In the last post, I shared my impressions of David Bowie as a musician, with some musings about the albums I was most familiar with, from Space Oddity to Heroes.
In this post, I'd like to talk more about this multi-faceted man, with some thoughts about his acting roles, live performances and the David Bowie Is... exhibit. These are once again personal observations, and thus limited to my own recollections and impressions.
The Movie Roles
The first (and really, only) lead role David Bowie had was in Nicolas Roeg's 1976 cult flick, The Man Who Fell to Earth. The role used Bowie's own natural diffidence to advantage, as he played an alien who takes the form of inventor/entrepreneur Thomas Newton. Newton is trying to finance his return to his water-starved home planet, but is soon seduced by (pardon the pun) earthly pleasures, particularly alcohol, and ends up stranded here.
The best aspect of the movie, for me, is his relationship with Mary-Lou, played by lovely Candy Clark. In once scene, he accompanies her to church, where he struggles to sing "Jerusalem" with the rest of the congregation. I had to smile when I saw that; imagine, David Bowie having trouble carrying a tune!
Since then, Bowie appeared in various roles, many of which I can't comment on too extensively: The Hunger, where he played John Blaylock, one half of a vampire couple (with Catherine Deneuve). I've only seen this film once, and quite a few years ago; Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, playing a British POW in a WWII Japanese camp. I have never seen this movie, though I hear he is very good*; Just a Gigolo, as as a German WWI veteran who takes up a career as a gigolo to make ends meet; the Goblin King in Jim Henson's Labyrinth, a role in which he showed a menacing edge; Pontius Pilate in Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, which I've only seen once, and I honestly do not remember his performance at all, I'm embarrassed to say; and Basquiat, about the NYC artist, where Bowie played a real person for the first time, Andy Warhol. I haven't seen this one, either.
But there are two roles he played that I do admire (and remember!), one of which I absolutely relish; this was his performance as Colin Morris, aka The Englishman, in John Landis' Into the Night, from 1985. Into the Night is one of my favourite movies of all time; every time I watch it, I'm just delighted. There are many small, quirky performances, including those from other film directors, like Roger Vadim, David Cronenberg, Paul Mazursky, and Landis himself, as well as cameos by Don Siegel, Jim Henson, and others.
There are also musicians in acting roles here, including a turn by Carl Perkins as a big, menacing bodyguard, and of course, Bowie's gleefully psycho gunman, who is convinced that Jeff Goldblum's schlubby Ed Okin is some kind of master criminal! ("You can stop performing now, 'Ed' - if that's your name," he smirks). Later, there is a huge fight scene in a posh hotel suite, between Bowie, Perkins and Goldblum, to the accompaniment of an Abbott & Costello movie on multiple TVs!
The other performance by Bowie that sticks in my mind, though I've only seen it once, is his portrayal of another actual person, Nikolai Tesla, in 2006's The Prestige. He gives the character real depth, with a world-weariness that's quite affecting. Just a small part, but quite memorable, in a movie that I frankly expected to be better, what with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson and Piper Perabo in the cast.
*(Update: I have just recently seen Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence on Blu-Ray, and yes, he is very good, as defiant - and guilt-haunted - POW Maj. "Strafer Jack" Celliers. There is even a hint of madness in his portrayal of the character, perhaps a foreshadowing of the thoroughly demented Colin Morris in Into the Night. I had to smile a bit, though, because, as with Thomas Newton, he was again playing a character who is quite tone-deaf!)
In Person/Live
I had the pleasure of seeing David Bowie live once, at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1978, not long after the release of Heroes. This was the concert tour that was captured on the double live album, Stage.
Well, I wasn't disappointed, I'll tell you. The first thing they played were the opening notes of "Warszawa," and from that point on, I was happy.
Bowie was playing no persona here, he was just himself, immaculately dressed, of course, and in fine voice. I remember at one point noting how his voice resonated through the whole of that cavernous venue. Yes, of course it was amplified, but it was still powerful.
He was somewhat reserved and shy in person, seeming genuinely touched by the applause and enthusiasm of the crowd. He was aided ably in the band by his longtime guitarist, Carlos Alomar, who bounced happily around the stage, providing an energetic foil to Bowie's quiet presence.
They ran through tracks from Heroes and Low, as well as older songs, going back as far as Ziggy Stardust. No "Space Oddity," though, and I wasn't sorry (and I'm sure he wasn't, by that time) that they didn't play it.
I also remember seeing a TV special in the 1990s on A&E, part of the "Live By Request" series, that featured Bowie and his band, around the time of the Heathen album. Once again, I noticed his quiet charm and diffidence, as he performed requests for a small audience. It was there that I saw him use the stylophone, which he had played on Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold the World, and was to use again on Heathen. It's a hand-held electronic keyboard, with an octave-or-so range, played with a stylus - hence the name. Only he would showcase such an obscure instrument!
"David Bowie Is..."
I was also privileged to see this exhibit, which ran for some weeks at the Art Gallery of Ontario, one of only a few venues outside of England to show it.
This was an absolutely massive exhibit, ambitiously covering as many aspects of Bowie's career as possible; his hundreds of songs, of course; his early years in London; his influence on music videos; being a fashion icon; his film roles; and more. I spent the whole late morning and afternoon in the exhibit, and had to be chased out by an attendant at closing time!
I already respected and admired Bowie's music for many reasons, but this exhibit increased that respect and admiration many times over.
What was overwhelmingly clear was the massive amount of work the man put into his songs. From his early recordings in 1966-67 on, the control he exercised over his music was amazing.
The exhibit included the copy of The Oxford Companion To Music, from which he learned arranging, as well as several pieces of music manuscript showing his handwritten arrangements for early songs like "London Boys" and "Space Oddity." In fact, there was an entire small room devoted to that one song, showing his string arrangements, contemporary newspapers with headlines about the Apollo missions (where he got the inspiration for the song), and the proto-music video for the first version of it.
There was also a handwritten chart for the vocal arrangements for backup singers for one song on Young Americans. No notation, just a kind of graph showing at what points the voices were to sing the "ooh"s or "mmm"s in the song.
Many people have called David Bowie a genius, mostly since his untimely passing; if anything, this aspect of the exhibit was proof of the humourous saying that "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration!"
I was quite thrilled to see a couple of the (surprisingly basic) synthesizers that were used in the recording of those chilling songs on Low and Heroes. This was part of a room dedicated to Bowie's sojourn in Berlin, and included photos, and some of Bowie's own artwork from that period.
There were also displays of the many stage outfits he wore over the years, with footage of the actual concerts where he wore them projected on the walls behind.
As well, there was a whole room devoted to Bowie's many groundbreaking music videos. We take these so much for granted now, that some may not realize how far ahead of their time some of these were. As I mentioned in the last post, I never saw a purpose-made "music video," promoting a single song, before "The Jean Genie." And let's not forget his innovative video for "Ashes to Ashes," or some of those for his more recent albums, that could well include his last ones, for "Blackstar" and "Lazarus."
Also, there was a small room set up to look like a recording booth, with the walls lined with the full-size covers of all Bowie's albums up to that point (The Next Day had only just been released, and of course, Blackstar was yet to come). It was just overwhelming to think of one person having written all that music, much less performed it, arranged it and toured with it.
There were more things in the exhibit, but I won't try to cover them all. Needless to say, it was an incredible thrill to see the world of such a multifaceted artist opened up to me, and I'll surely never forget it.
Finally...
Want to know the main reason I admire David Bowie? By living his life, he showed that it makes no difference what someone looks like, or their sexual orientation, or their personal demons. In the end, we're all people, and we're all equal.
There will never be another David Bowie.
Monday, 25 January 2016
Monday, 18 January 2016
Thoughts on David Bowie - Part I
On January 8 this year, I posted a tweet on the occasion of David Bowie's 69th birthday, and on the release of his new album - "from a longtime fan."
On January 11, I had to collect my thoughts and send out another tweet, because David Bowie had died.
The massive torrent of tweets and messages was incredible, and showed how many people's lives David Bowie touched. I was a little overwhelmed, because I felt like I had a personal experience of the man that was unique. It was like, "What's everyone else so upset about? I'm the one who really appreciated him." Turns out there were millions of others who felt that way, too.
So, here are some personal thoughts about David Bowie, and the impact he had on my life. I'll focus mainly on his music, mostly on the early albums that I'm most familiar with.
There are other areas that he touched - some that mean more to others than to me - and I will mention a few of them in the next post.
The Albums:
Space Oddity
For my 15th birthday, my older brother presented me with a copy of Space Oddity. On the front cover was a large closeup of a thin, good-looking guy with spiky red hair, and on the back was the same wiry guy, sitting in an effeminate, knock-kneed pose, in a silvery outfit ("Is that a man?" asked our dad. "Yes," we replied, "It's David Bowie." "I thought it was a girl," he said.).
Well, my brother and I listened to that album many times during the rest of the winter, and at first, I admit I was a little baffled by the music. But it got hold of me eventually, and I played the album over and over.
The reason for my bafflement was that I had never heard songs like this before. I was used to the standard "verse-chorus" structure that even the Beatles had almost never strayed from.
I could talk about every track on this album, but two songs in particular really smashed my perceptions of how a song should go:
"Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed" starts off as an acoustic guitar-accompanied ballad to a snooty rich girl, but (d)evolves into a jaunty tune with full accompaniment, and a Bo Diddley rhythm, not to mention some of the most surrealistic lyrics you can imagine: "And the Braque on the wall/Slides down your front/And eats through your belly./It's very catching," being just a small sample.
Then there's "Cygnet Committee," a song I still find intriguing after all this time. It begins with a quiet instrumental intro, with bass, electric guitar, and electric harpsichord (played by pre-Yes Rick Wakeman.) It slowly builds to a higher and higher pitch, with lyrics that appear to be about a band of revolutionaries, to a kind of apocalyptic climax (even borrowing Dylan's phrase "desolation row" at one point), and an ending about hope ("I want to believe that a light's shining through somehow"), with Bowie keening at the end, "I want to live...live...live" over and over.
I remember saying to my brother about the song, "It doesn't really go anywhere," This was not a criticism, but an observation - perhaps even an epiphany. This was new territory for me; a nine-minute song that had no structure (save for a brief return to the opening verse), but was so powerful and affecting that it still moves me forty years later.
It was years later that I discovered that the album had been made over, circa 1972, as Space Oddity from the original 1968 album, Man of Words/Man of Music, due to the huge popularity of the "Space Oddity" single in '72.
A similar thing was to happen with Bowie's next album, for various reasons. And that leads us to...
The Man Who Sold the World
This was an album with no less than three different covers. The initial 1970 one, and the one that most are probably familiar with now, features Bowie, replete with shoulder-length hair, reclining sideways on a divan, in a unisex dress.
This was a bit too much for the powers that were, and the cover that was released for the reissue in 1972 (and the one that first made its way into our household) featured a black-and white photo of a heavily made-up Bowie with guitar, pouting at the camera while doing a high kick. The back cover was another high contrast black-and-white photo of a silhouetted Bowie singing and playing his omnipresent twelve-string acoustic.
The third cover consisted of several rather crude-looking cartoons, vaguely related to some of the songs on the album. The 1999 CD release has a couple of these in the insert. But it was the black-and-white cover that I knew best, and it seemed to exemplify well enough the eccentricities of the Bowie persona I was becoming familiar with.
As for the music, this was the first album to feature the three-man band that would be with Bowie for the next three releases: Mick Ronson on guitar, Trevor Bolder on bass, and Mick Woodmansey on drums. The songs were mostly straight-ahead rock, though not without the odd touches (including instruments like recorders and stylophone) that would continue to set Bowie's music apart from the rest.
The track that will stay with me, though, is the quiet "After All." I had always liked it, but it also had an effect on another member of our family - our younger brother. He was to die very suddenly at age 25, and his grief-stricken friends remembered how much he liked the song, so it ended up being played at his funeral.
The title track of the album is also notable for having been covered in the 1990s by Nirvana. I can't say I cared for their version; it was just a straight reading of the song, and lacked the unsettling and mysterious qualities that I liked in the original, like the background guiro (another unusual instrumental touch), and the distorted vocals.
Hunky Dory
Then came Hunky Dory, perhaps the most upbeat and happy album of Bowie's early career. He had gotten married, and had a son, variously named "Zowie" or "Joey." (He is now known as Duncan Jones, and is the respected writer/director of such movies as Moon and Source Code.) The cover again features Bowie with long hair, in a hand-tinted "glamour shot," - I've heard it referred to as "the Garbo cover."
Many of the songs are about contentment and home life, like "Eight Line Poem" and "Kooks," a song for his son about getting prepared for an unusual life.
On my most recent listen through the album, I happened to listen particularly closely to "Eight Line Poem," and was struck by the sweet, soulful guitar solo that Mick Ronson contributed to it, as well as to his flowing string arrangements throughout the album, and was saddened that he, too, had left us at much too young an age.
This album also once again featured Rick Wakeman on piano, and he adds a lot of flourishes to some of the songs, especially "Life On Mars?" and "Fill Your Heart."
There are stranger songs as well, of course, like "Quicksand"; also, odes to Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol; and one rocker, "Queen Bitch," featuring Ronson's unique "metallic" guitar sound, which would come more to the forefront on the next release.
The closing track is "The Bewlay Brothers," a contemplative track featuring, again, some very odd lyrics, almost as if he had used William S. Burroughs' "cut-up" technique: "And our talk was old, and dust would flow/Thru our veins, and Lo! it was midnight/Back o' the kitchen door/ Like the grim faces on the Cathedral floor." The song is considered to be about Bowie's brother, Terry, who was in and out of mental institutions for many years, and who would also die young. The song was apparently meaningful enough to Bowie that he was later to publish his songs under the rubric of "Bewlay Brothers Music."
Ziggy Stardust
The next album my brother was to bring home was probably Bowie's most popular and accessible, right up to the 1980s, and Let's Dance. This was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. It's a concept album about (again!) the end of the world, and the arrival of an alien musician, who ends up being killed by his own fans (one of Bowie's personal fears - that, or a plane crash). Again, mostly straight-ahead rockers, with simple instrumentation - Ronson's "metallic"-sounding electric guitar, and some saxophone work from Bowie.
The "second side" of the album, starting from "Lady Stardust," and ending with "Rock'n'Roll Suicide," is a true, coherent suite of songs, like the "second side" of the Beatles' Abbey Road, and stands along with it as a great achievement in emotional and musical range. Probably the best-known song here is "Suffragette City," which is a great up-tempo rocker, but lyrically, shows someone in great desperation. Perhaps it reflected Bowie's own state of mind, which climaxed with him announcing, at the end of the tour for this album, that he wasn't going to play live anymore.
Aladdin Sane
The creative juices kept flowing, however, and Bowie was to produce an album next that looked back on that tour, particularly the U.S. segment, and gave us Aladdin Sane. Everyone knows the cover of this one, featuring Bowie with closed eyes and the now-famous (cliched, almost?) "lightning-bolt" makeup.
It's full of impressionistic lyrics about (again) Andy Warhol, or cities like Detroit and Hollywood. "Panic In Detroit" stands out, due to its chugging (again) Bo Diddley rhythm, wailing backup singers, and lyrics about riots, abandoned cars and suicide.
There are also cover songs, of Bowie's own "The Prettiest Star," and a frenetic version of the Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together."
An interesting addition to the arrangements was the presence of free-form pianist Mike Garson, who adds a striking contrast to the tight rhythms of the title track, and a beautiful, flowing, dreamlike accompaniment to the final track, "Lady Grinning Soul."
The most well-known track, though is "The Jean Genie," apparently a song about Iggy Pop. I recall seeing David Bowie being interviewed on TV, as he arrived in Canada on tour. I remember well his modesty and graciousness for those few minutes, and it's stuck with me ever since. Then, they played something I'd never seen before - the music video for "The Jean Genie."
Pin Ups
The last album Bowie was to do with "The Spiders From Mars" was Pin Ups, which my buddies derisively referred to as his "contractual obligation album." This was true in a sense, as Bowie was fulfilling his final obligations to the mismanaged MainMan organization which had represented him for some years. But it doesn't mean the album didn't rock like hell; it was blazing covers of some songs that Bowie had heard in London clubs in his teens. The likes of The Who, The Pretty Things, The Kinks, and others were represented.
The standout for me was a cover of "See Emily Play," the early Pink Floyd tune. It got me curious to hear more of their early stuff, and I've been a huge Syd Barrett fan ever since. I even borrowed Bowie's term "Syd's Pink Floyd" to distinguish between pre- and post-Barrett when talking about the Floyd.
Diamond Dogs
The next album he was to do was Diamond Dogs, which had a kind of "post-apocalyptic" theme, and borrowed some concepts from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, including a song with that actual title. The musicians are kind of "Bowie and backup," including longtime collaborator Herbie Flowers on bass, who had been on Space Oddity, as well as the Bowie-produced/Ronson-arranged 1972 Lou Reed classic, Transformer.
There is lots of good rock music on this album also, including the driving "1984," and the most well-known track, "Rebel Rebel," which features one of the great rock guitar riffs, and to my mind, is Bowie's answer to the Stones' "Satisfaction." Seriously, listen to them side by side sometime!
David Live
Bowie was to tour again after Diamond Dogs, and this is when he created his next persona, "The Thin White Duke," who wore zoot suits and fedoras, and where Bowie completely changed his musical style. This was "blue-eyed soul," which obliged him to change the sound of his voice, from the glam tenor of Ziggy Stardust to a rich, resonant baritone. I will admit that the album that came out of that tour, David Live, was a bit of a head-scratcher for me. It featured complete reworkings of his classic songs to suit the new "soul" sound, and I wasn't sure it all worked. I also thought his voice was very rough-sounding - as it turned out, this was the worst period in his life for drug problems, and that may have contributed to it.
Young Americans
The album that came out next was the formal introduction of this new persona, and was called Young Americans. This was all-soul, all the time, and featured his next hit, an early disco number, "Fame," co-written with album collaborator, John Lennon, also in the midst of drug (and marital) problems. This was the first album to feature guitarist Carlos Alomar, a bundle of energy who would be with Bowie for many years. It also included David Sanborn on saxophone, who would go on to many more collaborations and solo work, not to mention a young Luther Vandross.
The album also has a cover of Lennon's "Across the Universe," which, though much different from the Beatles version, holds its own as a more stripped-down, emotional reading.
When I hear some of these tracks now, I think I appreciate them more than I did at the time. My friends would say, "Why does he change his sound so often?" and I would reply, "Why not? He's looking for something new," but to be honest, I was feeling less enthusiastic as a fan myself.
It was around this time that Bowie took on his first major movie role, that of stranded alien (surprise!) Thomas Newton, in The Man Who Fell to Earth. I will talk about Bowie's acting career in another post, but scenes from this movie would appear on the covers of his next two albums...
Station to Station
Station to Station came out just as I was finishing high school, and there was a big hit from it on the radio, "Golden Years." My friends again dismissed it as a disco song, but I kind of liked the smooth, polished sound of it, and didn't consider it "disco" at all. I bought the album, and was impressed with the title track, with the "train" sounds at the beginning, and the changing tempi and time signatures (as well as some very offbeat lyrics). Having developed a liking for progressive rock, this was something I could get into! Some of the other tracks, like "Word on a Wing" or "Stay" were less enthralling, at the time.
The album grew on me through my post-secondary years, though, and I came to like it. Particularly outstanding is the final track, a passionate rendition of Dmitri Tiomkin's "Wild Is the Wind," that showcased Bowie's newfound soulful voice like never before.
In retrospect. Bowie was getting more sophisticated - but I wasn't. At that time, I was wondering whether I would feel enthusiastic enough to buy his next album. Well, life is full of surprises...
Low
I heard things about Bowie's next album that were intriguing: "He's taking a new direction." "He's got a new sound."
At a party I went to, things were winding down, and I crawled into a bed upstairs for the night. There was a radio in the room, and they announced a track off Bowie's new album. I didn't get the title - it sounded like some foreign language - but through my drowsiness, there came the most incredible piece of music I'd ever heard.
The next day, I raved to my friends about the song I'd heard, and as soon as I could, I went and bought the album. Another still from Man Who Fell on the cover, I noted, having seen the movie sometime before.
After the buzzsaw opening to the first track, "Speed of Life," I thought the songs weren't that different from before. There were synthesizers aplenty, which was a plus (I was, and still am, a huge fan of the sound of analogue synthesizers), but they were mostly uptempo, poppy tunes.
Then, I turned the LP over, and there was the song I'd heard: "Warszawa." From the opening drones of that piece, chills ran up and down my spine, and barely let up until the last track on the album. It was raw, haunting, despairing, chilling music, and subconsciously, I may have realized that it brought me back to those first "unstructured" songs on Space Oddity that had caught my attention years before.
The "lyrics" in two songs on the second side ("Warszawa" and "Subterraneans") were also a source of puzzlement. I sure couldn't make them out. As it turns out, they were merely meaningless syllables that Bowie sang as melodies. They are very effective, in any case, in adding another layer to the mysterious and enigmatic music.
I also noticed that the main collaborator on the album was someone I had been admiring for a while, Brian Eno. I had some of his albums at that time, Here Come the Warm Jets, Discreet Music and Another Green World, and had been fascinated with the things he did with music. Not only did he write incredibly clever and weird lyrics, he also did things with instrumentation and arrangements that were new and unique. So it was no surprise to me that he had helped Bowie achieve something new and brilliant.
This is my favourite David Bowie album, and one of my favourite albums ever. It still gives me chills.
Heroes
The next album to come out was also recorded during Bowie's "recovery" in Berlin. The striking cover was apparently (like that of Iggy Pop's The Idiot) loosely based on a painting he had seen in a Berlin art gallery.
Musically, at first, it seemed quite similar to Low, with faster, more mainstream tracks on the first side, and introspective, synth-laden instrumentals on the second. It again featured able assists from Brian Eno, and some of the (Side 2) tracks had a similar feel to those on Low. But this album ended with an uptempo piece, co-written with Eno and Carlos Alomar, "The Secret Life of Arabia." It was like Bowie was becoming more positive and hopeful, after the bleakness of the previous release. Mind you, there is still plenty of dark stuff here, like "Joe the Lion" and "Blackout."
The album also featured another personal (ahem) hero, guitarist Robert Fripp, a collaborator with Eno at least since Here Come the Warm Jets. His work on the title track is noteworthy for its keening, sustained notes, set atop Bowie's tight rhythms - in a way, invoking Mike Garson's work on Aladdin Sane.
And the Rest?
I will stop here.
I did get several of Bowie's later albums, including the third in the so-called "Berlin trilogy," Lodger, as well as Scary Monsters, Let's Dance, and others. Through the 1980s, though, my musical explorations turned more to classical music, and working in a record store enabled me to inexpensively purchase box sets of operas and symphonies that I felt more inclined to listen to at that time.
Then, CDs appeared, and I slowly started to replace my old, scratchy. pop- and click-laden LPs.
In 2000, there was a fire in my apartment, and many of my LPs (and some CDs) were damaged enough that I didn't keep them. Since then, I've been more selective about what music I buy, and since the advent of DVDs, I have collected more movies than music. What with cable TV and the internet, there are more options for entertainment now than I can get my head around, and collecting music is only something I do occasionally, when something really catches my ear. The last time I bought rock CDs in any number was during the grunge era!
I have heard some tracks from Bowie's last album, Blackstar, with the title track being particularly haunting, and will probably pick it up, once the frenzy for his albums dies down. (I was working in a record store at the time of Glenn Gould's passing, and you'd think, from the crowds that filled the place, that they weren't going to press any more of his albums, ever!)
I do have more to say about David Bowie, though, and in the next post, I'd like to talk (more briefly, I hope) about his film roles, seeing him live, and the David Bowie Is... exhibit. Stay tuned.
On January 11, I had to collect my thoughts and send out another tweet, because David Bowie had died.
The massive torrent of tweets and messages was incredible, and showed how many people's lives David Bowie touched. I was a little overwhelmed, because I felt like I had a personal experience of the man that was unique. It was like, "What's everyone else so upset about? I'm the one who really appreciated him." Turns out there were millions of others who felt that way, too.
So, here are some personal thoughts about David Bowie, and the impact he had on my life. I'll focus mainly on his music, mostly on the early albums that I'm most familiar with.
There are other areas that he touched - some that mean more to others than to me - and I will mention a few of them in the next post.
The Albums:
Space Oddity
For my 15th birthday, my older brother presented me with a copy of Space Oddity. On the front cover was a large closeup of a thin, good-looking guy with spiky red hair, and on the back was the same wiry guy, sitting in an effeminate, knock-kneed pose, in a silvery outfit ("Is that a man?" asked our dad. "Yes," we replied, "It's David Bowie." "I thought it was a girl," he said.).
Well, my brother and I listened to that album many times during the rest of the winter, and at first, I admit I was a little baffled by the music. But it got hold of me eventually, and I played the album over and over.
The reason for my bafflement was that I had never heard songs like this before. I was used to the standard "verse-chorus" structure that even the Beatles had almost never strayed from.
I could talk about every track on this album, but two songs in particular really smashed my perceptions of how a song should go:
"Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed" starts off as an acoustic guitar-accompanied ballad to a snooty rich girl, but (d)evolves into a jaunty tune with full accompaniment, and a Bo Diddley rhythm, not to mention some of the most surrealistic lyrics you can imagine: "And the Braque on the wall/Slides down your front/And eats through your belly./It's very catching," being just a small sample.
Then there's "Cygnet Committee," a song I still find intriguing after all this time. It begins with a quiet instrumental intro, with bass, electric guitar, and electric harpsichord (played by pre-Yes Rick Wakeman.) It slowly builds to a higher and higher pitch, with lyrics that appear to be about a band of revolutionaries, to a kind of apocalyptic climax (even borrowing Dylan's phrase "desolation row" at one point), and an ending about hope ("I want to believe that a light's shining through somehow"), with Bowie keening at the end, "I want to live...live...live" over and over.
I remember saying to my brother about the song, "It doesn't really go anywhere," This was not a criticism, but an observation - perhaps even an epiphany. This was new territory for me; a nine-minute song that had no structure (save for a brief return to the opening verse), but was so powerful and affecting that it still moves me forty years later.
It was years later that I discovered that the album had been made over, circa 1972, as Space Oddity from the original 1968 album, Man of Words/Man of Music, due to the huge popularity of the "Space Oddity" single in '72.
A similar thing was to happen with Bowie's next album, for various reasons. And that leads us to...
The Man Who Sold the World
This was an album with no less than three different covers. The initial 1970 one, and the one that most are probably familiar with now, features Bowie, replete with shoulder-length hair, reclining sideways on a divan, in a unisex dress.
This was a bit too much for the powers that were, and the cover that was released for the reissue in 1972 (and the one that first made its way into our household) featured a black-and white photo of a heavily made-up Bowie with guitar, pouting at the camera while doing a high kick. The back cover was another high contrast black-and-white photo of a silhouetted Bowie singing and playing his omnipresent twelve-string acoustic.
The third cover consisted of several rather crude-looking cartoons, vaguely related to some of the songs on the album. The 1999 CD release has a couple of these in the insert. But it was the black-and-white cover that I knew best, and it seemed to exemplify well enough the eccentricities of the Bowie persona I was becoming familiar with.
As for the music, this was the first album to feature the three-man band that would be with Bowie for the next three releases: Mick Ronson on guitar, Trevor Bolder on bass, and Mick Woodmansey on drums. The songs were mostly straight-ahead rock, though not without the odd touches (including instruments like recorders and stylophone) that would continue to set Bowie's music apart from the rest.
The track that will stay with me, though, is the quiet "After All." I had always liked it, but it also had an effect on another member of our family - our younger brother. He was to die very suddenly at age 25, and his grief-stricken friends remembered how much he liked the song, so it ended up being played at his funeral.
The title track of the album is also notable for having been covered in the 1990s by Nirvana. I can't say I cared for their version; it was just a straight reading of the song, and lacked the unsettling and mysterious qualities that I liked in the original, like the background guiro (another unusual instrumental touch), and the distorted vocals.
Hunky Dory
Then came Hunky Dory, perhaps the most upbeat and happy album of Bowie's early career. He had gotten married, and had a son, variously named "Zowie" or "Joey." (He is now known as Duncan Jones, and is the respected writer/director of such movies as Moon and Source Code.) The cover again features Bowie with long hair, in a hand-tinted "glamour shot," - I've heard it referred to as "the Garbo cover."
Many of the songs are about contentment and home life, like "Eight Line Poem" and "Kooks," a song for his son about getting prepared for an unusual life.
On my most recent listen through the album, I happened to listen particularly closely to "Eight Line Poem," and was struck by the sweet, soulful guitar solo that Mick Ronson contributed to it, as well as to his flowing string arrangements throughout the album, and was saddened that he, too, had left us at much too young an age.
This album also once again featured Rick Wakeman on piano, and he adds a lot of flourishes to some of the songs, especially "Life On Mars?" and "Fill Your Heart."
There are stranger songs as well, of course, like "Quicksand"; also, odes to Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol; and one rocker, "Queen Bitch," featuring Ronson's unique "metallic" guitar sound, which would come more to the forefront on the next release.
The closing track is "The Bewlay Brothers," a contemplative track featuring, again, some very odd lyrics, almost as if he had used William S. Burroughs' "cut-up" technique: "And our talk was old, and dust would flow/Thru our veins, and Lo! it was midnight/Back o' the kitchen door/ Like the grim faces on the Cathedral floor." The song is considered to be about Bowie's brother, Terry, who was in and out of mental institutions for many years, and who would also die young. The song was apparently meaningful enough to Bowie that he was later to publish his songs under the rubric of "Bewlay Brothers Music."
Ziggy Stardust
The next album my brother was to bring home was probably Bowie's most popular and accessible, right up to the 1980s, and Let's Dance. This was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. It's a concept album about (again!) the end of the world, and the arrival of an alien musician, who ends up being killed by his own fans (one of Bowie's personal fears - that, or a plane crash). Again, mostly straight-ahead rockers, with simple instrumentation - Ronson's "metallic"-sounding electric guitar, and some saxophone work from Bowie.
The "second side" of the album, starting from "Lady Stardust," and ending with "Rock'n'Roll Suicide," is a true, coherent suite of songs, like the "second side" of the Beatles' Abbey Road, and stands along with it as a great achievement in emotional and musical range. Probably the best-known song here is "Suffragette City," which is a great up-tempo rocker, but lyrically, shows someone in great desperation. Perhaps it reflected Bowie's own state of mind, which climaxed with him announcing, at the end of the tour for this album, that he wasn't going to play live anymore.
Aladdin Sane
The creative juices kept flowing, however, and Bowie was to produce an album next that looked back on that tour, particularly the U.S. segment, and gave us Aladdin Sane. Everyone knows the cover of this one, featuring Bowie with closed eyes and the now-famous (cliched, almost?) "lightning-bolt" makeup.
It's full of impressionistic lyrics about (again) Andy Warhol, or cities like Detroit and Hollywood. "Panic In Detroit" stands out, due to its chugging (again) Bo Diddley rhythm, wailing backup singers, and lyrics about riots, abandoned cars and suicide.
There are also cover songs, of Bowie's own "The Prettiest Star," and a frenetic version of the Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together."
An interesting addition to the arrangements was the presence of free-form pianist Mike Garson, who adds a striking contrast to the tight rhythms of the title track, and a beautiful, flowing, dreamlike accompaniment to the final track, "Lady Grinning Soul."
The most well-known track, though is "The Jean Genie," apparently a song about Iggy Pop. I recall seeing David Bowie being interviewed on TV, as he arrived in Canada on tour. I remember well his modesty and graciousness for those few minutes, and it's stuck with me ever since. Then, they played something I'd never seen before - the music video for "The Jean Genie."
Pin Ups
The last album Bowie was to do with "The Spiders From Mars" was Pin Ups, which my buddies derisively referred to as his "contractual obligation album." This was true in a sense, as Bowie was fulfilling his final obligations to the mismanaged MainMan organization which had represented him for some years. But it doesn't mean the album didn't rock like hell; it was blazing covers of some songs that Bowie had heard in London clubs in his teens. The likes of The Who, The Pretty Things, The Kinks, and others were represented.
The standout for me was a cover of "See Emily Play," the early Pink Floyd tune. It got me curious to hear more of their early stuff, and I've been a huge Syd Barrett fan ever since. I even borrowed Bowie's term "Syd's Pink Floyd" to distinguish between pre- and post-Barrett when talking about the Floyd.
Diamond Dogs
The next album he was to do was Diamond Dogs, which had a kind of "post-apocalyptic" theme, and borrowed some concepts from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, including a song with that actual title. The musicians are kind of "Bowie and backup," including longtime collaborator Herbie Flowers on bass, who had been on Space Oddity, as well as the Bowie-produced/Ronson-arranged 1972 Lou Reed classic, Transformer.
There is lots of good rock music on this album also, including the driving "1984," and the most well-known track, "Rebel Rebel," which features one of the great rock guitar riffs, and to my mind, is Bowie's answer to the Stones' "Satisfaction." Seriously, listen to them side by side sometime!
David Live
Bowie was to tour again after Diamond Dogs, and this is when he created his next persona, "The Thin White Duke," who wore zoot suits and fedoras, and where Bowie completely changed his musical style. This was "blue-eyed soul," which obliged him to change the sound of his voice, from the glam tenor of Ziggy Stardust to a rich, resonant baritone. I will admit that the album that came out of that tour, David Live, was a bit of a head-scratcher for me. It featured complete reworkings of his classic songs to suit the new "soul" sound, and I wasn't sure it all worked. I also thought his voice was very rough-sounding - as it turned out, this was the worst period in his life for drug problems, and that may have contributed to it.
Young Americans
The album that came out next was the formal introduction of this new persona, and was called Young Americans. This was all-soul, all the time, and featured his next hit, an early disco number, "Fame," co-written with album collaborator, John Lennon, also in the midst of drug (and marital) problems. This was the first album to feature guitarist Carlos Alomar, a bundle of energy who would be with Bowie for many years. It also included David Sanborn on saxophone, who would go on to many more collaborations and solo work, not to mention a young Luther Vandross.
The album also has a cover of Lennon's "Across the Universe," which, though much different from the Beatles version, holds its own as a more stripped-down, emotional reading.
When I hear some of these tracks now, I think I appreciate them more than I did at the time. My friends would say, "Why does he change his sound so often?" and I would reply, "Why not? He's looking for something new," but to be honest, I was feeling less enthusiastic as a fan myself.
It was around this time that Bowie took on his first major movie role, that of stranded alien (surprise!) Thomas Newton, in The Man Who Fell to Earth. I will talk about Bowie's acting career in another post, but scenes from this movie would appear on the covers of his next two albums...
Station to Station
Station to Station came out just as I was finishing high school, and there was a big hit from it on the radio, "Golden Years." My friends again dismissed it as a disco song, but I kind of liked the smooth, polished sound of it, and didn't consider it "disco" at all. I bought the album, and was impressed with the title track, with the "train" sounds at the beginning, and the changing tempi and time signatures (as well as some very offbeat lyrics). Having developed a liking for progressive rock, this was something I could get into! Some of the other tracks, like "Word on a Wing" or "Stay" were less enthralling, at the time.
The album grew on me through my post-secondary years, though, and I came to like it. Particularly outstanding is the final track, a passionate rendition of Dmitri Tiomkin's "Wild Is the Wind," that showcased Bowie's newfound soulful voice like never before.
In retrospect. Bowie was getting more sophisticated - but I wasn't. At that time, I was wondering whether I would feel enthusiastic enough to buy his next album. Well, life is full of surprises...
Low
I heard things about Bowie's next album that were intriguing: "He's taking a new direction." "He's got a new sound."
At a party I went to, things were winding down, and I crawled into a bed upstairs for the night. There was a radio in the room, and they announced a track off Bowie's new album. I didn't get the title - it sounded like some foreign language - but through my drowsiness, there came the most incredible piece of music I'd ever heard.
The next day, I raved to my friends about the song I'd heard, and as soon as I could, I went and bought the album. Another still from Man Who Fell on the cover, I noted, having seen the movie sometime before.
After the buzzsaw opening to the first track, "Speed of Life," I thought the songs weren't that different from before. There were synthesizers aplenty, which was a plus (I was, and still am, a huge fan of the sound of analogue synthesizers), but they were mostly uptempo, poppy tunes.
Then, I turned the LP over, and there was the song I'd heard: "Warszawa." From the opening drones of that piece, chills ran up and down my spine, and barely let up until the last track on the album. It was raw, haunting, despairing, chilling music, and subconsciously, I may have realized that it brought me back to those first "unstructured" songs on Space Oddity that had caught my attention years before.
The "lyrics" in two songs on the second side ("Warszawa" and "Subterraneans") were also a source of puzzlement. I sure couldn't make them out. As it turns out, they were merely meaningless syllables that Bowie sang as melodies. They are very effective, in any case, in adding another layer to the mysterious and enigmatic music.
I also noticed that the main collaborator on the album was someone I had been admiring for a while, Brian Eno. I had some of his albums at that time, Here Come the Warm Jets, Discreet Music and Another Green World, and had been fascinated with the things he did with music. Not only did he write incredibly clever and weird lyrics, he also did things with instrumentation and arrangements that were new and unique. So it was no surprise to me that he had helped Bowie achieve something new and brilliant.
This is my favourite David Bowie album, and one of my favourite albums ever. It still gives me chills.
Heroes
The next album to come out was also recorded during Bowie's "recovery" in Berlin. The striking cover was apparently (like that of Iggy Pop's The Idiot) loosely based on a painting he had seen in a Berlin art gallery.
Musically, at first, it seemed quite similar to Low, with faster, more mainstream tracks on the first side, and introspective, synth-laden instrumentals on the second. It again featured able assists from Brian Eno, and some of the (Side 2) tracks had a similar feel to those on Low. But this album ended with an uptempo piece, co-written with Eno and Carlos Alomar, "The Secret Life of Arabia." It was like Bowie was becoming more positive and hopeful, after the bleakness of the previous release. Mind you, there is still plenty of dark stuff here, like "Joe the Lion" and "Blackout."
The album also featured another personal (ahem) hero, guitarist Robert Fripp, a collaborator with Eno at least since Here Come the Warm Jets. His work on the title track is noteworthy for its keening, sustained notes, set atop Bowie's tight rhythms - in a way, invoking Mike Garson's work on Aladdin Sane.
And the Rest?
I will stop here.
I did get several of Bowie's later albums, including the third in the so-called "Berlin trilogy," Lodger, as well as Scary Monsters, Let's Dance, and others. Through the 1980s, though, my musical explorations turned more to classical music, and working in a record store enabled me to inexpensively purchase box sets of operas and symphonies that I felt more inclined to listen to at that time.
Then, CDs appeared, and I slowly started to replace my old, scratchy. pop- and click-laden LPs.
In 2000, there was a fire in my apartment, and many of my LPs (and some CDs) were damaged enough that I didn't keep them. Since then, I've been more selective about what music I buy, and since the advent of DVDs, I have collected more movies than music. What with cable TV and the internet, there are more options for entertainment now than I can get my head around, and collecting music is only something I do occasionally, when something really catches my ear. The last time I bought rock CDs in any number was during the grunge era!
I have heard some tracks from Bowie's last album, Blackstar, with the title track being particularly haunting, and will probably pick it up, once the frenzy for his albums dies down. (I was working in a record store at the time of Glenn Gould's passing, and you'd think, from the crowds that filled the place, that they weren't going to press any more of his albums, ever!)
I do have more to say about David Bowie, though, and in the next post, I'd like to talk (more briefly, I hope) about his film roles, seeing him live, and the David Bowie Is... exhibit. Stay tuned.
Sunday, 10 January 2016
Words We Don't Use Anymore Part II
Happy New Year! Thank you for coming back to my blog. I will try to post thoughts/events/pics as often as I see fit again this year, and hope you enjoy them.
I thought I'd start off another year the way I started the blog last March, with a word that I find charming or quaint, but that is not widely used. This time, the word is:
Nigh, literally "near," or "almost." With origins in Old English, this word is only used poetically nowadays, as the word "near" means virtually the same thing. but has come to have more versatility.
As an example of its poetic or lyrical sense, we still use the word whenever we sing the Christmas carol Away In a Manger: "...and stay by my cradle (or, side un) til morning is nigh," depending on which version you use.
As a kid, like many others, I used to sing this song in Sunday School, but would think, "Pssh! Silly writers! They mean "til morning is night - they've just left off the last letter!" Ah, the certainty of youth! Of course, "til morning is night" doesn't make any sense, since you're asking Jesus to stay with you through the night, not through the day. "Stay by my (whatever) til morning is near," is what it means; it just took many years (and lots of reading) for me to figure that out.
Well, nowadays, you might see the word as the answer in a crossword puzzle (which is what inspired me to write this post), but in popular usage, it's well-nigh obsolete (bazinga!).
I thought I'd start off another year the way I started the blog last March, with a word that I find charming or quaint, but that is not widely used. This time, the word is:
Nigh, literally "near," or "almost." With origins in Old English, this word is only used poetically nowadays, as the word "near" means virtually the same thing. but has come to have more versatility.
As an example of its poetic or lyrical sense, we still use the word whenever we sing the Christmas carol Away In a Manger: "...and stay by my cradle (or, side un) til morning is nigh," depending on which version you use.
As a kid, like many others, I used to sing this song in Sunday School, but would think, "Pssh! Silly writers! They mean "til morning is night - they've just left off the last letter!" Ah, the certainty of youth! Of course, "til morning is night" doesn't make any sense, since you're asking Jesus to stay with you through the night, not through the day. "Stay by my (whatever) til morning is near," is what it means; it just took many years (and lots of reading) for me to figure that out.
Well, nowadays, you might see the word as the answer in a crossword puzzle (which is what inspired me to write this post), but in popular usage, it's well-nigh obsolete (bazinga!).
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