard it. I mean it helped us because when we did it live it was obviously recognised. Q What was the story behind that then? Did he write it for them? Yeah. They came and said, ‘We’re gonna split up. We haven’t got a hit’, or whatever and he said, ‘I’ll write you one’ and that’s the one that he wrote. And they did it basically and that really saved their careers for a bit. Q How do you rate Ziggy Stardust, the motion picture? How do I rate Ziggy Stardust, the motion picture? I haven’t actually seen the re-cut of it. I thought the atmosphere was good, so it’s probably the same. The sound was always a bit suspect, I don’t know whether that’s been enhanced or not, I would hope so. It was good to watch, personally. Whether that effect is the same from somebody not in the band I can’t really say. 101
Q What was it like working with Bowie as musicians? Working with David was different. It was sometimes a matter of keeping up with where he was going. He had a knack of not knowing anything about studios, which he doesn’t, he didn’t. For example, he’d see an accordion or a trumpet or some instrument that the band who’d just been recording had left behind and we’d be saying, ‘This track needs something else’, and he’d go, ‘Oh, I know what. Let’s use the accordion’ or the trombone or the Jew’s harp or whatever… And we would be going, ‘Oh, you’re joking. That won’t work. That doesn’t fit’. But he would do it and mess about with it and it would work. I think his skill in being on the ball in as far as what’s happening, what’s about to happen, musically, was uncanny at times, at being able to pull stuff from here, there and mix it into a great song was brilliant. And he still does that at times. I’m not sure whether it’s as consistent as it was in the early days, like the amount of tracks that you would call classic tracks. But he’s still got the knack to do that, just pull one out of the air; it’s still there, like ‘“Heroes”’ or something like that. There are quite a lot of tracks that I wish I’d played on. Q Anything else you want to add to that? Was he a hard guy to work with, was he quite temperamental? In the studio sometimes impatient, which probably led to the reason why we only did three takes at the most. He would expect everybody to really have it together; otherwise the atmosphere would go a bit sour. But once you knew that was the game, then you played that game and it was alright. So that got tough. I mean generally, I guess it was fun as well, above everything. You did your job. It’s like the saying that the happier times are getting there not necessarily when you get there – you know, when you look back, you realise that they were the good times. I mean even sleeping in a sleeping bag on his landing in his flat which is where we probably 102
slept for about a year, the whole band, we were in sleeping bags, doing the first albums. At the time you think it’s rough. You look back and you think, ‘No it was actually cool’. We got up, had a coffee, went down and played drums straightaway and jammed and then had breakfast and you know, it was good, it was a good scene. Q How do you rate Ronson as a guitarist? Mick as a guitarist was a tasty player. He just had a knack of playing really simple but tasty that really communicated. You just knew it was a good player playing it, just little twists of the notes showed he really knew his stuff. He got in to being a real showman, I mean he was, in the early days he was into being a showman as well, but being with Bowie pulled it out even more. It had to be the right sounding chord for the guitar and it had to be the right setting and he knew exactly what he wanted and when he
Click the above photo for a video link Drummer Woody Woodmansey recalls Bowie at work in the studio. 103
got that really in, he was blistering. A lot of times he would do a solo and his first attempt was the one we kept. Q Was 1971-1974 Bowie’s golden era? Was that period the golden era? I suppose only time will really tell. I mean, I think from consistency and the newness of what it did to rock and roll, then yes, it probably was his golden era. The fact that he’s probably at times been able to pull it out of the bag, like the electronic stuff was a completely new direction but he was talented enough to be able to take the form on, that new form and make it his own and communicate with it and sometimes to the same degree as he did in the early days. It was quite outstanding. A bit I think like a painter learning a new technique or a new style, getting it together and then coming out with some masterpieces. He’s able to do that.
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Track-by-Track Analysis
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his track-by-track review of David Bowie’s vast recorded back catalogue – dating from 1967 right through to 2003 – aims to provide a clear, concise, and unbiased evaluation of each of the British superstar’s songs and albums. Each song and album has been rated out of five as follows: ����� Essential ���� Great ��� Good �� Average � Poor Right, lets crack on, shall we? 105
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David Bowie (1 June 1967) Tracklisting: Uncle Arthur / Sell Me a Coat / Rubber Band / Love You Till Tuesday / There Is a Happy Land / We Are Hungry Men / When I Live My Dream / Little Bombardier / Silly Boy Blue / Come and Buy My Toys / Join the Gang / She’s Got Medals / Maid of Bond Street / Please Mr. Gravedigger
Uncle Arthur �� Quaint and quirky: ‘Uncle Arthur likes his mommy / Uncle Arthur still reads comics / Uncle Arthur follows Batman.’ Sell Me a Coat � Multi-layered, yet still sounding sparse, ‘Sell Me a Coat’ suffers from poor production. It’s lyrically sound, though: ‘And when she smiles, the ice forgets to melt away / Not like before, her smile was warming yesterday, / See the trees like silver candy, feel my icy hand.’ Rubber Band �� A marching tune employing tuba as the lead instrument, ‘Rubber Band’ was released as a single prior to the album’s liberation and helped persuade a record label to sign him. A flop in the charts, the track has more than a little of Anthony Newley’s style in Bowie’s vocal delivery. Love You Till Tuesday �� Utilising an acoustic guitar supplemented with strings, ‘Love You Till Tuesday’ is pure showpiece, and lent its name to Bowie’s premier film two years later. There Is a Happy Land �� Lyrically, ‘There Is a Happy Land’ is an early foray into Bowie’s 107
vision of children as a separate race to adults, a theme prevalent in his later albums. Germinal. We Are Hungry Men �� More developing ideas here, this time ‘We Are Hungry Men’ takes us into the mind of a self-styled Messiah, the likes of which we find on ‘Space Oddity’, ‘The Man Who Sold the World’, ‘Hunky Dory’, and, of course, ‘Ziggy Stardust’. A clever take on the population explosion. When I Live My Dream � ‘When I live my dream, I’ll take you with me, / Riding on a golden horse / We’ll live within my castle, with people there to serve you, / Happy at the sound of your voice.’ Instantly forgettable. Little Bombardier �� In waltz time, ‘Little Bombardier’ makes good use of both brass and strings, and, lyrically, includes a bizarre twist – the hero of the piece turns out to be a child molester. Silly Boy Blue �� An overlong yet passable ballad: ‘You wish and wish, and wish again, / You’ve tried so hard to fly, / You’ll never leave your body now, / You’ve got to wait to die.’ Come and Buy My Toys �� Short and sweet, ‘Come and Buy My Toys’ is a mildly charming affair, and among the scant couple off the album with a lead acoustic guitar. Join the Gang �� Using maniacal sound effects, and being an early excursion into 108
contemporary youth culture, ‘Join the Gang’ makes good use of the sitar in a tale of drug use and peer pressure. She’s Got Medals � Predating the androgyny of Ziggy Stardust, ‘She’s Got Medals’ is a gender-bending tale rife with gay and lesbian connotations. It’s somewhat harsh-sounding. Maid of Bond Street �� Like ‘Little Bombardier’, ‘Maid of Bond Street’ is another number in waltz time making extensive use of strings and brass. ‘This girl is maid of Bond Street, / Hailing cabs, lunches with executives, / Gleaming teeth sip aperitifs.’ Please Mr. Gravedigger � An odd a cappella track, album closer ‘Please Mr. Gravedigger’ is a macabre piece, and has, in the past, been aptly described as ‘one of pop’s genuinely crazy moments’. Conclusion David Bowie’s eponymously-titled debut album bears little to no resemblance to the music that later made him famous. With influences stretching across theatrical tunes, music-hall pieces, the quaint British quirkiness of the likes of The Kinks, early Pink Floyd, and Syd Barrett, and a hint of the Beatles thrown in for good measure, Bowie’s debut album may come as a shock to fans who have come to know his later work. Still a long way from commercial success, this album is rooted in the 1960s and is a goldmine of goofy juvenilia, ludicrous lyrics, and the embryonic themes that would later define the artist’s more mature work. A stuttering start. Overall rating: � 109
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Space Oddity (4 November 1969) Tracklisting: Space Oddity / Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed / Don’t Sit Down / Letter to Hermione / Cygnet Committee / Janine / An Occasional Dream / Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud / God Knows I’m Good / Memory of a Free Festival
Space Oddity ���� A largely acoustic number, enhanced by Bowie’s electronic album, ‘Space Oddity’ is still one of the artist’s best-known tracks. Inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, we are introduced to the infamous Major Tom for the first time. Taking in possible themes of drug use, self-destruction, and isolation, ‘Space Oddity’ has a fantastic vocal and a superb, swirling arrangement. Great stuff. Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed ��� Ahead of its time, ‘Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed’ has a strong, blues-based psychedelic edge reflecting the work of Bob Dylan. Utilises Bowie’s much-used at the time 12-string acoustic guitar. Good lyrical wordplay. Don’t Sit Down � A pointless folk jaunt lasting less than a minute, and consisting mainly of the lyrics ‘Oh yeah, baby, yeah’ and ‘Don’t sit down’, ‘Don’t Sit Down’ was subsequently left off the 1972 re-release of the album, and rightfully so. Letter to Hermione �� Finding Bowie at his most pained, ‘Letter to Hermione’ is a ballad for a former girlfriend. Painting himself as a bitter romantic, Bowie’s lyrics are heartfelt and disaffected. Musically the track is forgettable. 111
Cygnet Committee ��� With lyrical wordplay reminiscent of Dylan, ‘Cygnet Committee’ is an ambitious nine-minute epic, and the track most indicative of Bowie’s future direction. More messianic vocal work in this, his first stab at extended development. Suffers for being somewhat too long. Janine �� Pleasant if not particularly significant pop music, with themes concerning a fracturing personality: ‘But if you took an axe to me, you’d kill another man not me at all.’ An Occasional Dream �� Another composition for Bowie’s ex-beau. A gentle love song. ‘It was long, long ago, / And I still can’t touch your name.’ Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud �� Featuring a full orchestral arrangement and using Bowie staple Mick Ronson on lead guitar for the first time, ‘Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud’ is a passable track influenced by the Buddhist craze of the time. God Knows I’m Good �� ‘God Knows I’m good, / Surely God won’t look the other way, Hey.’ An observational tale of shoplifting, ‘God Knows I’m Good’ recalls Bowie’s earlier folk style. Insignificant. Memory of a Free Festival �� A disastrous single release, ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ is a nice but badly arranged ‘Hey Jude’-esque album-closer. It’s drawn-out and unnecessarily long. Conclusion Sometimes prog-rock, sometimes folk, and sometimes balladry, 112
‘Space Oddity’ is an odd hodgepodge of an album that doesn’t seem to fit well with itself. A little of what he was and a little of what he was to become, ‘Space Oddity’ captures a number of Bowie staples both lyrically and musically. Featuring a notable list of collaborators, including Rick Wakeman, Tony Visconti, and Herbie Flowers, Bowie’s second studio album is another fairly unbalanced foray into the world of popular music. Getting there. Overall rating: ��
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The Man Who Sold the World (4 November 1970) Tracklisting: The Width of a Circle / All the Madmen / Black Country Rock / After All / Running Gun Blues / Saviour Machine / She Shook Me Cold / The Man Who Sold the World / The Supermen
The Width of a Circle ��� A great opener to the album, ‘The Width of a Circle’ is a hard rocker with strong heavy-metal overtones. Featuring Mick Ronson’s lead guitar work, this eight-minute classic is one of Bowie’s heaviest-ever tracks, and you can really feel the power of his voice in this one. All the Madmen ��� ‘Day after day, / They send my friends away, / To mansions cold and grey.’ One of Bowie’s more disturbing songs, ‘All the Madmen’ explores insanity. It opens with an acoustic guitar and a decant recorder, lending a certain derangement to the track, before lending itself to a fully grounded glam-rock sound. Good vocals and bass work well here. Black Country Rock ��� Another killer Ronson riff lends this blues-rock number a certain Led Zeppelin sound. ‘Black Country Rock’ is one of the more upbeat tunes on the album, and could also be likened to early T.Rex. After All �� A slower, darker piece, taking in eerie vocals from Bowie, ‘After All’ contains lyrics concerning Bowie’s fascination with children as a separate race. An odd instrumental break doesn’t work so well in this track, which echoes the teachings of occultist Aleister Crowley. 115
Running Gun Blues �� ‘I slash them cold, I kill them dead, / I broke the gooks, I cracked their heads, / I’ll bomb them out from under the beds, / But now I’ve got the running gun blues.’ A mix of Bowie past and Bowie present. Nothing special. Saviour Machine ��� Lyrically strong and musically catchy, ‘Saviour Machine’ contains heavily distorted slide guitars which really add to this track about religion. She Shook Me Cold ��� As hard-hitting as anything either in Bowie’s catalogue or that of anyone else from the 1970s chart scene, ‘She Shook Me Cold’ features more great solo work from Mick Ronson and some sexually provocative lyrical work. The Man Who Sold the World ���� ‘Oh no, not me, / I never lost control, / You’re face to face, / With the Man Who Sold the World.’ Partially inspired by a nursery rhyme, ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ boasts vocal work similar to that to be found on ‘Space Oddity’. One of Bowie’s brighter moments. The Supermen ��� A hard rocker with which to close the album, ‘The Supermen’ really brings everything together, as vocals, bass, and drums all flow perfectly with Ronson’s guitar work. Good stuff. Conclusion Influencing all and sundry from the worlds of goth rock, new wave, and science-fiction-tinged music, including The Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees, and Nine Inch Nails, ‘The Man Who 116
Sold the World’ introduces the nucleus of the members of the backing band made famous by ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’. Described as Bowie’s first album proper, this, his third studio outing, is actually more recognisable due to Mick Ronson’s heavy-metal-tinged guitar work rather than anything Bowie himself did. Still, with references to Aleister Crowley, Nietzsche, and Kafka, ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ is still pure Bowie through and through. The story really starts here. Overall rating: ���
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Hunky Dory (17 December 1971) Tracklisting: Changes / Oh! You Pretty Things / Eight Line Poem / Life on Mars? / Kooks / Quicksand / Fill Your Heart / Andy Warhol / Song for Bob Dylan / Queen Bitch / The Bewlay Brothers
Changes ���� With an introduction somewhat reminiscent of the Thomas the Tank Engine theme tune, ‘Changes’ is, nevertheless, a great opener to a great album. One of his best-known songs, ‘Hunky Dory’’s opener’s lyrics reflect Bowie’s constant musical re-inventions: ‘Strange fascination, fascinating me / Changes are taking the pace I’m going through.’ A classic chorus and great piano playing add to this classic. Oh! You Pretty Things ���� With lyrics inspired by Nietzsche, ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ carries on where ‘Changes’ left off. A sing-along hook, replete with simple piano, and a great Bowie vocal performance make this a timeless standard. Eight Line Poem ��� Leading in directly from the piano of ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’, ‘Eight Line Poem’ is a laid-back song with simple piano and country-tinged guitar. Life on Mars? ����� Truly one of Bowie’s best, ‘Life on Mars?’ features a fantastic guitar outro from Ronson, and Bowie’s now infamous, twisted Dylanesque lyrics: ‘See the mice in their million hordes / From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads / Rule Britannia is out of bounds / To my mother, my dog, and clowns.’ Rick Wakeman, subsequently of Yes, 119
also features on piano. A Radio Two poll in the late 1980s crowned the tune as Bowie’s best of all time, and it’s no surprise. Great stuff. Kooks �� A light, upbeat, acoustic track, ‘Kooks’ is a dedication to Bowie’s newborn son, Zowie Bowie: ‘What to say to people when they pick on you / ‘Cos if you stay with us you’re gonna be pretty kooky too.’ Quicksand ���� Featuring multi-tracked acoustic guitars and a swirling string arrangement, ‘Quicksand’, lyrically, is influenced by Nietzsche, occultism, and Buddhism: ‘Don’t believe in yourself / Don’t deceive with belief / Knowledge comes with death’s release.’ Powerful and heartfelt. Fill Your Heart �� Probably the weakest song on the album, ‘Fill Your Heart’ is actually a cover of a song written by Biff Rose and Paul Williams in the mid 1960s. Happy and sing-a-long. Andy Warhol ���� A strong acoustic jam, ‘Andy Warhol’ opens with a lot of unnecessary studio banter before breaking into a memorable flamenco-inspired riff that continues throughout the song. ‘He’ll think about paint and he’ll think about glue / What a jolly boring thing to do.’ Song for Bob Dylan ��� ‘Oh, hear this Robert Zimmerman / I wrote a song for you / About a strange young man called Dylan / With a voice like sand and glue.’ A gentle blend of acoustic and electric guitars forming a tribute, leaning towards the country stylings of Bob Dylan. Not bad. 120
Queen Bitch ����� A Velvet Underground-inspired classic, ‘Queen Bitch’ is one of Bowie’s strongest rockers, incorporating Ronson’s solid guitar work, a melodic bass line, a tight drum pattern, and an understated vocal performance from Bowie. A glam-rock template for Ziggy. The Bewlay Brothers ���� A remarkable end to a remarkable album, ‘The Bewlay Brothers’ sees Bowie’s voice distorted in a most impressive way, in one of the most sinister-sounding tracks of his career. Conclusion David Bowie’s fourth studio outing, and his first with RCA, which would be his label for the next decade, is a polychromatic record, full of distinct styles and ideas all pulled together thanks to Bowie’s vision and his backing band’s quiet talent. Lyrically laying down the foundations for the rest of his career, ‘Hunky Dory’ is one of the greatest chapters in his career, and is undoubtedly one of his more powerful releases. Voted 43rd Greatest Album of All Time in Q magazine in 1998, and ranking in as 16th Greatest British Album ever in the same magazine in 2000, this album really stands up as one of his high points. Cracking stuff. Overall rating: ����
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The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (6 June 1972) Tracklisting: Five Years / Soul Love / Moonage Daydream / Starman / It Ain’t Easy / Lady Stardust / Star / Hang on to Yourself / Ziggy Stardust / Suffragette City / Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide
Five Years ��� A great piano-driven opener, ‘Five Years’ is part pop rock and part art rock. Bowie gives a pleading vocal performance here, and the orchestral background and whirlwind finish are classic. Soul Love ��� ‘New love – a boy and girl they talking / New words – that only they can share in / New words – a love so strong it tears their hearts.’ Notable for Bowie’s pioneering use of jazz saxophone, ‘Soul Love’ is glam rock, and features more great guitar work form Mick Ronson. Moonage Daydream ���� Arguably one of the album’s best, ‘Moonage Daydream’ is an epic, moody number that rocks with great style. Its punchy verses contrast well with the choruses, and the exit guitar solo is definitely a keeper. Starman ���� More mixing of pop rock and art rock here, as Bowie and the band create something fitting somewhere between The Who and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It did well in the charts, and it’s easy to see why. 123
It Ain’t Easy ��� A cover track of an original Ron Davies number, ‘It Ain’t Easy’ is an admirable rendering of the original. ‘Well all the people have got their problems / That ain’t nothing new / With the help of the good Lord / We can all pull on through.’ Lady Stardust ��� The simple two-syllable phrase ‘all right’ is the spine that holds ‘Lady Stardust’ together. More glam rock, a fantastic piano melody holds the tune together. Star ��� Pure rock and roll, the intro to ‘Star’ is more than a little reminiscent of The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’. Memorable: ‘I could make a transformation as a rock and roll star / So inviting – so enticing to play the part / I could play the wild mutation as a rock and roll star / Get it all yeah! Oh yeah.’ Hang on to Yourself ��� This time ‘come on’ holds the song together in another example of Bowie’s use of two-syllable brilliance. ‘Hang on to Yourself’ is also notable for its pure rock and roll sensibilities. Ziggy Stardust ���� More pop and art rock here, in what has henceforth become a summation of the album as a whole. It’s a strong glam-rock classic: ‘Ziggy played guitar / Jamming good with Weird and Gilly / And the spiders from Mars / He played it left hand / But made it too far / Became the special man / Then we were Ziggy’s band.’ Suffragette City ���� Influenced by the Beach Boys’ surf rock, ‘Suffragette City’ is famous for the line “‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am’, which 124
quickly made its way into popular culture. More two-syllable work here, too: ‘hey man’. A driving riff and a great chorus make this one of the best on the album. Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide ��� Reaching number 22 in the UK charts, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’ tackles the subject of the final collapse of a washed-up rock star. Mellow and dark, and ending with a string orchestra, this is a solid close to the album. Conclusion Bowie’s flair for the dramatic became a full-blown obsession with ‘Ziggy Stardust’, his fifth studio album, and a concept one at that. Not necessarily his best, but definitely his most definitive, this 1972 concept album was named the 20th greatest album of all time in a ‘Music of the Millennium’ poll, as well as 23rd in Q magazine’s and 35th in Rolling Stone’s greatest album of all time polls. A mythological story of a doomed messiah, ‘Ziggy Stardust’ is archetypal glam rock, full of catchy choruses, mystical lyrics, and catchy choruses. It features great guitar work from Ronson and songs full of homage for Bowie’s heroes. Bowie is at his most dramatic here. The sum is better than its parts – but only just. Overall rating: ����
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Aladdin Sane (13 April 1973) Tracklisting: Watch That Man / Aladdin Sane / Drive-In Saturday / Panic in Detroit / Cracked Actor / Time / The Prettiest Star / Let’s Spend the Night Together / The Jean Genie / Lady Grinning Soul
Watch That Man �� With vocals buried thanks to rushed production, ‘Watch That Man’ suffers here, in what would have otherwise been a most prolific opener. Aladdin Sane ��� An early alternative title was ‘Aladdin Vein’, a pun on A Laden Vein, which highlights this mesmerising track’s pervasive drug undertones. Musically featuring an avant-garde piano solo, the lyrics also touch upon the madness of nationalism. Drive-In Saturday ��� ‘She’s uncertain if she likes him (got got du aaah aah aah) / But she knows she really loves him / It’s a crash course for the ravers (got got du aaah) / It’s a Drive-in Saturday.’ A futuristic sound with 1950s groundings, ‘Drive-In Saturday’ did well in the charts thanks to its pop complexities and references to the likes of Twiggy and Mick Jagger. It was heavily influenced by doo-wop. Panic in Detroit ��� Built around a Bo Diddley beat, its explosive Mick Ronson guitar work, prominent conga drums, and female backing vocals all feature to good effect on this hard-rock track. Cracked Actor �� ‘Crack, baby, crack, show me you’re real / Smack, baby, smack, 127
is that all that you feel / Suck, baby, suck, give me your head.’ More poor mixing, this time burying Bowie’s harmonica, doesn’t completely ruin this track, which has a memorable chorus, but it certainly doesn’t help it, either. Time �� Popular, yet somewhat self-indulgently theatrical, ‘Time’ is more famous for the line ‘Time falls wanking to the floor’ than anything more tangible. Nothing spectacular, that’s for sure. The Prettiest Star ��� Written as a proposal (of sorts) for ex-wife Angela Barnett, ‘The Prettiest Star’ is a re-recording of the single track released in 1970. More glam-rock influenced than the original, it doesn’t work quite as well, but is good nonetheless. Let’s Spend the Night Together �� A breakneck, harder version of the Rolling Stones’ original, ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ is, nevertheless, weaker, and just doesn’t have the same drive. Very much 1970s overkill here. The Jean Genie ���� ‘The Jean Genie lives on his back / The Jean Genie loves chimney stacks / He’s outrageous, he screams and he bawls / Jean Genie let yourself go!’ Great lyrics and great production make this one of Bowie’s most recognisable tracks to this day. It features a chugging R&B riff comparable to Jimmy Page’s Yardbirds. Lady Grinning Soul ��� Featuring acclaimed piano work from Mick Garson, ‘Lady Grinning Soul’ is pure James Bond theme tune pomp and swagger. An eerie ballad with which to close the album. 128
Conclusion Another character, ‘Aladdin Sane’, and another hit album debuting at the top of the UK charts, Bowie’s sixth studio outing was his hardest rocking up to that time and a far cry from the folk sensibilities of ‘Hunky Dory’. Notable for its exploration of cabaret and avant-garde jazz, ‘Aladdin Sane’, unlike its predecessor, is worse in its sum than in its separate parts. Not that it’s bad, however. ‘Aladdin Sane’ was another Bowie effort that has since found its place in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, coming in at number 277. Overall rating: ���
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Pin Ups (19 October 1973) Tracklisting: Rosalyn / Here Comes the Night / I Wish You Would / See Emily Play / Everything’s Alright / I Can’t Explain / Friday On My Mind / Sorrow / Don’t Bring Me Down / Shapes of Things / Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere / Where Have All the Good Times Gone
Rosalyn �� Cover of a song by the Pretty Things, Bowie’s version is hardrocking psycho-billy that he turns glam rock. A good way to kick off the album. Here Comes the Night �� Cover of a song from 1965 by Them, this is a nice rocker and one of the stronger tracks on the album. I Wish You Would �� Cover of a song by Billy Boy Arnold, Bowie makes this number his own with great guitars and a fine vocal performance throughout. See Emily Play �� Cover of a song by Pink Floyd, ‘See Emily Play’ is a tough song to cover, but Bowie does an admirable job here, retooling it as a pyscho-surreal piece for Garson and drummer Aynsley Dunbar. Everything’s Alright �� Cover of a song by the Mojos, this is another admirable cover, with strong rock sensibilities. I Can’t Explain � Cover of a song by The Who, ‘I Can’t Explain’ is a poor rendition 131
of the original and offers nothing new and exciting to the track, killing anything good about the English rockers’ original rendition. Friday on My Mind ��� Cover of a song by the Easybeats, Bowie’s arrangement is a fantastic rendition of the song, utilising strong backing vocals to really beef out the track. Sorrow �� Cover of a song the Merseys, ‘Sorrow’ was released as a single to promote the album. Doo-wop influenced, the track is also soulful. Don’t Bring Me Down �� Cover of a song by the Pretty Things, Bowie’s harmonica adds a nice touch to this guitar-driven, rocking number. Shapes of Things �� Cover of a song by the Yardbirds, Bowie’s interpretation offers nothing particularly new or exciting. It’s still a nice cover, regardless. Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere ��� Cover of a song by The Who, ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere’ is one of the best tracks on the album. It features powerful vocals from Bowie and great piano work. Where Have All the Good Times Gone � Bringing the album to a close is a cover of ‘Where Have All the Good Times Gone’ by The Kinks. Unfortunately, it is one of the album’s more mediocre tracks, and offers little to the original’s interpretation. 132
Conclusion Considering ‘Pin Ups’ is a pure and simple covers album, it actually stands up remarkably well. Unpretentious and at times masterful, ‘Pin Ups’ is deserving of a brief listen, if only to give the concept albums a well-deserved rest. Overall rating: ��
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Diamond Dogs (24 April 1974) Tracklisting: Future Legend / Diamond Dogs / Sweet Thing / Candidate / Sweet Thing (Reprise) / Rebel Rebel / Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me / We Are the Dead / 1984 / Big Brother / Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family
Future Legend ��� A scant minute in length, ‘Future Legend’ is a dramatic spokenword Bowie intro, envisioning a post-apocalyptic Manhattan, with ‘fleas the size of rats’ and ‘rats the size of cats’. Morphing into the title track, ‘Future Legend’ really helps set the scene here. Diamond Dogs ���� An unconventional single choice, but only so far as singles were few and far between on this conceptually complex album, ‘Diamond Dogs’ is bleak and harsh. With a Rolling Stonesinfluenced chugging guitar line ‘Diamond Dogs’ is a keeper. Sweet Thing ��� ‘It’s safe in the city to love in a doorway / To wrangle some screams from the dawn / And isn’t it me, putting pain in a stranger?’ With lyrics focusing on sadomasochistic homosexual relationships, ‘Sweet Thing’ is an epic two-parter, sandwiching ‘Candidate’. Part one features a soaring chorus and great piano work. Candidate ��� Bluesy and rocking, ‘Candidate’ is the meat to ‘Sweet Thing’’s tasty blues sandwich. Sweet Thing (Reprise) ��� A reprise of this well-packaged song cycle. ‘If you want it, boys, get it here, thing / ’Cause hope, boys, is a cheap thing, cheap thing.’ 135
Rebel Rebel ���� A step back into his glam past here, as Bowie’s last glam-rock single’s rocking dirty guitar sound owes much to Keith Richard. Also notable for its gender-bending lyrics: ‘You got your mother in a whirl / She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl.’ The riff is the real winner here, though. Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me �� R&B balladry, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me’ is a precursor to Bowie’s questionable plastic-soul period. We Are the Dead ��� Featuring a disco rhythm not unlike that of the theme from Shaft, ‘We Are the Dead’ also has a touch of American soul to it, but, thankfully, not too much. 1984 �� ‘I’m looking for a vehicle / I’m looking for a ride / I’m looking for a body / I’m looking for a side / I’m looking for the treason that I knew in ’65 / Beware the savage jaw / Of 1984.’ More Shaftinspired plastic soul, it was later covered by Tina Turner on ‘Private Dancer’. Big Brother ��� A good song with a catchy chorus, ‘Big Brother’ features fuzzy guitars and strong lyrics: ‘Someone to blame us / Someone to follow / Someone to shame us / Some great Apollo / Someone to fool us / Someone like you / We want you Big Brother.’ Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family �� Kind of a throwaway, but still not a terrible way to end the album, ‘Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family’ is all chanting and fuzzy guitars. ‘bruh-bruh-bruh-bruh-bruh…’ 136
Conclusion Another Bowie studio outing, and yet another Bowie concept album. Kind of. Half glam-tinged dysfunctional world, and half based on George Orwell’s 1984, ‘Diamond Dogs’ still manages to maintain the feeling of a complete album. Featuring another lead character, Halloween Jack, it was clear that Bowie’s sense for the dramatic was yet to leave him. His first album not to feature any of the Spiders from Mars, Bowie himself takes up lead guitar duties, producing a rawer, scratchier effect that gives the album its distinctive sound. Tony Visconti was also back, providing mixing and strong string arrangements. ‘Diamond Dogs’ was to be Bowie’s glam swansong, as he veered towards both the theatrical (the 1984 tracks are bombastic and vocal-histrionic show tunes for the most part) and at the plastic soul era of Young Americans. Another turning point in an everchanging career. Overall rating: ���
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Young Americans (7 March 1975) Tracklisting: Young Americans / Win / Fascination / Right / Somebody Up There Likes Me / Across the Universe / Can You Hear Me? / Fame
Young Americans ��� A massive breakthrough in the States, ‘Young Americans’ is one of the highlights of an otherwise lifeless release. ‘Ain’t there one damn song that can make me… break down and cry?’ Win ��� ‘Now your smile is spreading thin / Seems you’re trying not to lose / Since I’m not supposed to grin / All you’ve got to do is win.’ Benefits from maintaining a touch of ‘Diamond Dog’’s grit. Fascination �� Smoothly segueing with ‘Win’, ‘Fascination’, originating from Luther Vandross’s ‘Funky Music’, is nothing spectacular. Nice sax work from Bowie, though. Right � This is a riff passed off as a song – a full six minutes of it, too. Dirge. Somebody Up There Likes Me � Lacking any real emotional impact, ‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’ is dull and uninspired. Across the Universe �� This is an ill-advised Philly soul rendition of the Beatles’ original. Still, not the worst track on the album. 139
Can You Hear Me? �� ‘I want love so badly / I want you most of all / You know, it’s harder to take it from anyone / It’s harder to fall / Can you hear me call ya?’ Nothing special, this integrates well with the plastic soul context of the album, however bad that may be. Fame ��� Bowie’s first number-one single in America, ‘Fame’ was inspired by a Carlos Alomar guitar riff, and has lyrics from both Bowie and Lennon. It suffers with time, however, but a decent finale for a farfrom-decent album. Conclusion A jolt in a new direction, ‘Young Americans’ saw Bowie shedding his glam-rock past and exploring Philly soul with a young Luther Vandross. John Lennon also appears here. Seemingly a distinctly conscious move towards a different musical genre, ‘Young Americans’ is somewhat conventional and bland. Overall rating: ��
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Station to Station (23 January 1976) Tracklisting: Station to Station / Golden Years / Word on a Wing / TVC 15 / Stay / Wild Is the Wind
Station to Station ���� With lyrics concerning Aleister Crowley and the occult once more, ‘Station to Station’’s opening cut clocks in at just over 10 minutes and builds around a chugging guitar line and a funky rhythm section. It’s one of Bowie’s best. Golden Years ��� Intended for Elvis to perform, the snake-hipped one turned it down, and ‘Golden Years’ fast became a minor hit for Bowie. Groovy and bright, it is a definite improvement on the ‘Young Americans’ era in spite of retaining some of that album’s variety of soul. Word on a Wing ��� Sung with passion, ‘Word on a Wing’ is upbeat, yet dark. Lyrically one of the best numbers on the album – ‘Lord, I kneel and offer you my word on a wing / And I’m trying hard to fit among your scheme of things / It’s safer than a strange land / But I still care for myself / And I don’t stand in my own light.’ TVC 15 ��� Inspired by an incident when Iggy Pop hallucinated that the TV was swallowing his girlfriend in Bowie’s L.A. home, ‘TVC 15’ is, nevertheless, upbeat and hard-rocking. Featuring heavily distorted guitars, it is fuelled by Bowie’s catchy hook. 141
Stay �� More groove along the lines of ‘Golden Years’, ‘Stay’ is fractured and off-rhythm, but this only adds to the effect in an otherwise average song. Wild Is the Wind ��� One of the best cuts on the album, Bowie makes this Johnny Mathis original his own, singing with great conviction. A mellow ballad, ‘Wild Is the Wind’ is a calming ending to the album. Conclusion A bleaker, darker, and, thankfully, more complete version of Bowie’s soul persona, ‘Station to Station’ sees Bowie return as the Thin White Duke. It utilises more synths and electronica-based rhythm sections, leaning towards Krautrock for the first time. Claustrophobic, bleak, and yet oddly uplifting at times, ‘Station to Station’ is a return to form for Bowie, and points the way towards his German-influenced future musical ventures. Overall rating: ���
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Low (14 January 1977) Tracklisting: Speed of Life / Breaking Glass / What in the World / Sound and Vision / Always Crashing in the Same Car / Be My Wife / A New Career in a New Town / Warszawa / Art Decade / Weeping Wall / Subterraneans
Speed of Life ��� A multi-layered instrumental piece, ‘Speed of Life’ is a great introduction for what is to come, with its heavy use of synths and immense drums. Emphasises the album’s focus on music rather than words. Breaking Glass ���� With an almost schizophrenic beat, ‘Breaking Glass’ is dark and uncompromising even by ‘Low’’s bleak standards. With fractured lyrics full of introspection, this short yet far-from-sweet cut is one of the album’s best. What in the World ��� With sounds essentially pilfered from Space Invaders, ‘What in the World’ is pure avant-garde excess, showcasing some of ‘Low’’s fabulous mixing. Disjointed, yet free-flowing, the song is a playful one about adolescent infatuation. Sound and Vision ����� Notable for its juxtaposition of a synth-led instrumental track and an uplifting country-tinged guitar line, ‘Sound and Vision’ is one of Bowie’s most masterful tracks of all time. Lyrically and musically memorable, ‘Low’’s lead single excels by taking in its myriad of different musical styles. 143
Always Crashing in the Same Car ��� Lyrically expressing the frustration of making the same mistake over and over and over again, ‘Always Crashing in the Same Car’ is, musically, a melancholic piece, with an oddly provoking backdrop. Calming vocals really make this track come into its own. Be My Wife ��� Conventional by ‘Low’’s avant-garde standards, ‘Be My Wife’ is toned-down electronica, being closer to a more traditional rock number. Featuring a ragtime piano intro, the track is a surprisingly good fit here in spite of its contrast to the rest of the album. A New Career in a New Town ��� An instrumental piece, ‘A New Career in a New Town’ works well with its down-to-earth harmonica and use of a Harmonizer on the drums. Ambient electronica. Warszawa ���� Mostly instrumental in scope, ‘Warszawa’ does contain some impressionistic lyrics, but is most notable for its perpetual droning beat and ambience. A strong start to the second half of the album. Art Decade ���� With a name punning the art deco style, the song itself is a melancholic, droll number, featuring plenty of repetition in a playful, insightful way. Hypnotic. Weeping Wall ���� Another instrumental number, ‘Weeping Wall’s’ principal melody is an adaptation of the classic English folk tune ‘Scarborough Fair’. Minimalistic in rhythm, ‘Weeping Wall’ is almost unbearable at times with its odd chord progression and razor-like synths. Evocative stuff. 144
Subterraneans ���� A slow-building, mostly instrumental piece, ‘Subterraneans’ is part ‘Be My Wife’, part ‘Warszawa’. Eno’s use of synths here is particularly prevalent. A great end to a great album. Conclusion Originally written off by music critics as too experimental, ‘Low’ has since reaped the critical acclaim it deserves, being named best album of the 1970s by Pitchfork Media and coming in at number 14 in Q magazine’s 100 Greatest British Albums Ever list. The first of a series of collaborations with Brian Eno called his Berlin Trilogy, ‘Low’ is a piece of art as much as it is a piece of music. Influencing music genres for years to come, including new wave and industrial, the album benefits from incredible production, and, especially, a cavernous drum sound throughout and an insightful economy of words. Overall rating: ����
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“Heroes” (14 October 1977) Tracklisting: Beauty and the Beast / Joe the Lion / “Heroes” / Sons of the Silent Age / Blackout / V-2 Schneider / Sense of Doubt / Moss Garden / Neuköln / The Secret Life of Arabia
Beauty and the Beast ��� A savage rocker, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ opens ‘“Heroes”’, but doesn’t reflect the rest of the album’s somewhat ambient mood. It features a heavy and upbeat guitar. Joe the Lion �� A raucous, guitar-heavy number, ‘Joe the Lion’ is a reflective vocal performance boosted by a great guitar riff. Signs of influence by German Krautrock are also on show here. “Heroes” ���� Remaining one of Bowie’s most formidable tracks, ‘“Heroes”’ is cool, dark, and hauntingly beautiful at the same time. Feedback is used well here, and Bowie’s vocals are just fantastic. Sons of the Silent Age ��� ‘Sons of the silent age / Make love only once but dream and dream / Don’t walk, they just glide in and out of life / They’d never die if they could just sleep one day.’ Replete with a killer chorus, this King Crimson-esque track helps keep up the album’s pace. Blackout ��� A dark and atmospheric instrumental, ‘Blackout’ is another rowdy King Crimson-esque number utilising some great synth work from Eno. 147
V-2 Schneider �� Inspired by Kraftwerk, ‘V-2 Schneider’ is a synth-led instrumental piece that also utilises Bowie’s sax. It’s an upbeat, catchy track, but fails to live up to the rest of the album’s standards. Sense of Doubt �� A dark and atmospheric instrumental, ‘Sense of Doubt’ has a dark piano riff and is more Pink Floyd in scope. Nothing spectacular, unfortunately. Moss Garden ��� Featuring Bowie plucking on a traditional Japanese koto, ‘Moss Garden’ is another ambient instrumental track, evoking a dreamlike place. Almost Indian in vibe, this is more Pink Floydinfluenced artistry. Neuköln ��� The last of the instrumentals, this dark and atmospheric piece features plaintive saxophone and a great experimental use of sound. The Secret Life of Arabia ��� A light-hearted closer, ‘The Secret Life of Arabia’ is worlds apart from the rest of the album, yet still fits well. Funky and danceable, it’s good, but doesn’t quite work as an album closer. Conclusion The second instalment of Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, ‘“Heroes”’ (quotation marks for ironic purposes) features more experimentation from Eno and Bowie, and is more prog rock than their previous outing, sounding, at times, like either King Crimson or Pink Floyd. Not quite as much impact as ‘Low’. Overall rating: ��� 148
Lodger (18 May 1979) Tracklisting: Fantastic Voyage / African Night Flight / Move On / Yassassin (Turkish for Long Live) / Red Sails / DJ / Look Back in Anger / Boys Keep Swinging / Repetition / Red Money
Fantastic Voyage ��� ‘It’s a modern world, but nobody is perfect / … but that’s no reason to shoot some of those missiles.’ A statement of the times, ‘Fantastic Voyage’ gets the album off to a strong start with a slower-paced rock track. African Night Flight ��� Surreal and experimental, ‘African Night Flight’ is a tribute to the music and culture of the veldt, and benefits from jungle sounds, quickly sung vocals, and some African tribal sounds. Move On �� Nice guitar work here, in a track with a midsection that came from a tape that got twisted in a Revox machine. A bit too conceptual. Yassassin (Turkish for Long Live) ��� A Turkish-tinged reggae number, ‘Yassassin’ was a Dutch-onlyreleased single, and features a nice electric violin that adds to the track’s exotic sound. Red Sails �� ‘Feel a bit roughed up, feel a bit frightened / Nearly pin it down some time / Red sail action wake up in the wrong town / Boy, I really get around.’ ‘Red Sails’ is more ambient Krautrock from Bowie. With a digressive percussive beat it comes out as one of the worst on the album. 149
DJ ��� Lodger’s second single, ‘DJ’, is a cynical comment on the cult of the DJ: ‘I am a DJ / I am a play / I can’t turn around.’ One of his more ubiquitous tracks, it is notable for its well-mixed guitar solo. Good stuff. Look Back in Anger ���� With a galloping rhythm guitar and immense drums, ‘Look Back in Anger’ also features a noteworthy guitar solo. One of the best on the album. Boys Keep Swinging ��� A comment on ideas about masculinity, ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ is also notable for the band members swapping instruments on it to get a garage-band feel to the sound. Clumsy, yet charming. Repetition ��� ‘I guess the bruises won’t show if she wears long sleeves.’ At times chilling, ‘Repetition’ is an exploration of a wife-beater’s mentality. Sung without emotion, it features incredibly chilling lyrics. Red Money ���� ‘Oh, can you feel it in the way / That a man is not a man? / Can you see it in the sky / That the landscape is too high?’ A sonic assault musically, and with great production, ‘Red Money’ is one of the better numbers on the album and benefits from being both drum and synth-laden. A strong closer. Conclusion The final chapter of the impressive Berlin Trilogy, ‘Lodger’, unlike its predecessors, features no instrumentals and is much more poporiented. More attitude is on show as Bowie really cuts loose on this album, merging prog rock with the straight-ahead rock of his 150
next studio outing – ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)’. This is down-the-line Bowie. Overall rating: ���
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Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (12 September 1980) Tracklisting: It’s No Game (No. 1) / Up the Hill Backwards / Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) / Ashes to Ashes / Fashion / Teenage Wildlife / Scream Like a Baby / Kingdom Come / Because You’re Young / It’s No Game (No. 2)
It’s No Game (No. 1) ��� This punky, hyper, hard-rocking opener features lead female vocals sung in Japanese. Bowie’s lyrics are pained and impressive. Up the Hill Backwards ���� ‘While we sleep they go to work / We’re legally crippled it’s the death of love / It’s got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it / It’s got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it.’ One of Bowie’s most underrated gems, the lyrics of ‘Up the Hill Backwards’ are a commentary on the double-edged sword of celebrity. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) ��� The album’s careering title track features prominent percussion and a mock-cockney set of Bowie vocals. Shares themes with Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control’. Ashes to Ashes ����� A classic number-one single, ‘Ashes to Ashes’ is built around a guitar synth and revisits Major Tom: ‘Ashes to ashes / Funk to funky / We know Major Tom’s a junkie / Strung out in heaven’s high / Hitting an all-time low.’ With choir-like textures and Bowie’s dead-pan vocal performance, this is truly one of his best. Fashion ���� ‘Fashion! / Turn to the left / Fashion! / Turn to the right / Oooh, 153
fashion! / We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town / Beep-beep, Beep-beep.’ The album’s second single, ‘Fashion’, contains lyrics evoking fascism. Funky and dance-influenced, it gave Bowie his first chart hit in America for four years. Teenage Wildlife ��� Featuring a personal set of lyrics, ‘Teenage Wildlife’ is helped along by a musical backdrop similar to that of ‘“Heroes”’. The most glam-rock track on the album, Bowie pours his heart into this one: ‘A broken-nosed mogul are you / One of the new wave boys / Same old thing in brand new drag / Comes sweeping into view / As ugly as a teenage millionaire / Pretending it’s a whiz-kid world.’ Scream Like a Baby ���� A take on political imprisonment, ‘Scream Like a Baby’ is notable for its modernistic new-wave guitar-synth-led sound. Variablespeed vocals and haunting sounds really make this one of Bowie’s best. Kingdom Come �� This is forgettable, unfortunately. ‘Well I’ll be breaking these rocks / And cutting this hay / Yes I’ll be breaking these rocks / What’s my price to pay?’ Because You’re Young ��� ‘It’s love back to front and no sides – like I say / These pieces are broken – like I say / These pieces are broken / Hope I’m wrong but I know.’ Featuring Pete Townshend of The Who on lead guitar, ‘Because You’re Young’ is another great rocker. It could have been a single with a little more work. It’s No Game (No. 2) ��� The second half of the album’s bookends, ‘It’s No Game (No. 2)’ 154
is much more calming than the album’s opener, being more of a straight ahead pop-rock number. Conclusion Bowie’s first studio album since the Berlin Trilogy finds him in great form, with critics claiming that ‘Scary Monsters’ was ‘the perfect balance’. Less experimental and featuring a more commercially-viable sound, ‘Scary Monsters’ has always performed well in great-albums lists. Serves as a fitting coda to the 1970s. Good stuff. Overall rating: ����
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Let’s Dance (14 April 1983) Tracklisting: Modern Love / China Girl / Let’s Dance / Without You / Ricochet / Criminal World / Cat People / Shake It
Modern Love ��� Inspired, in part, by Little Richard, ‘Modern Love’ is a rocking pop gem. Commercial, disposable, yet far from self-conscious, it is a solid start to this album, which is mostly themed on the struggle between people and God. China Girl ��� A new version of the song originally written for Iggy Pop’s ‘The Idiot’, ‘China Girl’ is given the dance treatment and features some drug-laced lyrics along the way: ‘I could escape this feeling with my China girl / I feel a wreck without my little China girl / I’m a mess without my little China girl / Wake up in the morning, where’s my little China girl?’ It’s smooth and danceable whilst retaining the haunting lyrics. Let’s Dance ��� A radio standard, ‘Let’s Dance’ is notable for Stevie Ray Vaughan’s lead guitar. Also featuring a thumping bass line, the track is a nearly eight-minute epic. Majestic and brooding, the joyous instrumental backing to its dark lyrical content completes it. Without You �� A new-romantic style ballad, ‘Without You’ is gentle and forgettable. Ricochet �� ‘March of flowers, march of dimes / These are the prisons, these 157
are the crimes / Men wait for news while thousands are still asleep.’ Closer to the Berlin trilogy than the rest of the album, ‘Ricochet’ is brooding and full of rolling drums. Criminal World �� Bringing further neo-romanticism to the album, ‘Criminal World’ is a cover of a song by Metro. Nothing spectacular, it sounds a bit like Duran Duran. Cat People �� Originally recorded for the 1982 movie of the same name, ‘Cat People’ is all goth rock and deep crooning. The great production in the original version is not replicated here. Shake It � ‘I feel like a sail-boat / Adrift on the sea / It’s a brand new day / So when you gonna phone me?’ This is filler of the worst kind. Irrelevant. Conclusion Not one to be behind the times, Bowie joined the disco scene of the 1980s with funky ‘Let’s Dance’. As commercial as he’d ever get in his career, ‘Let’s Dance’ was the right album at the right time brought him more success in America than ever before. Full of ups and downs, as a whole it’s not a bad effort. Overall rating: ���
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Tonight (1 September 1984) Tracklisting: Loving the Alien / Don’t Look Down / God Only Knows / Tonight / Neighborhood Threat / Blue Jean / Tumble and Twirl / Keep Forgettin’ / Dancing With the Big Boys
Loving the Alien �� The album’s suffered from rushed production, and ‘Loving the Alien’ is one of the only worthwhile songs here. Covering Bowie’s dislike of organised religion, the track made the top 20 in the UK. ‘Thinking of a different time / Palestine a modern problem / Bounty and your wealth in land / Terror in a best laid plan.’ Blue Jean �� ‘One day I’m gonna write a poem in a letter / One day I’m gonna get that faculty together / Remember like everybody has to wait in line / Blue Jean – look out world you know I’ve got mine / She got Latin roots / She got everything.’ Loosely inspired by Eddie Cochran, ‘Blue Jean’ was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, but still sounds like a ‘Let’s Dance’ outtake. Conclusion Something of a lazy studio release, ‘Tonight’ was bashed out to try to jump on the back of ‘Let’s Dance’’s commercial success, yet fails to glisten. With dashed-off production and poor covers, ‘Loving the Alien’ and ‘Blue Jean’ are the only noteworthy tracks worth listening to. Particular flops worth mentioning are the languid ‘Don’t Look Down’ (an Iggy Pop cover), ‘God Only Knows’ (a Beach Boys cover) and ‘Dancing With the Big Boys’, which is consistently voted one of the worst of his career by fans. Overall rating: � 159
Never Let Me Down (20 April 1987) Tracklisting: Day-In Day-Out / Time Will Crawl / Beat of Your Drum / Never Let Me Down / Zeroes / Glass Spider / Shining Star (Makin’ My Love) / New York’s in Love / ’87 and Cry / Too Dizzy / Bang Bang
Time Will Crawl �� The second single from the album, ‘Time Will Crawl’ benefits from its restrained production, compared to Bowie’s other, more overblown work from the album. Bouncy and nihilistic, it is one of the only two tracks to save face for this poor album. Never Let Me Down �� Pretty much one of the only tracks worth a write-up of its own, ‘Never Let Me Down’ was the third single from the album, and was written as a homage for the late John Lennon. Simple and straightforward, it features great synths and harmonica. Conclusion Drawing some of the harshest criticism of Bowie’s illustrious career, ‘Never Let Me Down’ is mostly exchangeable 80s poprock dirge, with loud uninspired drums, colour-by-numbers guitar solos, and uninspired songwriting to boot. To sum it up, Bowie himself has since said, ‘My nadir was “Never Let Me Down”. It was such an awful album. I’ve gotten to a place now where I’m not very judgmental about myself. I put out what I do, whether it’s in visual arts or in music, because I know that everything I do is really heartfelt. Even if it’s a failure artistically, it doesn’t bother me in the same way that “Never Let Me Down” bothers me. I really shouldn’t have even bothered going into the studio to record it.’ Overall rating: � 160
Tin Machine (22 May 1989) Tracklisting: Heaven’s in Here / Tin Machine / Prisoner of Love / Crack City / I Can’t Read / Under the God / Amazing / Working Class Hero / Bus Stop / Pretty Thing / Video Crime / Run / Sacrifice Yourself / Baby Can Dance
Conclusion The latest venture for Bowie, Tin Machine was a democratic, straight-up rock group fronted by the flamboyant frontman. Simply produced, at least in comparison to his two previous outings, their first album won generally positive reviews and made the top five in the UK album charts. Since then, however, the album has been ridiculed as another low point in Bowie’s career. Yes, the songs are, for the most part, mediocre at best, but the album does have its plus points. Gabrels’s guitar playing is admirable, and at times certain tracks are strong. There’s something slightly too try-hard here, however, as Bowie’s sophisticated vocals fail to fit with the grungier musical backing. Overall rating: ��
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Tin Machine II (2 September 1991) Tracklisting: Baby Universal / One Shot / You Belong in Rock ‘n’ Roll / If There Is Something / Amlapura / Betty Wrong / You Can’t Talk / Stateside / Shopping for Girls / A Big Hurt / Sorry / Goodbye Mr. Ed / Hammerhead
Conclusion Less successful, both commercially and critically, than their previous outing, Tin Machine’s second and last studio album does have a few passable tracks, namely ‘Amlapura’, ‘Goodbye Mr. Ed’, and ‘Baby Universal’. Not unbearable, it is still nothing more than half an album’s worth of average album. Overall rating: ��
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Black Tie White Noise (5 April 1993) Tracklisting: The Wedding / You’ve Been Around / I Feel Free / Black Tie White Noise / Jump They Say / Nite Flights / Pallas Athena / Miracle Goodnight / Don’t Let Me Down & Down / Looking for Lester / I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday / The Wedding Song
The Wedding ��� An instrumental piece, ‘The Wedding’ makes good use of church bells and acknowledges the meeting of Bowie’s Western background to Iman’s Eastern one by melding Middle-Easterninfluenced sax solos and Western dance beats. You’ve Been Around �� Originally intended for Tin Machine, ‘You’ve Been Around’ doesn’t really go anywhere, and finishes with a whimper rather than a bang. Makes good use of a backing choir. I Feel Free ��� A cover of a Cream classic, ‘I Feel Free’ has a funky bass line and is an admirable version of the tune. Features Mick Ronson on guitar. Black Tie White Noise ��� Inspired by the Los Angeles riots, the album’s title track is engaging, and complex in its arrangement. Falling into line with the rest of the decade’s top artists, Bowie made a bow into hip-hop, dueting with Al B. Sure! It’s also jazz and soul influenced. Jump They Say �� Interesting lyrically, and with a funk-based sound, ‘Jump They Say’ is okay, but not particularly emotionally appealing. 163
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Nite Flights �� A cover of The Walker Brothers’ 1977 track from the album of the same name, ‘Nite Flights’ is interesting, but, in all honesty, not that memorable. Pallas Athena ��� ‘God is on top of it all, that’s all.’ Accompanied by the sound of strings playing out a sorrowful melody, ‘Pallas Athena’ soon develops into a techno dance number. Bowie’s saxophone also makes another appearance here. ‘We are, we are, we are, we are praying.’ Miracle Goodnight ��� The album’s third single, ‘Miracle Goodnight’ showcases more love-inspired lyrics from Bowie in a light-hearted hip-hop arrangement using synths, as well as Ronson’s retro-sounding electric guitar. Good rhythmic and vocal variety. Don’t Let Me Down & Down ��� A cover of a song Bowie’s new bride had discovered in Paris, and then persuaded Bowie to cover, ‘Don’t Let Me Down & Down’ is slightly unfocussed at times, but is undoubtedly a solid performance. Looking for Lester ��� An instrumental piece featuring trumpet and piano, ‘Looking for Lester’ is a lively, jazz-tinged number. I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday �� ‘You say that the day never arrives / And it seems so far away / But I know it’s gonna happen someday / Someday to you.’ It’s a passable Morrissey cover tune. 165
The Wedding Song ��� A shortened, lyrically enhanced version of the album’s opener, ‘The Wedding Song’ closes the album with evocative lyrics and more good use of both Western and Eastern instrumentation. Conclusion Bowie’s first solo album in the 1990s, ‘Black Tie White Noise’ re-united the Thin White Duke with Mick Ronson, the famed guitarist from the Ziggy Stardust era. Inspired by his wedding to supermodel Iman, musically it is far superior to anything since before ‘Let’s Dance’. Ambitious, yet in many ways lacking cohesion as an album, ‘Black Tie White Noise’ is a more detached, more effective ‘Young Americans’. Overall rating: ���
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The Buddha of Suburbia (8 November 1993) Tracklisting: Buddha of Suburbia / Sex and the Church / South Horizon / The Mysteries / Bleed Like a Craze, Dad / Strangers When We Meet / Dead Against It / Untitled No. 1 / Ian Fish, U.K. Heir / Buddha of Suburbia
Conclusion An album conceived for the four-part BBC series of the same name, ‘The Buddha of Suburbia’ only took six days to write and record, but three times that to mix, thanks to a number of technical mishaps. The tracks make ample use of Bowie’s saxophone, as well as synths and piano. It has actually been deleted for many years, but is well worth a look if you can get your hands on it. Adventurous, yet never too heavy, particular stand-outs include ‘Buddha of Suburbia’, ‘South Horizon’ and ‘Bleed Like a Craze, Dad’. Overall rating: ���
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Outside (26 September 1995) Tracklisting: Leon Takes Us Outside / Outside / The Hearts Filthy Lesson / A Small Plot of Land / Baby Grace (A Horrid Cassette) / Hallo Spaceboy / The Motel / ‘I Have Not Been to Oxford Town’ / No Control / Algeria Touchschriek / The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty) / Ramona A. Stone/I Am With Name / Wishful Beginnings / We Prick You / Nathan Adler / I’m Deranged / Thru’ These Architect’s Eyes / Nathan Adler / Strangers When We Meet
Conclusion Ambitious, and near-industrial in musicality, ‘Outside’ was intended to be the first of five volumes, one a year until 1999, in a nonlinear explorative narrative of art and murder. Once again working alongside Brian Eno, Bowie introduced characters from one of his short stories about murder and mutilation becoming an underground art craze in North America. Conceptually difficult to get heads around, Outside is an admirable project for which one must give Bowie credit. Back into what can be considered full creative swing, ‘Outside’ picks up, and develops on, ‘Black Tie White Noise’’s good groundwork. Stand-outs include ‘The Hearts Filthy Lesson’, ‘Hallo Spaceboy’, and ‘Strangers When We Meet’. Overall rating: ���
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Earthling (30 January 1997) Tracklisting: Little Wonder / Looking for Satellites / Battle for Britain (The Letter) / Seven Years in Tibet / Dead Man Walking / Telling Lies / The Last Thing You Should Do / I’m Afraid of Americans / Law (Earthlings on Fire)
Little Wonder ���� ‘Big screen dolls, / tits and explosions / Sleepytime, Bashful but nude / Little wonder then, little wonder / You little wonder, / little wonder you.’ The album’s biggest chart success, ‘Little Wonder’ uses good samples, and is a wondrous track of its own devices. Looking for Satellites ��� Featuring a stilted Reeves Gabrels guitar solo, ‘Looking for Satellites’ benefits from the restrictive nature Gabrels had to perform the parts in. Good stuff. Battle for Britain (The Letter) ��� ‘Don’t be so forlorn, it’s just the payoff / It’s the rain before the storm / On a better day / I’ll take you by the hand / And I’ll walk you through the doors.’ Lyrically sound, ‘Battle for Britain’ is a fairly solid track. Seven Years in Tibet ��� Also recorded in Mandarin, ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ also features a set of good Bowie lyrics: ‘The stars look so special / And the snow looks so old / The frail form is drifting / Beyond the yoga zone / Turn to question the mountain / Why pigs can fly / It’s nothing at all.’ Musically sound.
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Dead Man Walking ���� Brought out as a single, ‘Dead Man Walking’ features a guitar riff dating back to the mid-1960s, courtesy of Jimmy Page. A cracking track. Telling Lies ��� The first ever downloadable single by a major artist, ‘Telling Lies’ is a passable track, yet nothing particularly spectacular. The Last Thing You Should Do ��� ‘Save the last dance for me / Catch the last bus with me / Give the last kiss to me / It’s the safest thing to do-oh-oh-oh-oh.’ Okay. I’m Afraid of Americans ���� A single which originally appeared on the soundtrack for sexy flop Showgirls, ‘I’m Afraid of Americans’ is a humorous depiction of paranoia and consumerism. Tongue in cheek, it is conceptual both lyrically and musically. Law (Earthlings on Fire) ��� ‘I don’t want knowledge / I want certainty / I don’t want knowledge / I want certainty / I don’t want knowledge / I want certainty.’ An ample closer. Conclusion Showcasing an electronica-based sound, ‘Earthling’ was widely considered a return to top form for Bowie, both commercially and critically. Inspired, in part, by the rave culture of the early-mid 1990s, this 1997 release could be criticised in the sense that rather than being pioneering, as Bowie’s albums were in the 1970s, it is following trends rather than setting them. ‘Earthling’, however, features plenty of elements not commonly found in stereotypical electronica albums, such as acoustic and 170
electric guitars, jazz piano, and structures rooted more in pop than in techno or jungle. One of the more well-rounded drum-andbass style techno albums ever made, ‘Earthling’ features both the rhythmic skeleton of a drum-and-bass record and the meaty flesh of a great pop record. Good stuff. Overall rating: ����
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‘ hours…’ (4 October 1999) Tracklisting: Thursday’s Child / Something in the Air / Survive / If I’m Dreaming My Life / Seven / What’s Really Happening? / The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell / New Angels of Promise / Brilliant Adventure / The Dreamers
Thursday’s Child �� As with many of the other tracks on the album, ‘Thursday’s Child’ was originally written for the computer game Omikron. The first single, it is nothing more than passable. Something in the Air �� ‘But there’s something in the air / Something in my eye / I’ve danced with you too long / There’s something I have to say / There’s something in the air / Something in my eye.’ A premonition of the Rapture, ‘Something in the Air’ is one of the better tracks to be found here. Survive �� An average single release. ‘Give me wings / Give me space / Give me money for a change of face / There’s noisy rooms and passion pants / I loved you.’ If I’m Dreaming My Life �� One of the best tracks on the album, ‘If I’m Dreaming My Life’ clocks in at an epic seven minutes. ‘Just one living chance / When the mother sighs / When the father steps aside / At the wrong time / Oh ho, Oh ho.’ Seven ��� Another track originally written for Omikron, ‘Seven’ was released 173
as the album’s fourth single. Mildly enjoyable pop, it is pretty much the best the album has to offer. What’s Really Happening? �� Not even bearing Bowie’s lyrics, ‘What’s Really Happening?’ surely isn’t even a Bowie song. It’s okay, though, I suppose. ‘Grown inside a plastic box / Micro thoughts and safety locks / Hearts become outdated clocks / Ticking in your mind.’ The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell �� Could have made it on to ‘Earthling’, at a squeeze. ‘You’re still breathing but you don’t know why / Life’s a bit and sometimes you die / You’re still breathing but you just can’t tell / Don’t hold your breath / But the pretty things are going to hell.’ New Angels of Promise �� Originally written for Omikron, where it was used as the theme song, ‘New Angels of Promise’ is nothing special. ‘Suspicious minds / You didn’t feel us coming / In this lonely crowd / its always time / Suspicious minds / You didn’t feel us coming / In this lonely crowd / it’s always time.’ Pretty derivative. Brilliant Adventure �� A slightly better-than-average instrumental piece, evoking memories of the instrumentals recorded for ‘Low’ and ‘“Heroes”’ back in the 1970s. The Dreamers �� ‘Black eyed ravens / They spiral down / They tilt his head back / To the flame filled sunset / Raise their guns high / As the darken falls / These are the days boys.’ Tired and turgid.
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Conclusion Bowie’s final album for EMI, ‘‘hours…’’ is the exact opposite of ‘Earthling’, as depicted visually on the album cover. Almost devoid of emotion at times, certain tracks work well, but others are mostly forgettable. One mildly interesting gimmick was that Bowie even got a fan to write one track’s lyrics. Creative blank, anyone? Overall rating: ��
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Heathen (11 June 2002) Tracklisting: Sunday / Cactus / Slip Away / Slow Burn / Afraid / I’ve Been Waiting for You / I Would Be Your Slave / I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship / 5:15 The Angels Have Gone / Everyone Says ‘Hi’ / A Better Future / Heathen (The Rays)
Sunday �� Interesting, but not really the best opening track for an album. Inactive and laboured in parts, ‘Sunday’ is somewhat reminiscent of ‘Speed of Life’, which can be found on ‘Low’. Cactus �� A cover of the original Pixies track from ‘Surfer Rosa’, ‘Cactus’ doesn’t quite fit well in Bowie’s repertoire. It’s slightly parodistic. Slip Away �� ‘Don’t forget to keep your head warm / Twinkle twinkle Uncle Floyd / Watching all the world and war torn / How I wonder where you are.’ Blowing a lot of wind, ‘Slip Away’ is a little too schmaltzy for good taste’s sake. Slow Burn ���� Featuring Pete Townshend on lead guitar, ‘Slow Burn’ earned Bowie a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Male Vocal Performance, and rightfully so. ‘Here shall we live in this terrible town / Where the price for our eyes shall / Squeeze them tight like a fist / And the walls shall have eyes / And the doors shall have ears / But we’ll dance in the dark / And they’ll play with our lives.’ Afraid ��� ‘If I put faith in medication / If I can smile a crooked smile / 177
If I can talk on television / If I can walk an empty mile.’ Wellcontrolled mania here from Bowie in an embellished dramatic piece. I’ve Been Waiting for You ��� A cover of an original Neil Young track, ‘I’ve Been Waiting for You’ features the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl on lead guitar. The instrumentation and mixing sound great here. I Would Be Your Slave ��� Verging on operatic density, ‘I Would Be Your Slave’ is one of the best compositions on the album. ‘I don’t sit and wait / I don’t give a damn / I don’t see the point at all / No footsteps in the sand.’ I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship ��� Written by Legendary Stardust Cowboy, who inspired Ziggy Stardust’s surname, ‘I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship’ has a controlled, manic quality. A good cut. 5:15 The Angels Have Gone ��� With chords pilfered from ‘Space Oddity’, ‘5:15 The Angels Have Gone’ is intense and vocally strong. Everyone Says ‘Hi’ �� With a driving tempo, ‘Everyone Says ‘Hi’’ is another passable single from the album. A Better Future ��� A quiet gem, ‘A Better Future’ is the Partridge Family made more powerful and urgent. Good stuff. Heathen (The Rays) ��� ‘Waiting for something / Looking for someone / Is there no 178
reason? / Have I stared too long? / Oo-o, Oo-o.’ Taking a clumsy punk drum beat, ‘Heathen’ is built around heavy-handed synths. Conclusion Marking the return of Tony Visconti to behind the mixing desk, 2002’s ‘Heathen’ is a palatable mix of both old and new Bowie. Featuring guest appearances aplenty from the likes of Pete Townshend, Dave Grohl, and King Crimson’s Tony Levin, ‘Heathen’ is a much better outing than ‘‘hours…’’ and had a worthy four-month run in the UK album charts. Overall rating: ���
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Reality (16 September 2003) Tracklisting: New Killer Star / Pablo Picasso / Never Get Old / The Loneliest Guy / Looking for Water / She’ ll Drive the Big Car / Days / Fall Dog Bombs the Moon / Try Some, Buy Some / Reality / Bring Me the Disco King
New Killer Star ��� The first single from the album, ‘New Killer Star’ is a strong opening track and showcases Bowie’s songwriting to good effect. Slinky guitars meld with a driving rhythm. Pablo Picasso ��� A cover of The Modern Lovers’ 1973 original, ‘Pablo Picasso’ is a lush, surrealist look at the proto-punk classic. Good stuff. Never Get Old ��� ‘Wanna be here and I wanna be there / Living just like you / living just like me / Forever.’ Reality’s second single, ‘Never Get Old’, is one of its best cuts. The Loneliest Guy ��� Atmospheric and mellow. ‘Streets damp and warm / Empty smell metal / Weeds between buildings / Pictures on my hard drive / But I’m the luckiest guy / Not the loneliest guy.’ Looking for Water �� A bit too desperate-sounding, considering Bowie’s age and previous outings, ‘Looking for Water’ is an anarchic rocker. She’ll Drive the Big Car ��� ‘She’ll turn the radio high / Find a station playing sad, sad soul 180
/ Just a little bit louder now / South along the Hudson yea.’ A strong, mid-tempo rocker, with overdubbed Bowie harmony parts. Days �� A run-of-the-mill love song. ‘Hold me tight / Keep me cool / Going mad / Don’t know what to do / Do I need a friend? / Well, I need one now.’ Fall Dog Bombs the Moon �� The weakest track on the album, ‘Fall Dog Bombs the Moon’ fails to pack much of a punch. Try Some, Buy Some ��� A cover of George Harrison’s 1973 number, ‘Try Some, Buy Some’ is a soaring, noteworthy cover of the original. Reality ��� ‘Tragic youth was looking young and sexy / The tragic youth was wearing tattered black jeans / Bearing arms and flaunting all her mischief / The tragic youth was going down on me.’ ‘Reality’, the album’s title track, is the hardest rocker here. It’s good enough. Bring Me the Disco King ��� Featuring all sorts of cameos, ‘Bring Me the Disco King’ is a modern lounge number and ends the album with a jazzy, meditative shuffle. A strong finish. Conclusion Boasting an all-star cast of Bowie veterans, ‘Reality’ is wellproduced and full of well-evolved compositions. Full of good guitar, synths, percussion, and sax parts, ‘Reality’ is well conceived. Overall rating: ��� 181
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