Tiggerlion on Aladdin Sane by David Bowie
On the 13th of April 1973, Ziggy Stardust, battered and bruised in the middle of a long tour, morphed into Aladdin Sane.
Watch That Man isn’t a portent of doom like Five Years. It’s a kind of hell in the present, a typical rock & roll party. Earth may no longer be dying but the drugs are bad, the tables are scattered with cocaine and champagne bottles, the men are creepy, a reverend is dancing on his knees, reminiscent of the cop kneeling to kiss the feet of a priest, and the music is so loud it’s difficult to hear any conversation. Mick Ronson’s guitars assail the ears from both sides, Woody Woodmansey’s drums clatter noisily and the new Spider, Mike Garson, on piano, is constantly trying to get a word in. The mix is dark and murky because everyone is smoking and the light bulbs are dim. At least the girls are beautiful. Linda Lewis and Juanita ‘Honey’ Franklin sound so fabulous they must be wearing short skirts and thigh length boots, still fashionable in 1973. It’s a strain to make out Bowie’s vocal because, for once, he isn’t the centre of attention. Someone else is working the room better than he is. David Bowie is out-postured and ends up running into the street in a state of panic. The planet suddenly seemed smaller, more self-absorbed.
Aladdin Sane, the album, presents a corruption of Ziggy Stardust, one damaged, distorted and deranged by real life experiences. The fey, bisexual, vulnerable megastar beefed up, becoming more robust but still willing to experiment. Most Glam Rock acts started out as Rock and added some Glam, apart from Marc Bolan and David Bowie who both went in the other direction. Aladdin Sane is the point when Ziggy’s undoubted glamour became more Rock. Whereas The Rise And Fall has an over-arching consistency of time and place, these ten songs are individual, separate pieces that create their own microcosm populated by different types of strange creatures with their own narratives and back stories, full of wry observations and witty comments, obsessed with tiny details. On the record label, each of them is given a place name signifying where it was written. However, they hang together as a whole providing glimpses of a hungover, debauched, hedonistic world where the normal rules no longer apply, glimpses mainly snatched from the windows of a tour bus as it made its way round America, a long way from home.
The real despair lies in track two. Mike Garson’s audition lasted just eight seconds and the title track demonstrates why. Inspired by Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, Bowie wrote the song on the R.H.M.S. Ellinis in the middle of the Atlantic. It was one of the first he recorded with Garson. It’s an epitaph for a lost generation in a future nuclear holocaust. The tune, a slight based on On Broadway, is merely a platform for Garson’s forty-five bar piano solo. It’s dramatic, imposing, dissonant. Beginning in chaos, it becomes wistful and romantic, then aggressive and churning until it melds with Bowie’s own saxophones and returns to Earth by surrendering and joining in with Trevor Bolder’s relentless bassline. His stunning playing adds another dimension to The Spiders, allowing Bowie to indulge his true love, theatre, on the adolescent angst of Time (New Orleans) and the seductive Bond Theme-styled Lady Grinning Soul (London). When Garson was absent, Mick Ronson took the opportunity to crank up the filth in his dirty riffs: Cracked Actor (Los Angeles) is grotesque rather than Glam, Panic In Detroit (Detroit) and Jean Genie (Detroit and New York) riotous and raw variations on Bo Diddley. The contrast lives up to the split personality at the heart of the album.
If Ziggy was fashioned on Marc Bolan and Jimi Hendrix, Aladdin is Mick Jagger cross-dressing as Marlene Dietrich backed by The Stooges. Watch That Man’s muddy mix is culled from Exile On Main Street, Jagger is name-checked on Drive-In Saturday and the subject of Lady Grinning Soul is reputedly the same as Brown Sugar, Claudia Lennear. Cracked Actor’s lewd double entendres, louche guitar and coarse harmonica could have been written for Goats Head Soup. Ronson and Garson trade insults on the revved up cover of Let’s Spend The Night Together, a knee-trembler in a back alley rather than a callow invitation to an entire night of frolics, with Bowie having one eye on his next conquest. This is true of the album as a whole. There are some glimmers of the past but Aladdin Sane looks to the future beyond Ziggy, beyond The Spiders, beyond Mars. Herein lies the DNA for the Rock & Roll of Pin Ups, the dystopia of Hunger City, the faded Hollywood glamour of David Live, the sweet Soul of Young Americans, and and the beginnings of an American adventure.
The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars had ensconced itself in the album chart for the long term, peaking at number five in the UK, but its related singles fared less well. Starman just skimmed the top ten. John, I’m Only Dancing managed number twelve. Aladdin Sane’s singles were big hits, putting Bowie in the top three, a position he enjoyed regularly for years to come. The Jean Genie is almost a homage to Iggy. It’s as reverent an act of hero worship as Queen Bitch on Hunky Dory is to The Velvet Underground. Of course there are some feints and curve balls in the lyrics but Bowie had spent a day mixing Raw Power just before starting on Aladdin Sane, so his ears were ringing. The Stooges’ eccentric brutality seeps in mostly via Mick Ronson’s lurid guitar but there is also the nastiness in the inexpert harmonica and the snake-shimmer maracas. Panic In Detroit was written after conversations with Iggy about the riots in his past. The imagery almost directly quotes Iggy and again, alongside Aynsley Dunbar’s funky percussion, the aggression in the guitar gives it its hallmark sound. Both songs remained regulars in Bowie’s live set lists throughout his career.
The second single was issued just one week before the album, well after The Jean Genie’s meteoritic trip through the charts, one thwarted from the top spot by Little Jimmy Osmond. Drive-In Saturday is an oasis of cool in the midst of the mayhem of Aladdin Sane. Inspired by a night train journey through the bleak, surreal landscape between Seattle and Phoenix, it has a languid, hallucinatory aura, slurring a doo-woop structure with complex chords punctuated by David Sanborn’s saxophone exclamations. It imagines a future when young people have to relearn how to make love by watching old porn movies. It is strange and other-worldly, Bowie’s alien persona observing mankind’s peculiar behaviour in a calm, detached manner. Its sophistication contrasts with the rough-edged B side, a version of Chuck Berry’s Round And Round recorded early in the Ziggy sessions, illustrating just how far Bowie had come in just one year. Simon Pegg describes Drive-In Saturday as a great ‘lost’ Bowie single because it wasn’t released in America and it was twenty years before inclusion on a greatest hits. Mott The Hoople could never have done it justice.
As with Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and the subsequent Diamond Dogs, Low and “Heroes”, the difference between the two sides of vinyl is marked. How much you like side two depends on what you make of the Garson showcases that bookend it. Time is an exercise in melodrama, from its preposterous lyric, gleeful vocal and show-tune piano to Ronson’s painful, screeching guitar. ‘Wanking’ distressed mothers of teenagers all over the UK but in the USA, the record executives had no idea what the word meant and felt Time was more radio-friendly than Drive-In Saturday, putting it out as a single. They did sensor ‘quaaludes and red wine’, though. Lady Grinning Soul is a lush, unashamedly romantic ballad delivered in best bib and tucker that only the later Wild Is The Wind can match. Garson’s sweeping piano lines are almost Parisian in style, while Ronson’s acoustic guitar brings the passion of Spain. Add to that lyrics touching on a Uruguyan card game and an American credit card and we are led to believe the lady likes to travel. Somehow, despite losing her clothes, she maintains a discrete mystery and disappears before Ronson brings the curtain down with some sublime vibrato. She is the living end.
The Prettiest Star (Gloucester Road) is easily overlooked, slipped in quietly between the flamboyant Time and the disinhibited Let’s Spend The Night Together, it barely breaks into a sweat. It’s a lovely melody, carried by the guitar, originally performed by Marc Bolan on a 1970 single, a disappointing flop after Space Oddity. Ronson restrains himself and stays faithful to Bolan but he does tidy up the arrangement. Sanborn’s tenor sax, the drunken doo-wop backing vocals and a solid kick drum add some much-needed muscle. It’s said to have been composed to persuade Angie to accept a proposal of marriage. If so, Bowie’s peculiar, fawning vocal is understandable but the use of the past tense and wistful nostalgia in the lyric is rather odd. However, if you are prepared to pay The Prettiest Star close attention, you’ll find an engaging simplicity and the most beautiful guitar solo in the whole of Glam Rock. It’s the sound of a rough-arsed northerner, after a few jars, getting emotional over his friend falling in love. It could be the aftermath of Watch That Man (New York).
In 1973, Aladdin Sane was only available on vinyl and as such the packaging was as important as the contents. The cover is striking and iconic. Defries commissioned the well-known photographer, Brian Duffy, at great expense to demonstrate to the record company that his charge was worthy of investment. It paid dividends. The large, bold red lightening strike across the ethereally white face and mystical teardrop on the left clavicle is Brian Duffy’s and David Bowie’s most famous image. Pierre Laroche applied the makeup. Bowie’s hair at the time was a red feather cut. On the front, his famously uneven eyes are closed denying us the window to his fractured soul. Inside the gatefold, a skeletal, androgynous, seemingingly naked Bowie is looking over his right shoulder. The lyrics, apart from the Jagger/Richards composition, are printed on the inner sleeve and back in 1973, a card inviting application to the fan club was also included. The Aladdin Sane cover is Bowie’s most enduring image and has been described as the Mona Lisa of Rock, adorning walls in many a household even today.
The end of The Spiders was inevitable shortly after “You’re hired”. Tony Defries, Bowie’s manager, asked Garson how much he would like to be paid and he pitched low. He assumed the successful Spiders were on £1500 a week, so he asked for £500. It turned out they were still on just fifty quid and they were angry when it slipped out in conversation. Consulting a lawyer confirmed they would be in breach of contract if they did not complete the tour and the album. Garson, himself, as a person and a musician, fit in nicely. Woody was receptive to his Scientology, Ronson enjoyed the musical challenge and Bowie was inspired. After Ziggy ‘retired’, Garson remained with The Spiders, helped Ronson with his solo LP and managed to continue playing with Bowie as well. In fact, he became Bowie’s longest serving musical accomplice, continuing off and on right through to The Next Day and the final Reality Tour.
Written on the road, a schizophrenic collection of outstanding songs performed with swagger by a battle-hardened band, Aladdin Sane did more than consolidate the achievements of Ziggy Stardust. It gave Bowie a stronger foothold in America and, therefore, the world. It established him as a real Rock Star with an iconic image and charismatic stage presence to match. He had never successfully followed up a success before, the remake of The Prettiest Star a reminder of the last time he made an attempt. Entering the charts at number one, keeping The Beatles blue and red albums at bay, must have given him enormous satisfaction and boosted his self-belief even further, enabling him to kill off Ziggy just three months later. At last, after many years of shape shifting, trying anything to become famous, an apprenticeship that would serve him well for the rest of his career, Bowie was right at the top of the tree.
In 1973, the UK had just joined the European Economic Community, IRA bombs exploded in London, the Lofthouse Colliery Disaster claimed the lives of seven men, VAT came into being, the Austin Allegra rolled off Leyland production lines, women were admitted to the London Stock Exchange for the first time and the Cod Wars with Iceland slumbered on. Lord knows the youth needed something exciting to believe in.
As an introspective fourteen year old, I bought Aladdin Sane on the day it was released. In the documentary, Cracked Actor, there is a clip of the queue outside the Liverpool Empire on 10th June. They are largely smartly dressed youngsters, some with ties and wearing cardigans as though they’d just come home from school. I was inside, dressed much the same, watching the matinee show, while my mother and her sister were at the ABC Cinema across the road. Truth is the point of Art not perfection. Aladdin Sane was to me the diary of a Rock Star describing exotic worlds I’d never experience: America, an alien future, city riots, the boudoir of a beautiful woman. It spoke truth to me like no other album and has stayed with me my whole life. It’s easily the album I’ve listened to the most. Aladdin Sane may not be everyone’s favourite Bowie album but it’s mine.
This is how The Spiders sounded live (minus Garson), The Jean Genie performed on TOTP:
Great review, thanks, and it’s sending me back to the album. Amazing TOTP clip too, though the sound stutters any way I try to watch it on the laptop. I even downloaded it with the same result. Fine on the phone though – strange. Anybody else?
No problems on an iPad.
Restarting the laptop fixed it. Indigestion, probably.
Absolute belter of a review, thanks for that. It’s an album I like the idea of more than I like the sounds in the grooves.
I first heard it the week it came out – my sixth-form football and school mate Steve Coles bought it on release, having played the last few Bowie’s incessantly for months in anticipation. I can still recall exactly where and with whom I was on first hearing it, and my impression then remains unchanged today; it’s a fundamentally nasty and uncomfortable listen.
Inevitably, I acquired my own copy, which got rather few plays over the years. A CD copy became mine eventually but not until the 24-bit remaster series that came out in 1999. I bought the whole lot of them, and therby acquired my own pristine soundtrack to bad drugs and reckless abandon. I don’t believe I’ve spun the disc up once since then. It’s too much like hard work for me. I do appreciate your forensic analysis though, and I can fully understand why you love it so much. I’m more of a Pinups guy.
PS the styling abomination on four wheels was called the Allegro, with an o not an a.
Thank you for this. It felt wrong when I typed it.
There was a ruthlessness in David Bowie at this point. Ziggy Stardust had proved him right all along. Prior to that, he’d tried many styles and collaborators and cast them aside like changing clothes. After Ziggy, even people who seemed essential to his success weren’t safe. He did make amends later to some of those left by the wayside but in 1973, when his success was assured, he remained very focussed on himself and nothing else.
By Ziggy, Bowie had been plying his trade for nearly ten years, with only one hit single to show for it. It’s not surprising that when mega stardom arrived, he was going to make the most of it and in Tony DeFries, had a manager who was ferociously ruthless (as Bowie later found to his detriment)
Like many other musicians, he’d been trying different styles until one finally clicked with the public. This meant he’d built up quite a back catalogue, but cleverly these are regarded as part of his chameleon nature, rather than just chasing success.
Exactly. What he was very good at was spotting a coming trend and managing to make it his idea to mass acclaim.
Quite right. Life On Mars? was released as a single a few months after Aladdin Sane and was another hit, taking Hunky Dory high into the charts along with it. They redid the cover for Space Oddity with a Ziggy image and also changed the cover for The Man Who Sold The World, both of which then picked up sales. That’s how he ended up with five very different albums in the top thirty at the same time, establishing him as a shapeshifter, a reputation he relished and exploited as time went on.
Tony Defries was actually quite brilliant but he made sure he profited enormously to Bowie’s detriment.
What a superb piece that is. You saw that matinee performance one afternoon while your mother and your aunt went to the pictures over the road! This was Bowie performing in music hall venues that was part of an established showbusiness circuit used by established stars like Ken Dodd, Tom Jones, Tommy Steele and so on. Amazing.
One month after I first saw him, Ziggy was retired and Bowie didn’t return to England for five long, long years. When he did, he was selling out Earls Court (60,000 capacity) three nights in a row.
That would be 20,000 x 3
Yes. Of course. Not quite Wembley.
Excellent review. He did return to England between Ziggy and the ‘Stage’ shows at Earls Court 1978. He played Empire Pool, Wembley, in May 1976, during the ‘Station To Station’ tour. Instead of a support band the Bunuel/Dali movie ‘Un Chien Andalou was shown. Great gig!
Lovely piece: still can’t abide much of it other than the singles. I remember the day it came out; I had nipped out of bounds with Benjie Clark as he bought it. We grabbed a pair of benders from the Wimpy bar and went over to Andy Luck’s study to play it on his superior stereo, which meant him plugging in his amp and playing additional guitar. As more of a keyboards man and ELP fan I was pretty nonplussed.
Remind me again. Didn’t you go to Greyfriars School?
You callin’ me fat, striped boy?
Cripes!
Yaroo!
Man, how I hated that record! I bought into all the hype and in those days of only being able to buy an LP maybe four or five times a year rashly threw caution to the wind and purchased it a few days after release. “What is this fey posturing music?” I asked and the answer was “It’s glam rock pap”.
Four hundred years later (well it feels like four hundred years) I have a reasonably strong idea that I might just have been Wrong
You know what, I listened to it this afternoon. There are two great tracks on there, the rest really, really is glam rock filler.
Lovely writing as ever but still waiting for the Childish Gambino review, I said…
So far, after just two listens, I’m really struggling with Childish Gambino. Can you make any words out? It sounds like it’s made by a robot whose circuits have shorted.
You need to give it at least 4 more listens. How many more times do I need to tell you? Call yourself a “reviewer”?
To be honest I have struggled with it but was hoping you might tell me where I was going Wrong?
I vividly remember the excitement of the period when it was released. I was only ten, so my brother bought this and I got the Glitter Band album (don’t judge me) at the same time, from Hammond’s in Hull. Loved the iconography of the cover, remember trying to draw the face obsessively (there was even a helpful outline to copy it!). Thought the particular sounds coming out of the record were amazing, without really understanding the sleaze (apart from ‘wanking’ of course, even then I knew that was naughty!) or the musical influences. But… that weird piano! The crunching, wailing guitar! The exotic-sounding ‘Panic’ song! The gorgeous one about Jagger and Twig the Wonder Kid! By then I was already well-steeped into Bowie by sheer osmosis, and this just fed my fascination even more. I remember my mum actually getting me out of bed so I could watch his appearance on the Russell Harry show, when he did look like an actual alien, with no eyebrows and all the colour sucked out of his skin and into his hair (as someone once memorably put it). He sang Drive In Saturday and this strange song called My Death. Great memories. Thanks for the brilliant review, Tigger.
Here he is, singing Drive-In Saturday on the Russell Harty Show a good few months before we could actually buy it. He shaved his eyebrows because he was upset that Mott The Hoople turned the song down (“That showed them,” he said on VH1 Storytellers decades later)! Ian Hunter couldn’t understand the words and the chords were too involved.
Wonderful review. I don’t think I’ve heard a rock piano solo that is any better than Garson’s solo on the title track. That track and Lady Grinning Soul are the pearls. Like others have said it’s not an album that is comfortable to listen to from A to Z.
I don’t think AS itself bears relation musically to On Broadway though, which is three verses of chord pairs that goes up a semitone each verse, although of course AS does quote it in the coda.
First heard this, newly-released, on a very druggy weekend jaunt with a Transit van full of friends up to Nottingham from Wales.
I was not in a very good headspace at the time due to unrequited love for a lovely girl who was only interested in being friends. The sleazy, decadent bleakness of it struck a chord at the time.
It’s far from my favourite Bowie album, but it has it’s moments.
I hesitate to call that a review as it was so much more, but a great piece, Tigger.
You’re bang on about side 2. I love MOST of Aladdin Sane. In fact, but for a couple of the side two tracks it would possibly be my favourite Bowie album. I don’t have a lot of time for …er…Time or Lady Grinning Soul and I do tend to commit the cardinal sin of skipping them.
Ha! You aren’t a thespian, then. You just like your Rock to be nasty and dirty. 😉
Partly, perhaps, but the title track is one of my all-time faves from anyone, not just Bowie. It’s the Piano solo that makes it, of course and I’m sure I’m not the only person here who can play it note for note – but only without a piano.
Very nice piece about your fave Bowie album. Never completely worked for me, couple of great singles, Lady Grinning Soul is glorious, but also some less wonderful moments like the Stones cover, Time etc. Of course even lesser Bowie albums are great, but to me it does sound a bit rushed and slapdash. May make my top 10.
Thanks Tigs. Certainly the most potent over – stopped me in my tracks in the shop. I had overlooked presence of Sanborn and Aynsley Dunbar. He must have one helluva CV
For me Bowie really excited me with the next record and the one after that and that and that and that.
Aynsley Dunbar has indeed a cv to relish. Sadly, despite the excellent photos on the sleeves, his own Retaliation were a tad lumpen
https://www.aynsleydunbar.com/bio.html
Excellent article Tig. It seems we’re the same age and I too got it when it came out and played it constantly. Oddly, it ruined Bowie for me. After this, I thought, he surely has nothing else to say. I rapidly lost interest and can’t remember the last time I played him now.
Bowie was just getting started!
Stuart Maconie and slotbadger have a great deal to say about Diamond Dogs. Have a listen:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/davidbowie-albumtoalbum/id1355073030?i=1000469356422
I have fallen out with his voice now which is a bit of a problem really. Actually I liked “Let’s Dance”.
He sings much of Let’s Dance in his best Scott Walker baritone. You can also hear that on Win from Young Americans, a fair bit of Lodger and on some of Outside. I really like the weariness on Low and the excitement on “Heroes”. On Stationtostation almost every track has a different voice. I’m a sucker for ..hours as well.
Have a listen to Stationtostation again. Think of it as a white collar Bruce Springsteen album written and performed by an alien stoned on coke.
That’s probably what put me off. I once saw it described as his Big Important Voice. I like Stationtostation though I don’t know it very well. I will give it another go.
the bass on that blew up my B and W DM4s – well it the amp and my stoned decision to turn it up to 11.
That’s a superb insight into Aladdin Sane. I used to feel ambivalent about it, but over time (Time?) I have grown to cherish it and you articulate its significance very clearly.
I hope you liked the Maconie interview thus far – I just uploaded the final part of that the other day!
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/davidbowie-albumtoalbum/id1355073030?i=1000471253920
Wonderful. I’ve loved all your podcasts.
Post the link on your Diamond Dogs thread, too. Just for completeness and to give it a bump.
I am agree. One of my favourite podcasts that I return to infrequently.
Excellent piece of writing, Tiggs – highlight of my day!
I heard the singles on TOTP at the time, of course – didn’t hear the full album until later (Diamond Dogs was my first big Bowie album and I worked backwards)…apart from the Stones cover, I loved it all – at the time, I might have preferred the rockers, but now I find I prefer the title track, Lady Grinning Soul, Time, etc….
My fourteen year old self asked my dad to buy it for my birthday, a last minute request as he left the house in his pinstripe suit to drive off in his Triumph Stag to oversee his little business in Leamington Spa. To his credit, he delivered on his word, and the record plunged in full make up into all my teenage insecurities, frustrations, deluded dreams and neurosis. I have listened to it ever since. But I would have given anything to have been a fly on the wall to watch the moment of purchase. I’m sure it would have been a Monty Python sketch in the making.
How old was he at the time? Let’s say 34, about the age of Ringo Starr!
55 – which makes it funnier..
Good God! Mind you, my youngest is 42 years younger than me and I’d do the same for him.
But it wouldn’t be the same. Nothing music related would anymore. Who would be as controversial to the conservative majority as Bowie was back then? To provoke an equivalent reaction you’d probably have to delve into politics and be willing to go buy him a Free Tommy Robinson t-shirt. Or buy him a copy of The Sun in Liverpool or something.
Buying The Sun in Liverpool??? Now, you are going too far.
Great article, thanks. It still has a special place in my heart as the first LP I bought, from Boots in Stockton High Street in February 1974. I don’t have it any more, but I can still conjure up the way it smelled in my mind’s, er, nose.
My copy was a Dynaflex pressing which, when held in both hands, wobbled prodigiously and made a right old noise.
I don’t remember my copy doing that! Back then, I treated vinyl like gossamer thin silk, obsessed with avoiding scratches and warps. It drove me insane.
Brilliant review of a brilliant album. I think Glam at it’s best curated an entry into all sorts of culture for many of us and gave us something other than the hippie stuff our big brothers had. Through Bowie (and Roxy) I learned about different authors, artists, bands, belief systems, and even sexual orientations. Aladdin Sane was a palpable hit and arty, rocky, and in the charts; he had a fab image and was clearly on top of his game. I like Bowie’s 70s more than i like the Beatles 60s, and I think he did more.
It really is the most fantastical of albums.
His albums are often a bit mixed in the quality of songs. Hunky Dory is one that is mostly killer rather than filler. He nearly always manages an absolute belter of a hit single though. Outstanding singles artist. A timeless, brilliant classic on pretty much every album, up until at least Let’s Dance. For all his avant garde dalliances he really was essentially a superb commercial hit maker.
I think the amount of filler on his albums was very low, at least in the seventies. Certainly compared to most other acts. And some people’s filler is another’s worthy attempt at something different.
Don’t know about filler but I often find a number of tracks hard to love but the big single always jumps out, well it would I suppose but I do think he was more of the crafter of hits than people normally recognise. Not always top ten but he was quite the Mr Showbiz nevertheless, even wanting to be a songwriter for others in the early days. Better as a popstar than rockstar perhaps.
You are quite right. He always knew how to write a ‘banger’. I love a great chewn but I love Bowie because he was unafraid to look ridiculous, always willing to push to the limit. So, those instrumentals on Low, the barking mad interludes on Outside, the preposterous Time and title track on Aladdin Sane, the weird instruments on Lodger, the annoyed Japanese lady on It’s No Game, the whole of Buddha Of Suburbia, the drum and bass of Earthling are all a major part of why I love him so. Nothing is really filler.
He probably had to have a certain try anything and not care too much approach in order to achieve what he did, not unlike The Beatles, be playful, have fun, to be creative. He was after all The Beatles of the seventies. Writing the single helps to focus the mind, gives some discipline and brought out the best in him, imo.
I love that annoyed Japanese lady – although I’m not clear what she is annoyed about…
She is reciting the lyrics (in Japanese of course)
I shall, of course, take your word on that, having no facility with Japanese language myself….I find her performance strangely stimulating….
I hadn’t really seen it that way before but I think Diddley has got it spot on. For me his only album that contains nary a clunker is Station to Station.
I think that is clearly wrong. His ratio of great material to “filler” throughout the 70s (at least from Hunky Dory on) is as good as anybody ever managed.
Bloody hell, next you’ll be saying Bowie deserves his place on the pantheon next to Duane, Ian Dury and Chris Whitley.
Time for some perspective here – DB always will be Minor Major never Major Minor and certainly never ever Major.
You silly, twisted boy…
An excellent piece of writing that I enjoyed more than the album, which I have never liked. I did try.
The song Time, as I have said on this forum before, contains one of the worst couplets ever written in the history of rock music. It epitomises the album – sloppy and careless.
With respect to Brown Sugar, it has been my understanding that it it was about Marsha Hunt, with whom Jagger had a child.
There is some debate about that.
Marsha Hunt was indeed Jagger’s secret girlfriend and mother of his first child Karis. However, Claudia Lennear claimed to be the song’s subject on BBC’s Radio 4 (25 February 2014, Today), because she kept Jagger’s “company” at the time it was written.
Aladdin Sane was my first proper Bowie album (after ChangesOne and ChangesTwo).
Why this one – because it was the only one available in the racks of the second hand shop I went to (apart from a beaten up copy of Pin-Ups for about 20p)
Maybe it was the wrong starting point. If I’m honest, I wasn’t massively impressed by it. It was probably 5 years before someone gave me a copy of Low and I bought a cheap copy of Ziggy Stardust. That’s where the real appreciation and purchasing started.
Being controversial, I would probably choose Tin Machine over Aladdin Sane.
But after that impassioned appreciation, I think I should go back and check my lugholes.
I was aware of the Space Oddity single, but, like most, Ziggy Stardust was my starting point. I’ll let you into a little secret; I was disappointed. The first three tracks are absolutely stunning. Oh wow, I thought. But, then, the rest of the songs I found uninteresting. Starman was OK. I’ve always enjoyed It Ain’t Easy but I can easily live without side two.
You struggle with 1972 I think. Ziggy is absolutely bloomin’ marvellous. There seems to be some kind of move to a critical re-evaluation that it isn’t all that great actually, see also @slotbadger ‘s (superb) podcast. Wrong wrong wrong. Masterpiece. All killer, no filler, I even like the cover version. Perfect. Top 5 of all time.
A pretty good year, the first when I bought records:
Can’t Buy A Thrill
On The Corner
Still Bill
Talking Book
Sail Away
Obscured By Clouds
Screaming Target
Let’s Stay Together
The Slider
Hunky Dory (nobody heard it in 1971)
Superfly
Ege Bamyasi
All Directions
Paul Simon
Sailin’ Shoes
Roxy Music
Clear Spot
Black Unity
Neu!
Caravanserai
Slade Alive & Slayed?
Dr John’s Gumbo
Transformer
Amazing Grace & Young, Gited & Black
Bobby Charles
The Harder They Come
Let’s Stay Together
The World Is A Ghetto
Foxtrot
Desperado
Close To The Edge
What Color Is Love
Pink Moon
Backstabbers
Cabaret OST
Oh. And Ziggy and Exile are pretty good, too, just not as great as the albums released either side of them. 😉
Context. This is the way to look at it. Not just in what was happening elsewhere in music, but news, fashion, politics, life itself.
It remains Bowies towering achievement, perhaps only matched by his epitaph, Blackstar. I also agree with your ‘presumption’ that Goats Head Soup was the pinnacle for the Stones. (Mind you, Lt Pigeon made quite an impression too).
Yep.
I think Ziggy is wonderful with no filler whatsoever.
I also think AS is shit hot.
Top writing, Tiggs, you went into similar detail on Revolver a while back. In fact, Bowie at the time was a chart singles artist for me, buying an LP wasn’t any kind of consideration. Until I got this as a surprise present, Summer 1974. My listening habits were King Crimson, ELP, Traffic, Mahavishnu, Yes, Weather Report, Zappa, Miles, Hendrix, Santana, jazzrock, soul, classical, Planxty. Then this track, Aladdin Sane with its relentless groove and whole-arm noisy cluster piano. Thought at first it was Tippett, who’d done similar piano shards on Cat Food in 1970. The whole record was a little patchy but features a few of his greatest ever hits and I did wind up buying several of his albums and they all get played, on vinyl, to this very day. Aladdin Sane, Station To Station, Low, they’re the best ones, I think. Bubbling under: Pinups, Ziggy, Hunky Dory.
😉
@Declan – not Heroes ?
Not even just for one day?
Gosh! Your listening habits were very mature and civilised before Aladdin Sane corrupted. It took me a good while to properly appreciate most of those! 😀
Oh, @Declan, you seemed to have missed my other pieces on In A Silent Way and Hot Buttered Soul! 😉
Well I was n-n-n-19 in 1974 and my trajectory was taking me away from the rock mainstream of Purple +Co. Steely Dan and Little Feat were already happenning. Already had Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson without realising about the whole Post-Miles concept. Jazzrock was a thing until the labels smelt cash, then it went downhill fast. Disco was only 2 years away (a good thing), as was punk (which I was, ahem, too old for). Helluva time, the 70s, and growing up in a small town in Ireland, what else would you do than buy records?
Heroes, you ask, Junior? Not a bad album, bit sludgy sounding, could have done with a few more melodies. Actually, I’d started avoiding the ubiquitous Eno by then, for no other reason than: why did he have to sing all over everything? Someone think he’s got an acceptable voice? No! Case in point: Remain in Light.
Actually, Tiggs, you have presented us with many screeds on Miles, true. Hot Buttered Soul? Need to seek that one out. Tell you something else: this lockdown thingy has turned into my chance of going through my classical collection (bought loads of stuff on Ebay at realistic prices when people were getting rid of their LPs, didn’t necessarily have the chance of playing them. Do now.) Current favourites: Schubert, Bartok, Ravel, Rachmaninov..
We are more alike than I thought. By 19 I was into electric Miles. I was just the correct age for Punk/New Wave and loved Disco. Plus Birmingham, where I lived at the time, was full of Reggae and Dub. But the clincher is I, too, have been accumulating more classical and those composers in particular. There is something so fabulous about a lush melody played beautifully by a big orchestra.
Let me spoil you with this, composed shortly before he (and Beethoven) died, almost 200 years ago. Schubert lived to 31, the latter 56. Stunning.
My favourite version of that is the one used in the film The Hunger, starring whatshisname. It’s played a little slower than usual.
Thank you. I adore a nice bit of cello. It may well be my favourite instrument.
Actually..
this is the one I wanted to post. Great lady on cello. Stunning.
Even better! The difference between the two performances is quite marked. This one is much more emotional, I’d say.
This has got to be some sort of clincher about how our pace of life has slown, that we’re listening to different versions of a classical piece and comparing them!
😉
I know. In a way it’s kind of wonderful. Just ignore the carnage going on outside.
Tippett; exactly right.
The day I first heard it I remember saying, “This must be Keith Tippett playing that piano.” and grabbing the sleeve from my mate to see if I was right. I wasn’t. I didn’t know anyone else could play like that.
Okay Tiggs, you’ve made me listen to it again. Side one is solid gold the whole way through, loads of nice production touches, sonically daring (love the phasing on the guitar and coffee-jar percussion on Panic In Detroit). Great, great guitar playing, every track.
However, side two runs out of steam from the off, what was he up to, trying to recreate the pretty stuff off Hunky Dory? Nice chords and all that, but! That Stones track is okay, shoulda kept it for Pinups. Jean Genie is fantastic, but we’re already on track 4 by now! Patchy really means not up to scratch in terms of what he apparently wanted to do and showed so well on the first side.
Still my favourite Bowie. Yes, Station To Station is better throughout but rather even-tempered, nothing to get your heart racing, not feral, scuzzy, and naughty like this one. I’ve also spent a lifetime with it, maybe one needs to be grateful for what we got.
PS How do you know about that piano solo being 45 bars long? I don’t even know how to count bars.
I read it somewhere!
I have a soft spot for The Prettiest Star and I really love Lady Grinning Soul but, then, Wild Is The Wind is my favourite Stationtostation track, all gorgeous and sexy and, as you say, naughty.
Have a hamper, mate.
😉
Cheers!
If they’re to be believed, absolutely everybody who saw Bowie do Starman on TOTP has it as a life-changing experience.
So, erm, why did at least nine records outsell it?
The only person I remember at the time being taken back by Bowie’s performance was my friend Bill, who had been an early fan of Bowie and saw this as a sell-out, in the same way some Tyrannosaurus Rex fans reacted to T.Rex.
Pop stars are always going to mean different things to different people, but to most people I know, with widely varying levels of interest in music, it always seemed that Bowie was a mainstream pop star who used some, at times fairly daft, images for publicity.
I once read that Alice Cooper, when he sobered up, took to golf and found himself playing alongside old entertainers, often forty years older than him. One day they asked him what he did in his act. He reluctantly explained he used a witch’s name, had a snake round his neck and climaxed with a fake execution. He expected shock, but just got nods of recognition “Right, vaudeville.”
For all of the talk of the shock of Bowie, mime and so one, there was a strong element of that in his various acts.
It was Groucho Marx who called Alice Cooper’s act vaudeville. They met performing a duet of Lidia the Tattooed Lady at a Frank Sinatra benefit & hit it off.
Groucho took some of his pals to see Cooper’s show, inc Fred Astaire & George Burns.
George Burns would say, ‘Guillotine – I remember 1923, Gracie and I were working in Toledo. The great Mahagony did an act like that, except pigeons would come out.’
My recollection of top hits in 1972 is that Without You was there for ever, Mouldy Old Dough or The Scots Dragoon Guards captured the hearts of grannies everywhere and Donny Osmond or The Partridge Family besotted teenage girls. Number ten is no reflection of its artistic merit nor its impact. Lots of people who saw him on TOTP bought the album. The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust was slow to hit the charts but stayed there for ever (well, the best part of three years actually, 168 weeks).
Great review Tiggerlion. David Bowie is without doubt my favourite artist by a country mile.I had heard David Bowie before I recall really liking ‘Space Oddity’. I can remember sitting in the Basement of 3 Park Square West just by Regents Park a friends place. I was twelve. He had a stereo set up in his parents bedroom(there wasn’t a lot of space in the basement of that large dwelling). I sat there listening while I held the Aladdin Sane gate fold sleeve open and wondered whether there was anyway that I could be in more connected to this other world so far away from where I was. The same friend who was a couple of years older than me managed to get tickets for Earls Court and my name was on one of them. The concert wasn’t for a few months. My family had moved to Archway in north London and I became distracted and didn’t see quite as much as I had of my friend. I did however tell everyone who would listen that I was going to see David Bowie. The day of the gig I got ready. I didn’t have a Bowie ‘look’ on that occasion, that would come later ‘Victoria Station’ and the Wembley ’76 gigs. I arrived and my friends mum ‘Babs’ opened the door. I knew something was wrong by the way she looked at me. My ‘friend’ had already left with his new mate and my ticket. It irks me to this day that he did this to me. It didn’t stop my interest,if anything it added fuel to the fire which remains with me to this day. I miss David Bowie not being around – a great deal.
I hope you did get to see him live, eventually. The lesson there is don’t neglect your friends if they have a Bowie ticket with your name on it.
Hope so too. For some reason I never saw Bowie until the 1.Outside tour, subsequently only one more show on his last tour. Both shows were great.
I remember applying for tickets for Murrayfield in 83 and failing. Not sure why I chose Edinburgh, at the time I had never been to Scotland.
I did see him many times just not at Earl’s court!
I wish I could give my tuppence worth but I just ain’t in the mood. There. I said my tuppence worth.
My tuppenceworth then. A collection of mostly top class songs. Could have done without the ham-fisted Stones cover. The thing that really irritates me is the horribly thin and weedy production.
Yes it just isn’t a particularly enjoyable listening experience.
You guys need the original vinyl! I think the 2013 remaster is pretty good on CD.
I have it (US pressing), will give it another listen.
I had the original vinyl. Always thought the sound was thin. No depth or punch.
How long ago did you last listen to it? Thirty years ago?
This album was released the month I was conceived.
“He looked a lot like two potatoes, when he came out his mam”
I remember buying this album because it seemed obligatory, although post-Spiders, I had doubts in my mind as to what I was actually investing in.
I remember thinking that Watch That Man seemed more of less a track rejected from Ziggy Stardust and the following title track didn’t have the amount of testosterone that a nineteen-year-old lad required. Drive-in Saturday was sort of okay, but then I hit pay-dirt, with two hard-hitters one after the other, which I almost played to death.
Side 2 – and Time mainly gained approval by having the word, ‘wanking’ in it, whereas I couldn’t take The Prettiest Star seriously after havinng already heard a cover version on the radio.
What almost ruined the album for me was the awful, atricious cover version of Let’s Spend The Night Together – a track which was hardly worth recording in its original form. Surely this had to have been rescued from the floor of the studio as filler after the already-recorded Pin-Ups sessions. The Jean Genie had already been a great floor-filler at college discos, so I was a bit over familiar with it.
That leaves only Lady Grinning Soul, which again, I thought was sort of okay at the time, but which I now realise is quite exquisitely beautiful.