With
a collection of songs that could kindly be described as interesting here
is Bowie demonstrating his early song writing talents. The vocals remind
you of Tony Newley (who had a number one with 'Would You Mind' in the early
sixties) and the subject matter varies from pop ditties (Love you till
tuesday, When I live my dream) to darker tales of suspected child abusers
(Little Bombardier) and transvestites (She's got medals). Probable favourite
is the Visconti produced 'Let me Sleep beside you' - rather dodgy opening
bars, but a strong song otherwise. The final track is a fledgling version
of Bowie's first hit 'Space Oddity'
The man who Sold the World Renowned for the LP cover featuring Mr. Bowie in a flowing dress reclining on a couch, this LP is worth a listen to hear the newly arrived Mick Ronson on guitar. The sound is much more rock and less folk than at Deram. The title track with its difficult to interpret lyrics stands out, and still appears on Bowie set lists to this day, reworked but still wonderful. Lulu had a hit with it in early '74, but I bought Alvin Stardust instead. 'After All' and 'All the madmen' deal with the paradox of apparent madness vs. genius
.Hunky Dory. Snapped up in vinyl in a second-hand record shop in Helsingborg this is a pristine, much cherished recording. The only track I don't like is 'Fill your heart' which wasn't a Bowie composition anyway. Bowie was to find 'Changes' tiresome as the years passed but it has worn well, as has 'Oh! You pretty things' taken into the charts by Peter Noone (of Herman's Hermits). Noone's single success secured a record contract for Bowie who hadn't been able to follow up 'Space Oddity' with anything that caught the public's imagination. Biggest fave has to be 'Bewley Brothers ... or perhaps the sad isolation of 'Life on Mars'
Santa Monica '72. For a long time this radio broadcast was only available as a bootleg but in 1994 MainMan released the recording officially, dedicating it to the late Mick Ronson. Here he is in all his glory, driving the Spiders on lead and bass, helping along with the vocals. On the Bowie front, the strong set list provides a glimpse of the height he had reached by 1972. 'Space Oddity' has a high wince factor as Bowie does the rocket launch bit with his voice alone! Several of the songs are accompanied only by acoustic guitar, the trusty 12-string providing a richer backdrop to the slightly reedy vocal. 'My death' works well, as does 'John I'm only dancing' - a record several American radio stations refused to play at the time because of its gay/erotic connotations. Laugh you may - it was serious stuff then. We're spared the tedious and later seemingly compulsory 'White light, white heat' of later live shows but 'Waiting for the man' is bearable. 'Jean genie' is here too, with Ronson pumping along on guitar. Bowie misses the lyrics on 'Rock 'n' Roll Suicide' and shakes it off with a little laugh. No big favourites here. It's not the same as being there of course, but not it's bad.
The Rise and Fall...'Hi I'm bi' he said, and Ziggy Stardust crashed into our newsagents and living rooms. Loved and reviled across the land, Ziggy's progress was to appear prophetic as the years passed and Bowie 'descended' into his own private hell. Often viewed as a 'concept' LP it isn't really, the songs don't seem to run chronologically and on its release there was no clear 'Starman' story to support it - that only came later as plans to film the story were made and later scrapped. Strangely for a 'best LP of all time' etc. etc. there is little weirdness and no rude words. Difficult to choose a fave here - 'Five Years' is well written, 'Starman' catchy, 'Ziggy Stardust' stood out from the rest at the time. My vinyl is from 1983
Aladdin Sane
Written
on tour in the USA you can glimpse the way things are going. There's masturbation,
oral sex and the wonderfully demented piano of Mike Garson to add
even more spice to the listening. 'Drive in Saturday' with its sad connotations,
the warmth of 'Lady Grinning Soul' - once again it's hard to choose but
if pushed I'd go for the title track - mainly for the sake of the piano.
Or maybe 'Jean Genie' because the lyrics are so richly descriptive of a
person Bowie must have met. My vinyl is from 1981 and is thus short on
original record's artwork.
Pin Ups Recorded as a 'break from Ziggy' here are some 60's hits rehashed. 'Sorrow' stands out on this otherwise weak offering. The CD re-release is much helped by the wonderful 'Amsterdam' - not a Bowie song but a performance to savour time and time again.
Diamond Dogs I think DD has more uncalculated moments of charm than 'The Rise and Fall...'. 'Sweet thing/Candidate' flow into 'Rebel Rebel' to provide many minutes of enjoyment. This is where you'll find my favourite lines too; 'I'm glad that you're older than me, makes me feel important and free, does that make you smile, isn't that me' and 'I make it thing ...to gazelle on stage' delivered no doubt with that ridiculous smirk followed by a disarming grin. Bowie was by now without his Spiders and Mick Ronson but the guitar bits, which he did himself, work well enough.
Young Americans Mmm. What does one say. The title track's okay, and there's 'Fame' of course but not much else really . Not for me anyway. There's lots to remind you of Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield etc. but the real thing was and still is better.
Station to Station Hell had arrived in LA in the form of cocaine, fascism and what Bowie later described as 'an unhealthy interest in the occult'. Clearly desperate but not clear enough to know what for, there are some telling songs, including 'Word on a Wing', 'Stay' and the incredible non-Bowie composition - an all time favourite of mine -'Wild is the Wind'. The opening track, a mammoth ten or so minutes long, starts well but degenerates to blandness half way through. Bowie waved to his fans with rather a stiff arm at Victoria Railway Station and the press caught a well defined nazi salute. Berlin was calling.
Low The high point on Low is and will always be 'Sound and Vision'. The tone is sad and vibrant, mourning and hopeful. The warm 'A new Career in a New town' with its punchy harmonica always reminds me of something else - I hope I find out what one day. I have to be in the right mood for the more experimental B-side and as a whole the LP doesn't really work for me. Jean Michelle Jarre's Oxygene was released about the same time and was much more accessible.
"Heroes"
There's
another high point here too, this time in the title track with its ironic
quotation marks. Banal everyday heroism, play acting to keep the real world
at bay. Berlin was both therapeutic and a disappointment for a man planning
films on Goebbels and expecting the decadence of 'Cabaret' and Isherwood.
From his flat above the car parts shop he saw how real people lived and
some would say it changed him. More strong tracks - 'Sons of the Silent
age' and the wandering instrumentals on the B-side have more to tell, more
images to capture. My favourite of the three records dubbed the Berlin
Trilogy
Lodger
Rather light and superficial in production Lodger was proof that Bowie was feeling better. Eno reportedly hated it. The threat of nuclear annihilation hovers in the opening track and its followed by some strange little numbers about travelling round the world, being a DJ and swinging boys. No big hits here but the sinister 'Repetition' saves the day, the violence of wife-abuse swirling sickeningly in the bass.
Scary Monsters...
Something had clearly happened to kick-start Bowie in to action again.
It was the first Bowie LP I owned and is perhaps the strongest Bowie offering
ever gathered on vinyl. For me rock had never rocked like this before
and the subject matter was worth sinking your teeth into: exploitation
of child workers, the media vultures (before paparazzi arrived), religion,
Bowie's past.... Not a bad track from beginning to end, 'Ashes to Ashes'
and the title track vie for No 1 here.
Let's Dance
Let's Dance made mega-bucks for the ex-cult artist and because of this its often derided by many (inc. Bowie himself). Nevertheless it's another good collection of songs, some co-written with friend and fellow detox survivor Iggy Pop. 'China Girl' probably wins here, but there are other little throw away gems like 'Shake it' and 'Without You' along with the single hits 'Modern Love' and 'Let's dance'. 'Ricochet' has a strange spoken vocal that reminds me of Dylan Thomas reciting poetry for the BBC.
ChangesOneBowie
(RCA
1983) More cashing in from RCA who by now had
lost their steady earner to EMI. Here I had 'Space oddity', 'John, I'm
only dancing', 'Jean Genie' and 'Changes' on one LP. I couldn't go wrong
really apart from the fact it was a poor pressing.
Golden Years (RCA1983) Another nice selection of tracks I didn't have at the time. 'Wild is the wind' (from Station to Station) wins hands down though, mainly for the performance. A close second is 'Look back in Anger' (from Lodger) which worked so well on the 1997 'Earthling' tour.
Tonight
Also much derided as the rushed follow-up/cashing-in record. Dead weird video to go with the strong opening track 'Loving the alien'. The A-side is wrecked by the truly awful 'God only Knows' - how you can do that to a song you claim to love I'll never know! There's an attempt at reggae which passes off reasonably well as does the duet with Tina Turner on yet another Pop collaboration 'Tonight' (Iggy's original lyrics about a girlfriend dying were dropped for this suitable for family consumption version.). The B-side spirals slowly to the horrendous 'Dancing with the big boys' (more Pop!) having shone slightly in the first three tracks. Choose a favourite? If I must it would be 'Loving the alien'
Never Let Me Down
Just when Bowie fans thought it couldn't get any worse it did. The A-side struggles after the loud 'Day-in, Day-out' and the B-side never really gets going, wrapped as it is in the cloying web of the 'Glass spider' and its silly spoken story line intro.
'Beat of your drum' is probably the best of a poorish bunch. You could tape it and forget the rest if taping wasn't against the copyright laws!
Tin Machine I
Some Bowie fans would like to deny the existence of Tin Machine but it is still out there in the 'sale' racks of diverse record stores. Putting little sticky labels to the effect 'featuring David Bowie' didn't seem to help sales much in Sweden, which is a pity really because this heavy pre-grunge grungey record is not all bad. 'Heaven's in here' has a Stray Cat strut feel to it and a few suggestive lines involving thighs, tongues etc. 'Tin Machine' storms angrily through modern life, kicking at politicians, traffic and Bowie's own lyrical impotence. Then the pace dwindles a bit before the illiteracy/impotence brought about by TV-addiction is dealt with in the anguished 'I can't read' where the line 'I can't read shit anymore' metamorphises into 'I can't reach it anymore'. The short but sweet 'Bus stop' asks whether a religious vision couldn't have resulted from blue cheese. 'Pretty thing' pulls few punches. It's too long by far and explicit in a most unsubtle way, but its rawness (combined with revealing lines like 'Tie you down, pretend you're Madonna') has an undeniable attraction.
Tin Machine II
He couldn't keep it up though. Everything that Tin Machine had going for it in 'I' was gone in 'II'. It tries hard to start with. 'Baby Universe' gets close and 'Stateside' has a nice bluesy feel to it but basically Bowie was flogging a dead horse making this. Having said that though, how then does a track like 'Mr.Ed' get shoved on as the final track, condemned to unfair oblivion. It's worth the whole LP for this. Once again if taping were legal....
Black Tie, White Noise
Bowie was turned down for the role of young Sinatra in the seventies -
Sinatra reportedly didn't want any 'English fag' playing him, but I suspect
Bowie must always have been a secret admirer. They share similar mannerisms
and appearance, Bowie wrote 'Life On Mars ' for Frankie and on the cover
of 'Black tie...' we could see Ole' blue eyes was back. Always a lover
of masks, the blue was from contact lenses. Mike Ronson had
a finally attack at the fret board before sadly dying of cancer and his
guitar prescence gives weight to the tracks. Lots of 'I'm in love for the
first time' stuff but all carried off adequately enough. The title track
is LA riot inspired and there are some hints of what was to come on 'Earthling'
in tracks like the remix of 'Jump' and 'Pallas Athena'. A couple of nice,
non-Bowie, ballads too in 'Don't let me down' and 'Miracle Goodnight'.
Things hit a temporary all time low in the wailing on Morrisey's 'I know
it's gonna happen..' but most CD's are programmable to avoid such jokes.
(I can't bring myself to believe its serious!) The single hit 'Jump' and
its video is an obvious winner though I'm quite partial to the wailing
middle-eastern sax on the instrumental 'The Wedding'.
Buddha of Suburbia
More hints of what was to come in a reworking of music written for the BBC production of the same name. The title track harks back to the good old days of youthful life in London and just when you think the good lyrics are back you get your ears pummelled with 'Sex and the Church' which is an interesting if rather repetitive chant. Other tracks that stand out are 'Dead against it' and 'Strangers when we meet' Also included - an unbelievably unfathomable insert in the cassette box, written by Bowie and criticising the dire state of art and music in some areas of the world today.
Outside 1.
'Nope' said the guy in the record shop' We ain't got it. Video's dead weird though, not like Bowie really'. He was half my age and clearly only saw Bowie as the tanned and fit guy in the 'Let's dance' video. But he was right in away - the video to 'Heart's filthy Lesson' was disturbing with its nightmarish clamminess and figures being sawn in half. The tracks on the CD are based around a story written by Bowie and first revealed in Q-Magazine. It's a sort of 'Who dunnit' with a 'did it happen?' twist that permits Bowie to be several different, often strange, characters all telling their part in the story. Quite how a song like 'Spaceboy' fits in will no doubt be revealed when Bowie sees fit, meanwhile you can enjoy its hearty pounding. There are lots of strong songs interspersed with little spoken pieces that move the story along or sideways. The title track is well sung, 'Oxford Town' has a very catchy riff, 'Thru' these Architects Eyes' and a reworked, more sinister 'Strangers When we Meet' closes a long and encaptivating LP that you can dip into or enjoy as a whole. For me 'I'm deranged' vies for first place with 'Heart's Filthy Lesson' with 'Spaceboy' and 'Oxford Town' closely behind.
Earthling
Well there was no doubt a lot of wincing that went on as lasers struck this CD. Bowie had dabbled musically with drum&bass artists and does his own version of the genre here. That it should have been a surprise move however is hard to understand as the signs were there back in 'Black Tie...'. Despite the fact many say Bowie can't (and shouldn't) dance most of the tracks work well. The 'Telling lies' version here is heavier than the Internet release that I preferred. 'Dead Man Walking' was a strong single, but the follow-up '7 years in Tibet' suffers from an overdose of Reeves Gabrels on guitar. 'I'm afraid of Americans' has a nice twist and stomps along in a most undanceable manner. Favourite is probably 'The Last thing you should do' mainly for the wonderful 'Yeah!'
Hours...
If you loved Earthling or were enthralled by Outside.1 'hours...' may leave you at a loss. A series of what can only be called ballads (á la Hunky Dory?) topped off with some more computerised efforts written to support a computer game (Omikron) make for an awkward first listen. It's not Hunky Dory though, nor is it like anything else Bowie has ever done though there are many similarities lurking in the musical wings. The first single, 'Thursday's child', (who according to the children's rhyme, had far to go) opens the album glancing back at a life full of work to very little effect but finally rewarded with what Bowie feels is a wonderful prize. The vocal in 'Something in the air' is strangled by anguish and tainted by echoes of 'Seven years in Tibet'. 'Survive' with its 60's Antony Newley vocals tells of a dogged determination not to go under despite betrayals. The first 4 minutes of 'If I'm dreaming my life' are okay but it grinds along for a total of more than 7 minutes. Just when you're about to press eject, the radio friendly 'Seven' opens with rich 12 string and a lovely guitar riff. Bowie has written some whistlable songs. 'What's really happening' is one I'll be programming out for the forseeable future. Not so 'The pretty things are going to hell' which is aggressive animal barely tethered by the interesting lyrics. Bowie let's 'bitch' become 'bit' in 'life's a bit' and twists the whole song into a secret smile. 'New angels of Promise' leans on Outside and plods into a short but sweet instrumental - 'Brilliant Adventure' which is another Moss Garden in Berlin. 'The Dreamers' closes the album by opening with the tinkling bells we already heard in 'If I'm dreaming..' My favourites? 'Survive' and 'The pretty things...'
Heathen
The CD cover reminds me of A-level art, alien eyes rolled to the heavens, a glimpse of a classy tweedy jacket. The innards of the 'Special addition' held pics of defaced medieval art and frustrated writers. What had Tony Visconti and Bowie have come up with this time? 'Slow burn' - the first single didn't do much for me or record buyers generally even though Pete Townsend does a good job on guitar. The opening track 'Sunday' is suitably Bowie-weird, lifted by the crashing guitar at the end. 'Cactus' (written by Pixies Black Frances) takes us back to the best of 'Tin Machine' with the rather sensual idea of sending soiled (female) clothing to a prisoner. But unfortunately the next three tracks 'Slip Away', 'Slow Burn' and 'Afraid' are only just okay and when I get to the Neil Young track 'I've been waiting for you' with David Grohl on guitar I reach for the skip button on the CD remote.
But don't skip to far or you'll miss 'I would be your slave'. In love, frightened of being laughed at, Bowie is back on top form. It almost holds as he winks and smirks his way through the Legendary Stardust Cowboy's 'I took a trip on a Gemini Spaceship' - a little thank you for the source of Ziggy's surname. Continued improvement in '5.15 the angels have gone' - restrained, wistful changing trains in the rain, an inevitable goodbye. 'Everyone says 'Hi'' is lyrically back to Deram days and Hunky Dory, but without the jokeyness. Is it the letter to the Kooks kid who has left home? I'm not sure the songs fits in with the rest of the album but it's not 'skip' material. 'A Better Future' is a prayer for life, for the future, for sunny skies for the children, for taking away a sense of fear. Social comment echoes from 'Scary monsters', but more earnest .. 'from factory to field, how many tears must fall'. A big favourite. The title track is saved for last and does not disappoint. Perfect Bowie construction, tension, picture lyrics, emotion catching in the throat. Bliss!
If it was a vinyl LP I'd play the B-side much more than the A-side, even though it would mean missing 'Cactus'. In an ideal world I'd play it in reverse order too!
The bonus CD carries a Moby re-mix of Sunday (ok), a slightly mad Air remix of 'I deserve..', a1979 outtake of Panic in Detroit and the lovely, sad 'Conversation piece'. Written in 1969, David is living above a grocer's, his only conversation is with the immigrant owner, and he 'can't see the rain for the tears'. Sob!