10 x "BAD" (but actually good) DAVID BOWIE SONGS THAT THIS VERY BAD DAVID BOWIE FAN NEVER REALLY LISTENED TO BEFORE
Can I really be a big David Bowie fan if I've only bothered with half of his albums? Here's my selection of the dame's best work, from the "Phil Collins years" onwards
I love David Bowie. Really I do. If anyone asks me to name my favourite artists, I’ll inevitably name check the Thin White Duke near the top of the list. (Along with Prince, Joni, Steely Dan etc.) I’ve loved the Dame from the day I first heard the haunting cello intro of “Sorrow” playing on my friend’s Boots music centre when I was 12 years old. Since I caught him doing Space Oddity on Top of the Pops and, later, Heroes on Marc Bolan’s tv show.
I went out and bought all his records - from The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups and Diamond Dogs. It was extra exciting for a boy from Hull because Bowie’s old band, the Spiders, - Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder, Woody Woodmansey et al - were from Hull also. Wow!
When I was older, Bowie dropped the band and entered his extraordinary, imperial phase; Young Americans (my favourite) Station to Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). With each decade my love deepened.
Then, Let’s Dance happened. Oh dear.
Yes, a big hit with its stomping, soaring, vocal-frying title track, but the rest of the long player sounded, kinda cheap, shiny, phoned in and…really normal. Bowie was bigger than ever but I was about to bail.
The Serious Moonlight tour and the cringingly bad Glass Spider shows followed. Naff production. Some terrible clothes and regrettable hair choices too. And like a mean girl dumping her boyfriend on a whim and a better offer (mainly Prince, in my case) I pretty much gave up on David after that.
Albums kept coming, reviews got worse and worse, art direction and styling deteriorated. There were many so-called ”return to form” records, even a four piece band (Tin Machine) with Bowie humbling himself to the position of “singer” in a back to basics, hard rockin’ democracy. But the magic, the far out / freak out otherness had gone. Normal David Bowie wasn’t for me any more. After a while, I didn’t even bother listening.
After the love had gone, I saw him play live twice. Once on the Sound+Vision tour in 1990, when, I kid you not, the audience could vote for the songs Bowie would play via a premium rate phone line 1-900-2-BOWIE-90. The show was so flat and depressing that I walked out before the end. Then again in 1997 at the tiny, Hanover Grand club in Mayfair, London when Bowie did a couple of shows as a warm up for his Earthling Tour, playing a string of classics first (and sounding fabulous) followed by a sonically trying and very loud, drum n bass set. I resisted the temptation to walk out on Bowie for a second time and I felt bad for being such a fake and fair weather fan. Really, I should’ve told David, that very night, how I was truly sorry but we’d just drifted apart. That we wanted different things. Yes, us pop kids are mean and fickle like that.
Decades on, with Bowie now gone and two rather good, final records as his legacy, I find myself asking an important question. What sort of Bowie fan was / am I? Can I even call myself a true Bowie devotee if I have only heard about HALF of his output, and not even considered 10 or eleven of the post-Berlin LPs?
(btw Even Bowie wasn’t a fan of much of his own stuff from the mid 1980s. referring to the period that produced critically battered albums like Tonight (1984) and Never Let Me Down (1987) as his "Phil Collins years".)
My ignorance and lazy, pig-headed dismissiveness started to bug me. The dozen or more albums - after Let’s Dance and before The Next Day and Black Star - that I never got to hear properly, couldn’t be all bad, right? I decided to go back and listen. Without prejudice. In order. Without tonsorial and sartorial judgement. It would be my own sound and revision project. I’d even lend my ears to the clunky “Never Let Me Down” album with that truly abysmal track that featured a “rap” from Mickey Rourke.
During long, and sometimes arduous, listening sessions, I discovered, as I’d feared, some truly terrible music. How could the man who gave his adoring audience “Heroes” follow it up with the godawful “Zeroes”? How did he get from the edgy, pop art of “Lady Grinning Soul” to “Too Dizzy” a song that sounds like Shakin’ Stevens produced by Bob Clearmountain?
But I also found some really good stuff.
Here’s my pick of 10 excellent songs from Bowie’s “Phil Collins years” of the 1980s and 90s, right up to his actual, genuine “return to form” days in the 21st century.
Warning, this list contains traces of “Tin Machine.”
Jump They Say is from the “Black Tie White Noise” album which was produced by Nile Rodgers (many years after the global success of the Let’s Dance LP). Jagged, jerky, urgent and compelling, Bowie’s sax wails like a siren. He looks pretty damn fine in a suit, of course.
The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell Written and sung by Bowie but mostly Reeves Gabrels’ wow-wowing / hyper-phasing guitar. Referencing both Bowie’s “Oh! You Pretty Things” and "Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell" by Gabrels’ old mucker Iggy Pop, the lyrics of this ballsy, glam rocker concern mortality and age and, quite possibly…drugs.
“I am the dragon, I am the drug
I am the best jazz you've ever heard
I am the dragon, I am the sky
I am the blood at the corner of your eye
I find the secrets, I find the gold
I find you out before you grow old”
Loving The Alien Big song. Huge show-tune chorus. Bowie’s voice at his most heartfelt and cinematic. David claimed that the demo of this one was much better and we’ll have to take his word for that (it is nowhere to be found on youtube). That said, the weak, bland and covers-heavy Tonight album, which begins with this tune, is an absolute stinker.
Under The God Bowie decided he wanted to be in a group like The Pixies or Nirvana so he formed Tin Machine with his old mates from the Iggy’s band, circa The Idiot. Incredibly, Tin Machine made THREE albums and toured extensively. Under The God is the by far the best tune on their set list.
Hallo, Space Boy Slamming techno rock sound with vocal contributions from the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant. The classic Bowie trick of self-referential themes and lyrics (‘ground control’ and ‘Major Tom’ get a mention), looking back to go forward. Banger. (There’s a bonkers live version on youtube, Bowie singing with the Foo Fighters.)
I’m Afraid of Americans. Young Americans, This is Not America…I’m Afraid of Americans. This was Bowie’s drum n bass n goatee beard experiment, its creepy, stalker-ish, twisted and metallic distortion created by Brian Eno with remixes by Trent Reznor. And I totally ignored it on first release in 1997. (btw Bowie also performed Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” in 2001)
Time Will Crawl The video for this Chernobyl disaster-inspired, top forty hit finds Bowie at his most Zzavid* (and most “Glass Spider” too). Lots of experimental theatre group larks, expressive dancing, miming and pretending to lose his balance / be a blind man etc. Driving, urgent, poetic…and doomy, it was originally called "How We War". An alternative, 2018 Remaster version is less bright, bouncy and a bit better. (*tm Adam Buxton)
Stars (Are Out Tonight) A bonafide return to form! at 66 years old! A cynical look at celebrity - “Bridget, Jack, and Kate and Brad” etc - that is fierce, tense, self aware and sarcastic. It’s also the sound of Bowie back with Tony Visconti. Gerry Leonard plays guitar (I always thought it was Earl Slick)
Everyone Says Hi With the exception of Letter To Hermione, Bowie wasn’t big on love songs. This one sounds like a tritely-phrased but meaningful message to a former flame (a bit like Carly Simon’s Coming Around Again) but it was actually written for guitarist and friend Reeves Gabrels…who cried when he first heard it.
Thursday’s Child is not about Bowie (who was born on a Wednesday) but inspired by Eartha Kitt’s autobiography, also called Thursday’s Child. It is sweet and melancholy. And maybe the beginning of a goodbye.
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