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The Afterword #38: Jazz & Dave (The Nathan Adler Diaries 1947-2016)

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We crawl out of the oxygen tent, tens of millions of peoploids trying to make sense of the future that David Bowie was always showing us.

DrJ, Steven C, SimonGMusic, John Connolly and DFB use this podcast as a cathartic exercise in remembering a musical hero and trying to figure out why, nearly a week on at time of recording, we still are shellshocked and scrabbling around in the dust.

– the living art project ‘David Bowie’ by Mr David Jones from Brixton
– the ever circling ‘David Bowie Is’ exhibition
– the ‘J’ word
– We try and review ‘Blackstar’ both aurally and visually
– but mostly we just try and celebrate the magnificent bastard

There is no discussion of grief police and the nonsense of social media etc as that can all just be forgotten and his music and spirit will live on. This may not really add anything to the mound of Bowie analysis over the past 2 weeks but it was good for us.


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Comments

  3. In the first part of that second clip, he’s handling a rather shambolic somewhat hostile interview really well. Kudos.
    Or maybe all star interviews are like that before they get edited for the consumption of us punters.
    Who knows?

  4. Very nice. Well done.

    Bowie was very good at writing lyrics that attract meaning but, on closer inspection, remain mysterious. The listener can read whatever they like into them. Having said that, Hunky Dory and Young Americans have a number of personal songs (he did believe he saw a crack in the sky) and Word On A Wing is almost his own manifesto.

    I can’t believe you forgot Low. It is entirely personally revealing. It captures Bowie deep in depression, paralysed by writer’s block. He did draw awful things on a carpet, break glass and drive recklessly in a hotel car park. There may only be five songs with words and those words are few in number but they are all about Bowie’s state of mind at the time.

    I think Mr Jones was very good at separating his life from his work. I don’t know about you, but I’m entirely different in work compared to at home. Bowie’s work was art. He kept his life private, especially from the moment he got custody of his son. None of us know what he was like at home, but the moment the studio light went red or the spot picked him out on stage, he became Bowie The Artist. That is quite different to his ‘life’ being a work of art.

    • Almost forgot. Major Tom died in 1969. Something went wrong, he ended up floating in his tin can and there was nothing he could do. He died. Space Oddity is very bleak, an antidote to the optimism of the sixties and the excitement of a moon walk. I rank it as third most misunderstood song after Born In The USA and Every Breath You Take.

      Actually, Bowie had few personas. Sure, many of his songs are character driven (cf. Ray Davies among others). He invented Ziggy who morphed into Aladdin Sane. The Thin White Duke was a label given to him at the time by the press who’d had a superficial listen to Stationtostation. He wore soul boy clothes for Young Americans. By my reckoning, it all boils down to him creating only one persona.

      • Only a few personas that were named, but the different ways in which he presented himself from 1978 onwards still show continuity with what had gone before, just under the guise of ‘the real David Bowie’. That was his great inconsistency.

        • He certainly liked a new sound and a new look. That kept him interested and interesting. Few others have managed to keep freshening things up. The Beatles did. I reckon Madonna did. Roxy Music managed it for a while. Radiohead seem to be running out of steam. Massive Attack, maybe. I’m not that keen on Van Morrison but he enjoys a good change in direction. I’m struggling now. There aren’t many, are there?

            • But may I point out that something goes wrong after the space ship knows which way to go?

              “Ground Control to Major Tom
              Ground Control to Major Tom
              Take your protein pills
              and put your helmet on

              Ground Control to Major Tom
              Commencing countdown,
              engines on
              Check ignition
              and may God’s love be with you

              [spoken]
              Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Liftoff

              This is Ground Control
              to Major Tom
              You’ve really made the grade
              And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
              Now it’s time to leave the capsule
              if you dare

              This is Major Tom to Ground Control
              I’m stepping through the door
              And I’m floating
              in a most peculiar way
              And the stars look very different today

              For here
              Am I sitting in a tin can
              Far above the world
              Planet Earth is blue
              And there’s nothing I can do

              Though I’m past
              one hundred thousand miles
              I’m feeling very still
              And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
              Tell my wife I love her very much
              she knows

              Ground Control to Major Tom
              Your circuit’s dead,
              there’s something wrong
              Can you hear me, Major Tom?
              Can you hear me, Major Tom?
              Can you hear me, Major Tom?
              Can you….

              Here am I floating
              round my tin can
              Far above the Moon
              Planet Earth is blue
              And there’s nothing I can do”

                • Not a bit of it. He’s back inside and the second tin can is the Fray Bentos pie he smuggled on board ( have you tasted protein pills – bleurgh!!
                  The best technique for getting at that
                  lovely Argentine beef when you’re in zero G is to “float round” it with the tin opener. People often mishear the lyrics to Ashes To Ashes as “little green wheels” – it is, in fact “Fray Bentos lids are following me”…

    • We did mention Low as well as many other things but 50 mins of gold had to be lopped out of that bastard.

      If we were paying for that therapy we would have been charge a fortune

  5. Just finished listening, wonderful stuff fellas.

    The chat about tweets reminded me of @simongmusic ‘s tweet of Jan 9th: “Those last two songs I get the feeling are very personal. Dave’s telling us something”. You weren’t kidding, Simon.

  6. This seems as good a place as any to post this – the last performance of Ziggy and the Spiders (sans Woody), The 1980 Floor Show. Filmed at the Marquee in 1973, it was made for the US TV show Midnight Special (hence Wolfman Jack). Warning – contains “interpretive dance”, and, at around 27 minutes in, a ‘has to be seen to be believed’ performance of I’ve Got You Babe with a skagged-out Marianne Faithful dressed as a glam nun. I kid you not…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQBySMvPn5A

  11. Hang on though…Major Tom’s story continues in Ashes to Ashes. He is talked of sadly and the rumour/sordid details from ground control is the present tense “we know Major Tom’s a junkie”. He’s a time waster. The mother’s warning at the end is again present tense – so he’s still alive, floating around up there off his face.

    Hallo Spaceboy has Ground Control talking to Major Tom again some years later – he’s older now, scared and confused. So he’s still up there, addled, gibberishly asking himself the questions that the papers used to ask him when he first went into space. He’s not replying to the emotionless greetings from Ground Control. They keep saying Hallo and he keeps just withering on about God knows what.

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