Your Radio 4 Great Lives on David Bowie is one of my favourite episodes amongst a series which sits discreetly in the schedules but is an absolute gem. Check it out on Sounds in the archive.
My first encounter with the music of David Bowie was the video for 'Let's Dance,' which I saw on Top of the Pops. The song was number one in the United Kingdom for three weeks. The video was one of those formative cultural experiences, where you know instinctively that there is more going on than your child's mind can grasp – a world that exists beyond the slender reach of your understanding. In the same way, I could just about fathom that 'House of Fun' by Madness (one of the few songs ever penned to focus on the social embarrassment of purchasing condoms for the first time) wasn't actually about hi-jinks at a fairground.
I was fascinated by the aboriginal couple in the video for 'Let's Dance', for whom a pair of red shoes initially exert an exotic allure, but later become synonymous with the city on the horizon that both exploits and oppresses them. By the end of the song, the shoes are a malign talisman to be stamped on and kicked around in the dust.
I asked my mother what the video was about. She told me that it was about racism. In hindsight, I think that it's more complex than that.
The eighties were a very strange time for Bowie. His mystique was on the wane, but he was probably more popular than he ever had been at any point in his career. The 'Let's Dance' album sold phenomenally. The two albums that came after ('Tonight' and 'Never Let Me Down'), which are regarded as among his worst, both went platinum. Strangely, in my opinion at least, his best songs from this period appeared on the soundtrack to the film Labyrinth, when he was unburdened of the pressure of being David Bowie. He could be someone else. He could be Jareth, the Goblin King with the spiked, lion's mane hairdo. The film yielded 'Magic Dance' – a bouncy, spirited back and forth between Jareth and his goblin minions. There's a song called 'Chilly Down' which Bowie wrote but didn't perform, where the easy-going Caribbean lilt of the music is unsettled by lyrics that hint at sexual coercion. My interpretation might be coloured by the way that it was used in the film: As an accompaniment to a disturbing scene where a 16-year-old Jennifer Connelly is harassed by freaky-puppets who are capable of removing their own heads, and who are very keen to remove her head as well.
By the late 1980s, Bowie could have added 'soulful gravitas' to the section on his CV where actors list the accents they have mastered. His other two offerings on the Labyrinth soundtrack are a pair of earnest ballads: 'As The World Falls Down' and 'Underground'; the latter elevated by that very distinct, booming, back of the throat vocal, that was the hallmark of the David Bowie of this era.
After the nadir of 'Never Let Me Down', Bowie attempted to recover his mojo as the frontman of a band called Tin Machine. I think that part of him would have liked to have been a performer in the vein of Iggy Pop, but indestructible warrior-poets of that stripe are born rather than made.
'Black Tie White Noise' is where it felt like Bowie was putting himself back together. It wasn't entirely coherent but he at least came across as re-energised. He delivered a cover version of Nite Flights – one of four Scott Walker offerings to grace the final Walker Brothers album; an interesting choice of song, given a new funked-up direction by Bowie and Chic's Nile Rogers. Scott Walker, for all his talents as an existential songwriter, never really had it in him to bring the funk.
The Buddha of Suburbia album strikes me as Bowie reconnecting with his origins, along with the more artistic side of his nature. I suppose that you could draw a comparison between this record and the Labyrinth soundtrack, in that it is tangibly related to someone else's project and perhaps that freed him creatively.
These past weeks I have been rebuilding my Musicbee database which has been corrupted through my own dumb actions. I have been cleaning up the broken links and dragging hundreds of files from one dialogue box into another. It is slow and tedious work, but necessary if I want to listen to music on my PC.
Along the way, I made a re-acquaitance with Billy Idol's 'Cyberpunk' album – a sprawling conceptual record that marks a dramatic shift in style from rock cabaret towards dystopian electronic soundscapes. It was a critical and commercial flop that almost tanked his career. Despite the derision that greeted the album upon release, parts of it have aged very well and even feel contemporary. It's hard work for sure, but interesting. For example, the last three minutes of 'Adam In Chains', once you get past the interminable self-hypnosis tape intro, are recognisable as Billy Idol but in a new and unexpected guise, at the helm of a somnambulant ballad with electronic stopwatch percussion that reminds me of Propaganda's 'Dream Within A Dream'.
My theory is that Idol – a man who, prior to the release of 'Cyberpunk', never encountered a problem that he couldn't solve by yowling at it like a Californian mountain lion – would have been given an easier ride by the critics if he had recorded the album in German. They would have called it a sci-fi masterpiece and hailed its creator as the Tarkovsky of punk.
David Jones sent that song to me as well as you that "HOME ECOnomics shall be good enough " the song " If i never live to see those English evergreens" Reads: those wild ewes, noo yews, it is nothing to me. To be thrust forward as impressario, the same thing is to meet a porcupine in the woods and regret not speaking " I salute you sir?" But really my eyes communicated awesome terriblita of respect. Maybe Bowie's song was the Satyricon or some other Roman ancient Daphnis and Chloe that helped him to produce, produce 3x's where Bob Dylan married 4 or 5 times? Your household taxes.........i will try to send Buy Me A Coffee coins
I loved your Beatles piece last week, and this one carries on the music influences beautifully with a very insightful and fascinating discussion and intimate look at Bowie and his process. His dedication to art and reinvention has always stood out to me. He really worked hard. I love how you have woven together music and writing too. I do believe that writing is about rhythm and sound and is essentially a form of musical expression - of course, it once was. You can tell if it is working by reading writing aloud. Though most of us are best at one form, that's not always true. We create a lot of false barriers between art forms that I don't think serve the artistic impulse. Popular music has dominated our era - I'm the same age roughly as you - but writers are increasingly visible in mainstream culture, more now with the ubiquity of multimedia, book tours, and celebrity culture.
Does this have to be your final piece on music???
Really enjoyed reading this. Loved the In My Own Words documentary screened the other night as well.
I can’t bear that this is ‘the last’ of your music series - hopefully there will be more soon - it’s a joy
Your Radio 4 Great Lives on David Bowie is one of my favourite episodes amongst a series which sits discreetly in the schedules but is an absolute gem. Check it out on Sounds in the archive.
My first encounter with the music of David Bowie was the video for 'Let's Dance,' which I saw on Top of the Pops. The song was number one in the United Kingdom for three weeks. The video was one of those formative cultural experiences, where you know instinctively that there is more going on than your child's mind can grasp – a world that exists beyond the slender reach of your understanding. In the same way, I could just about fathom that 'House of Fun' by Madness (one of the few songs ever penned to focus on the social embarrassment of purchasing condoms for the first time) wasn't actually about hi-jinks at a fairground.
I was fascinated by the aboriginal couple in the video for 'Let's Dance', for whom a pair of red shoes initially exert an exotic allure, but later become synonymous with the city on the horizon that both exploits and oppresses them. By the end of the song, the shoes are a malign talisman to be stamped on and kicked around in the dust.
I asked my mother what the video was about. She told me that it was about racism. In hindsight, I think that it's more complex than that.
The eighties were a very strange time for Bowie. His mystique was on the wane, but he was probably more popular than he ever had been at any point in his career. The 'Let's Dance' album sold phenomenally. The two albums that came after ('Tonight' and 'Never Let Me Down'), which are regarded as among his worst, both went platinum. Strangely, in my opinion at least, his best songs from this period appeared on the soundtrack to the film Labyrinth, when he was unburdened of the pressure of being David Bowie. He could be someone else. He could be Jareth, the Goblin King with the spiked, lion's mane hairdo. The film yielded 'Magic Dance' – a bouncy, spirited back and forth between Jareth and his goblin minions. There's a song called 'Chilly Down' which Bowie wrote but didn't perform, where the easy-going Caribbean lilt of the music is unsettled by lyrics that hint at sexual coercion. My interpretation might be coloured by the way that it was used in the film: As an accompaniment to a disturbing scene where a 16-year-old Jennifer Connelly is harassed by freaky-puppets who are capable of removing their own heads, and who are very keen to remove her head as well.
By the late 1980s, Bowie could have added 'soulful gravitas' to the section on his CV where actors list the accents they have mastered. His other two offerings on the Labyrinth soundtrack are a pair of earnest ballads: 'As The World Falls Down' and 'Underground'; the latter elevated by that very distinct, booming, back of the throat vocal, that was the hallmark of the David Bowie of this era.
After the nadir of 'Never Let Me Down', Bowie attempted to recover his mojo as the frontman of a band called Tin Machine. I think that part of him would have liked to have been a performer in the vein of Iggy Pop, but indestructible warrior-poets of that stripe are born rather than made.
'Black Tie White Noise' is where it felt like Bowie was putting himself back together. It wasn't entirely coherent but he at least came across as re-energised. He delivered a cover version of Nite Flights – one of four Scott Walker offerings to grace the final Walker Brothers album; an interesting choice of song, given a new funked-up direction by Bowie and Chic's Nile Rogers. Scott Walker, for all his talents as an existential songwriter, never really had it in him to bring the funk.
The Buddha of Suburbia album strikes me as Bowie reconnecting with his origins, along with the more artistic side of his nature. I suppose that you could draw a comparison between this record and the Labyrinth soundtrack, in that it is tangibly related to someone else's project and perhaps that freed him creatively.
These past weeks I have been rebuilding my Musicbee database which has been corrupted through my own dumb actions. I have been cleaning up the broken links and dragging hundreds of files from one dialogue box into another. It is slow and tedious work, but necessary if I want to listen to music on my PC.
Along the way, I made a re-acquaitance with Billy Idol's 'Cyberpunk' album – a sprawling conceptual record that marks a dramatic shift in style from rock cabaret towards dystopian electronic soundscapes. It was a critical and commercial flop that almost tanked his career. Despite the derision that greeted the album upon release, parts of it have aged very well and even feel contemporary. It's hard work for sure, but interesting. For example, the last three minutes of 'Adam In Chains', once you get past the interminable self-hypnosis tape intro, are recognisable as Billy Idol but in a new and unexpected guise, at the helm of a somnambulant ballad with electronic stopwatch percussion that reminds me of Propaganda's 'Dream Within A Dream'.
My theory is that Idol – a man who, prior to the release of 'Cyberpunk', never encountered a problem that he couldn't solve by yowling at it like a Californian mountain lion – would have been given an easier ride by the critics if he had recorded the album in German. They would have called it a sci-fi masterpiece and hailed its creator as the Tarkovsky of punk.
I really loved Tin Machine and Billy Idol still writes very good songs.
Fascinating, ‘real life’ descriptions ! We were all so young!! Thank you Hanif ~ So many gifts you bring !
David Jones sent that song to me as well as you that "HOME ECOnomics shall be good enough " the song " If i never live to see those English evergreens" Reads: those wild ewes, noo yews, it is nothing to me. To be thrust forward as impressario, the same thing is to meet a porcupine in the woods and regret not speaking " I salute you sir?" But really my eyes communicated awesome terriblita of respect. Maybe Bowie's song was the Satyricon or some other Roman ancient Daphnis and Chloe that helped him to produce, produce 3x's where Bob Dylan married 4 or 5 times? Your household taxes.........i will try to send Buy Me A Coffee coins
I loved your Beatles piece last week, and this one carries on the music influences beautifully with a very insightful and fascinating discussion and intimate look at Bowie and his process. His dedication to art and reinvention has always stood out to me. He really worked hard. I love how you have woven together music and writing too. I do believe that writing is about rhythm and sound and is essentially a form of musical expression - of course, it once was. You can tell if it is working by reading writing aloud. Though most of us are best at one form, that's not always true. We create a lot of false barriers between art forms that I don't think serve the artistic impulse. Popular music has dominated our era - I'm the same age roughly as you - but writers are increasingly visible in mainstream culture, more now with the ubiquity of multimedia, book tours, and celebrity culture.
I’ll read again this evening and be thrilled all over again !
Please write another book that draws upon your experiences growing up in Bromley. You must have a whole host of stories re the Bromley Contingent.
Great snippet insights into such an unusual world.
You so make the era come alive again in my memory. Was that the beginning of your friendship with Salman Rushdie he mentioned in Knife?
A terrific read, so funny and engaging, loved every sentence.
Very nice!
The documentary was also very illuminating, do some more ? ? Xx
I enjoyed this piece immensely Hanif ! Thank you xxxx
Another slice of life from the center of the universe! Thank you Hanif