R.I.P. David Bowie / Playlist 12

David Bowie, c.1977

You don’t need me to tell you about the cultural significance of David Bowie now, do you?  News of his death landed with a resounding, global thud, on Monday morning and, doubtless, there will have been numerous obituaries, tributes and career surveys in all areas of the media, by the time you read this.

I won’t pretend to have played too much of his music in recent years, but it occurs to me that his is a name I’ve referred to more than once on here.  I’m sure that’s mostly because his hey-day, and indeed - his most groundbreaking work, coincided with my own formative years in the early to mid 70s.  At a time when being ‘a bit weird’ loomed much larger in the popular zeitgeist than today, Bowie still managed to project an even more alien presence than most of his contemporaries.

David Bowie, c.1972

There always appeared to be a self-conscious element of ‘Art’ in Bowie’s practice, and a willingness to embrace synthesis and artifice that, I suppose, made him a variety of Post Modernist, before most of us had even heard the term.  Like most ‘great’ artists, he also had a keen eye for the best ideas to steal and the most able supporting talent to co-opt.  Being apparently unembarrassed by default, and possessing a physical presence that suggested he might have actually beamed down from another planet, didn’t exactly hurt either.  Behind all that, lest we forget, also lay an ability to write relatively simple but eminently memorable tunes.

Anyway, instead of reiterating a load of standard interpretations that you’ll have heard repeatedly elsewhere, the most fitting tribute would seem to be to compile a playlist of Bowie pieces that made the greatest impression on me over the years.  I’ve chosen to overlook the various embarrassing mis-steps and dodgy collaborations with which his career was also littered, although I do harbor a secret affection for ‘The Laughing Gnome’.  It seems more respectful to simply remember that when he was good, - he was really very good.

‘Memory Of A Free Festival’:

After several attempts to forge a Pop career throughout the 60s, (originally, as Davey Jones), Bowie finally made his breakthrough with the single ‘Space Oddity’ in 1969.  The album of the same name is a charming, slightly naive hotch-potch that feels rather like a wistful farewell to the already receding 60s love-in.  This is particularly true of the album’s final track, - capturing, as it does, a memory of the Beckenham Free Music Festival that Bowie had helped to organise earlier that year.

It’s pretty dated, idealistic stuff, but I like the wavering harmonium-like keyboards that bathe the first half of the song with a sense of sun-dappled, psychedelic melancholia, and the closing, sing-along chant that evokes the attempted communality of the age.  Most memorably, Bowie signals his ability to combine the knowing and the emotional, in the lines,

“We claimed the very source of joy ran through, - it didn’t, but it seemed that way.

I kissed a lot of people that day.”

‘Hunky Dory’:

My first thought was ‘Life On Mars’.  My second thought was that just seemed far too obvious, despite the memorable impression that single made on me at the age of 10.  My third thought was that, actually, the whole album that includes it is pretty indispensable.  Released in 1971, it is, I suppose, Bowie’s first fully mature album, and one without a single bum track.  It may also be Bowie’s most emotionally honest and personally direct offering.

There’s nothing especially sophisticated about these tunes, and not a little whimsy, but everything feels properly resolved, and is rendered with disarming sincerity.  Pleasingly, there’s still room for a couple of strange bits, - just to keep things still moving forwards.  I’ve heard ‘Hunky Dory’ a million times, but have never worn it out.

‘Drive-In Saturday’:

‘

The Aladdin Sane’ album probably felt like a slightly less significant, second Glam missive from Bowie’s ‘Ziggy Stardust’ persona, in 1973.  It does contain a couple of genuinely weirder moments than it’s more famous precursor however, and a truly memorable, iconic cover image that captivated me, long before I actually heard the record, some years later.

This is my favourite track on the album, combining as it does, a brand of faux 50s nostalgia, typical of the age, with an anthemic chorus, (that gets me every time), filtered through a slightly eerie SF sensibility. 

‘Young Americans’:

The ‘Young Americans’ album may not be Bowie’s most consistent, but it did unleash a couple of stunning singles, (of which this is one), and ushered in Bowie’s ‘Plastic Soul’ era.  The track exhibits an insouciant, loose-limbed funk, punctuated by well-judged stop-start junctures, and an appealingly breathless vocal delivery.

‘Golden Years’:

I can’t really split this and ‘Young Americans’.  If forced to choose therefore, I would actually have to plump for another of his great Plastic Soul moments, ‘Fame’, - but I’ve already mentioned that in a recent post.  I find it frustratingly difficult to dance to anything much these days, but, in the past, - when I genuinely enjoyed doing so,‘Golden Years’ would always pull me onto a dance floor.

‘Stay’:

By 1976, Bowie was reputedly lost in heavy-duty cocaine addiction and a paranoid psychic prison of his own making.  It’s therefore surprising that he could still put out an album as satisfying and committed as ‘Station To Station’, - the piece most closely associated with his vampiric, ‘Thin White Duke’ identity.  His situation may have left him a little short of original material, but he was surrounded by top-notch session musicians and was clever enough to let them stretch out over some involving, extended cuts.  Indeed, in terms of pure musicianship, the album may actually be Bowie’s most satisfying.  I love the title track, but rate this even higher, not least for the twin guitar threat of Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick, and Bowie’s simultaneously mannered and soulful vocal.

‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’:

Still From: 'The Man Who Fell To Earth', (Dir. Nicholas Roeg), British Lion Films, 1976

The lead rôle, of extra-terrestrial, Thomas Newton, in Nicholas Roeg’s properly strange 1976 SF movie, was ideally suited to Bowie’s stilted, emotionally disengaged acting ‘style’.  He may not have been a natural, - but sometimes a lack of conventional skill is exactly what’s needed.  Anyway, we were already used to thinking of Bowie as an etiolated, otherworldly figure.

Perhaps what really makes the project so enduringly resonant is the correspondence between Bowie’s own personal circumstances (as mentioned above), and the plight of his character, - trapped in an increasingly degrading alien context, as his family die on their drought-ravaged home planet.  Either way, - and despite its flaws, ‘TMWFTE’ is a memorable piece, not least because of Bowie’s presence on screen.  Like all the best SF, it is ultimately about the human condition.

‘Low’:

Bowie Makes The Most Of A Great Profile

Another case where only the whole album will really do.  In fact, ‘Low’ is probably my favourite piece of Bowie’s, - taken as a complete statement.  In reality, it should probably be co-credited to Brian Eno, who was at least as responsible for its overall aesthetic.  Bowie may have been painfully short of original lyrical content, but again, he made a fantastic choice when it came to the supporting cast.

Having relocated to Berlin, it is famously the first of three albums that Bowie shaped with Eno (and producer, Tony Visconti), - and is often regarded amongst the pinnacles of his achievements.  It exhibits a distinct Mittel-European flavour, and is suffused with Krautrock-inflected electronics and metronomic percussion.  The first side of the original LP features a series of strange, emotionally distanced songs, whilst the second half is an instrumental suite, shot through with Eno’s trademark ambiences, to brilliant, cinematic effect.

‘"Heroes"’ (Album: Side 2):

(L - R): Guitarist Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, Bowie, Hansa Studio By The Wall, West Berlin, 1977

The second Berlin album is an even darker, slightly more abrasive, - but almost equally powerful statement.  Unfortunately, its memorable title track turns out to have been too thinly-veiled a theft of an existing Neu! song to ever really hear the same way again, and slightly unbalances the rest of the album as an obvious stand-out single.

The second half follows a similar, largely instrumental pattern to ‘Low’s’, - evoking, if anything, an even more sombre mood.  It’s easy to forget that the Berlin Wall still stood, (in sight of the recording studio), when these albums were recorded, and Eno’s instrumental suite here is shot through with Cold War gloom.  As a teenager, I repeatedly drew bleak, semi-abstracted scenes of post-industrial dereliction to this soundtrack.  Nothing really changes.

‘Modern Love’:

Bowie Dips A Toe Into The Mainstream, 1983, (Blondes Have More Funds). 

This is pretty much where I started to lose my real enthusiasm for Bowie’s music, - as he moved into the 1980s with the mainsteam commercial success of his ‘Let’s Dance’ album.  The album’s title said it all really, as the uncannily prescient Bowie recognised that the future lay in bright, shiny production values and less nuanced lyrical themes.  The weird alien and louche aristocratic personas that had served him so well, seemed suddenly less appropriate, and it was time to put on a big, pastel-coloured suit and make uncomplicated, good-time music.

For all that, I'm always happy to hear this.  It may be far less knowing than his mid-70s synthetic Funk and Soul excursions, but it's well put together, (with co-production from Nile Rogers), and positively swings.  It's on its toes from moment one, never lets up, and is hard not to love, - just for being what it is.

Postscript:

Since I began writing this post, reports have emerged that David Bowie underwent an 18-month struggle with the liver cancer that killed him.  It also appears that his final album, 'Black Star', released just days ago, may have even been part of a strategy to manage his own death as a kind of final art statement.  Never one to miss a trick, if so, - Mr. Jones.