RECORDS: DAVID BOWIE

HUNKY DORY (1971)

David Bowie

David Bowie gained a slight measure of fame a few years back with”Space Oddity,” one of several fine songs on a better than average album. But the man seemed so obsessed with being the cosmic poet laureate during a summer in which the world was a bit sick of dream machines and science fiction that he created an album predestined for failure.

Early this year he returned, and, lo and behold he’d become the Space Oddity. David Bosie in his fur maxi coat and evening gown and Lauren Bacall hair, parading somewhat pathetically for attention. He paraded so well, in fact, that he nearly overshadowed a pretty fair album, The Man Who Sold the World. But where he really blew it was again with his fanaticism for space-age lyrics. “And gloomy browed with super fear their tragic endless lives.” What the hell? He got a lot of press party attention, but that was about it.

Now he’s trying once more, with Hunky Dory. It almost is. He’s still hung up on words, still parading, still a shade too cute. But there’ve been some changes, perhaps concessions is a better word, and they’re for the best. He’s dropped his lyrics to an even priority with his music—excellently played and arranged—and his voice; campy, mocking, soft, hard, powerful or in general what he chooses it to be. No longer are lyrics forced upon us. We hear what we want, which is interesting to say the least. Perhaps most importantly, David seems to be relaxed, enjoying himself for a change.

It’s a damn good album despite a lot of self-contradictory, potentially annoying material, because the finished product allows the contradictions to be both overlooked and enjoyed. It might be easy to question the sincerity behind a “Song for Bob Dylan,” a plea to Robert Zimmerman to stop writing ultra-personal songs nobody understands and call back his old friend Dylan who everybody understands—while Bowie is busy singing of his brother who is “Camelian, comedian Corinthian and Caricature.” Yet the song is skillfully done with a superb early Dylan vocal and fine guitar work. Besides, it’s difficult to tell just how serious David is. It’s at least as easy to question the motives behind “Andy Warhol,” who Bowie claims dresses his friends up just for show and engages in “jolly boring” pastimes. Well, if anyone looks like a Warhol superstar it’s Bowie and his own cut, “Queen Bitch,” sounds more like Lou Reed than Lou Reed. Again, however, one is hard-pressed to judge Bowie’s seriousness. Anyway, “Queen Bitch” is one good rock tune. The point is, these songs are so good and really so much fun that they are not at all annoying.

Otherwise, David has a good time singing “Oh! You Pretty Things,” a tune he wrote for Peter Noone to make his solo debut with. David Bowie writing songs for an ex-Hermit? The poet serving the bubblegum king? Well, he camps it up in his best British music hall voice, surrounds it with a honky tonk piano and everyone has fun. Or there’s “Kooks,” a happily perverted little tale reminiscent of Ray Davies, with mum and dad telling sonny he can face life or stay at home and be like them, nuts but happy. “Life on Mars?” is one of those “what do any of them know” Bowie specials saved by fine vocals that Lauren Bacall could never match and Mick Ronson’s string arrangements.

In the end, David Bowie has his cake and eats it, too. He’s still got his lyrics on paper (relegated to the inside jacket, however), and he even lets them dominate the occasional song. But he pays as much attention to his voice and the sounds around it, even having a go at sax, which is how he broke into music (not as a Cockette, I might add); he leaves the listener a choice.

Intentionally or not, he’s making up for a lot of lost time and effort. In “Changes,” he says that “time may change me.” I think it has already.

Bob Kirsch

THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS (1972)

David Bowie

David Bowie may become a star this year, or he may not. This may or may not make a difference in your life. But, for all the people who are assured it will, take it easy: it’s unlikely.

Ziggy Stardust is excellent, it is true, but it all seems old hat. If David Bowie is a genius, then we have reduced that term to mean nothing more than someone who is familiar with relatively exciting readymades, is able to execute them competently, interestingly, intricately. And if that is what genius has become, it may as well be laid to rest next to our already-lengthy list of “So what’s.”

Why David Bowie isn’t what we are looking for is more difficult. The music here is excellent, it rocks as well as almost anyone’s this year. Like Marc Bolan, Bowie understands much of what makes rock ’n’ roll so powerful in both musical and social ways; raw energy, simplicity, an intensely sexual persona.

What Bowie and Bolan—and the other T. Rex-off-shoots who will infallibly crop up in the next year—don’t seem to understand is the missing element. Innocence.

Every great rock and roll singer has been great because, while he or she was potent and strong, they were also uniquely naive. David Bowie and Marc Bolan are worldly and they want to make a virtue of their worldliness. The requisites of rock are such that being jaded won’t do. Rod Stewart may be misogynist, but his misogyny is tempered with naivete. Ringo is the only Beatle who could have sung “Yellow Submarine,” or “Rocky Racoon,” or even “Lady Madonna.” Ringo is the least-objectionable ex-Beatle. Listen to Peter Townshend or Nils Lofgren or even Van Morrison when they are on. Mixed in with the electricity and the simplicity is—inevitably— a gap, where more worldly knowledge would infuse a blase stance. Rod Stewart sums this up by talking about the loss of innocence: “You led me away from home/Just to save you from bein’ alone/You stole my heart/And that’s a pain I could do without.”

If a lack of innocence is why David Bowie is not genius number one on the Hit Parade of the ‘70’s, there is much to substantiate his presence somewhere in its midst.

Bowie now has a rock and roll band, and it is a fine one. Much of its music, like many of David’s lyrics, are drawn from already-tapped sources, but whether serving up T.Rex, MC5, Alice Cooper or Face to Face period Kinks’ licks, the music is invariably well-made and interesting. Bowie’s vocals are infinitely stronger against this background; not so strangely. The weaknesses of his singing obviously needed shoring up.

Lyrically, particularly thematically, Bowie is more ingenuous than ingenious, but that is something we have come to expect. A few phrases jangle the nerves—I can’t trust a song which contains the phrase “freak out,” or “blow your mind”—and his frequent and superfluous heterosexism rankles, especially coming from one so supposedly so “liberated.” Nonetheless, on the whole, Ziggy Stardust succeeds, if on more limited terms than the cultists would have us believe.

Bowie’s sexual ambivalence get curiouser and curiouser. When he is singing tunes of heterosex, he is so blatantly chauvinist that you want to blank out the words. “Stardust” on the other hand, is a simple plaintive song about a queen whom Bowie may or may not have desired and it works. I don’t know whether is still gay or not—I wonder if it matters. Those ambi-sexual posturings can be ruinous—they have made a liar out of Alice Cooper. Bowie may have more success with it, because he is more honest, but I don’t see anything resolved here—either about the singer himself or about the whole “problem” of being homosexual.

Eventually, Bowie is going to have to come to terms with this kind of stuff. How he does it will undoubtedly be both interesting and confusing. He is, no doubt, a large talent and in some ways, a brave one. Ziggy Stardust is his best record, so far at least, but I can’t see him stopping here for long.

Dave Marsh

ALADDIN SANE (1973)

David Bowie

On “Drive-In Saturday,” a song from the new David Bowie album, a space-age couple flirt and “try and get it on like once before/ When people stared in Jagger’s eyes and scored.” Elsewhere there is an actual Rolling Stones song, “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” camped up for all its offensive worth. The spoken finale plea included just in case you’re still listening goes: “They said we were too young/Our kinda love was no fun...” This is the cut you’ll love to hate cause this is the performance Bowie'll never live down. So warped a perspective does it present, one’s tempted to say this entire album would better have been left below ground, and David Bowie with it. Not only has “the next Dylan?” overstepped his mark, miscalculated his audience, and revealed himself to be only another nut in the big fruitcake—he has blasphemed The Rolling Stones, for which there is no excuse.

Like it or not, one doody this smelly does not necessarily stink up a whole album and Aladdin Sane is okay in spite of some other mistakes which indicate Bowie has become a knowing victim of his own hype. The Tides of Lust world of Aladdin Sane is an uneasy truce between the past, present and future. Homo superior has evolved from awesome speculation to drugstore reality. Peopled by a cast of cartoon characters—Aladdin, Buddy, Reverend Alabaster, legendary Lorraine, Jung the foreman and his Astronette mate, The Prettiest Star—the songs make reference in cinematic images to an America where the Oceans have dried up, the people’s sense of the past is conveyed through video, and Detroit has been swiftly depopulated by war in The Street. Sex/romance in its major and minor variations (queer, straight, bio, ono, Orphean, fascist, anarchist, inanimate...) is the primary sign of recognition and the big-chief motif of the record. At a spooky party described in “Watch That Man,” the Lou Reed type you gotta look out for “talks like a jerk/But he could eat you with a fork and spoon.” On the other coast, an ageing movie queen tells it like it is: “Smack, baby, smack is all that you feel.” And there’s the Jean Genie who lives on his back and loves chimney stacks.

Another 23-inch set-up you can stand to talk about more than you can stand to hear. Bowie’s appeal is intellectual (unless you go in for smooth-skinned fellas with no eyebrows— the bushier the better I say) and a lyric sheet or headphones are recommended for proper appreciation of his astute albums (of which this is not one). He continues to write often inspired, fascinating lines, but his music is hit-and-miss. What with “Width of a Circle,” “Changes” and “Five Years,” “Watch That Man” is the one thing you wouldn’t expect this LP’s opener to be—a predictable Main St. readymade. “Aladdin Sane” features one of Bowie’s better, more hummable melodies (there aren’t many) but gets left-fielded midway through when an avant-gardy exposition takes its pretty time. “Drive-In Saturday " suffers from the way Bowie pronounces one word—“Buddy”—like Alice Cooper, and then is subsequently rescued, irony of ironies, by a Van Morrison scat rave-up. “Time” is conversely irritating in its mockery, not of some other star, but David himself; it’s the kind of Brelesque burlesque cabaret twirl that might come off better live than it does here. I’d just as soon not find out. “The Prettiest Star” is yet another la-may booger—a 1970 ode to my alterego—with a stunning guitar intro by Ronson.

These disappointing cuts on Aladdin Sane suffer from self-indulgence and self-abuse which in turn seem to have been spurned on by Bowie’s own self-imposed isolation, both real (business, media) and imagined (psychic), which in turn has given him a lot of artistic mileage. So what? There’s some good stuff too. “Panic In Detroit” and “Cracked Actor” show that Bowie can take it as deep as any 16-year-old pube, with plenty o’ pizzazz left over for the adults to work out on. The former song concerns itself with the temporary relationship of Bowie/Aladdin and a gun-totin’, truck-drivin’ revolutionary (“He looked a lot like Che Guevara”). That opening clincher is introduced by a low-end bomp line from Ronson which is quickly vamped up by “Gimme Shelter” rhythm and chorus. Chugga chugga! There is fighting in the streets and the police are on the loose. Bowie goes to school one day to find his teacher “crouching in his overalls,” somehow scores a trillion dollars, and returns home to find that his cutie has shot himself, leaving Bowie the gun and a suicide note instead of the autograph he’d requested. It’s fairly obvious, subtly put together, and quite mesmerizing. “Cracked Actor” would be great to hear on the AM simply because you never will. Mick Ronson skawks out a massive dizbuster of a riff over Trevor Boulder’s grapefully lumbering bass and some quick drumming from Woody Woodmansey while Bowie relates the bitching of an S & M-inclined daddy and his Sunset & Vine trick.

If you turn Aladdin Sane over you’ll find a couple more goodies, which rescue Side Two from the disaster of “Time,” “The Prettiest Star” and “Together.” “Jean Genie” may’ve been insinuating itself for a while now: it came out as a single (in slightly different form) last year. Poor Little Greenie is the athlete of the future, a splendidly repulsive being reminiscent of a Samuel R. Delaney creation who “says he’s a beautician and sells you nutrition.” Too long and consciously monotonous, a catchy little number nevertheless.

“Lady Grinning Soul” shows just how far afield Bowie can go and still bring off his brand of sweet-lips. Similar to “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide” in its concluding affirmation of life, love and the pursuit of happiness, “Lady” salutes the momentary joys of a good fuck who’ll "beat you down at cool canasta” and then drive away in her Volkswagen to cruise for fresh converts. Bowie soars through the vocal in oddly convincing manner—affected, effeminate and mawkish. He’s the only guy with the nerve-plus-chops to pull if off.

Undeniably, David Bowie has got real problems. A very inconsistent live performer who is much too dependent on his charm to ever really step out with the authority R & R needs to render sophisticated lyrics convincingly, he would better serve his own interests by sticking to the studio where he could concentrate more on the musical end of things, and hopefully continue his fine production work (Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople). Rumor has it that Bowie and The Spiders are breaking up to go their separate ways in the fall after one more tour. Good. May Mick Ronson prevail.

Aladdin Sane is a complete letdown after the brilliance of Ziggy and more especially Hunky Dory. As a one-time short-term fan, I have the distinctly unpleasant feeling that Bowie is indeed guilty of many of the charges his fagbaiting slanderers have levelled against him. He is hollow—but it has been his forte in the past to describe that vacancy with some degree of insight and lots of lyrical imagination. This album sacrifices insight for its descriptive purposes while various musical booboos call Bowie’s self-seriousness blatantly into question. The Art don’t rise above its Implications. A strong breeze could wisk Sane away at the shortest notice.

Tim Jurgens

PIN UPS (1973)

David Bowie

Two separate David Bowie stories, to start off with: Last Christmas I got an unusual opportunity to litmus the Bowie As Outrage phenomenon when a dancetime TV special featured a film direct from England of David singing “The Jean Genie.” I happened to be watching it with a whole living room full of absolutely middle Americans, from Mother in her 40s to kid sis all of 14 and giggly in love with Alice Cooper. 1 told them, “Watch this, here comes the first overtly homosexual rock star.” So we did, and I was interested to note their reaction: near total indifference. They took one look: “Oh yeah, he is, isn’t he?” and went back to their cranberry sauce without the hint of a shudder. When just the day before, Mother had drawn me aside during Christmas shopping and confided a certain disturbance over Lori’s Alice hotpants: “Is... he, really... or just a put-on?” as she so fervently hoped.

So much for David Bowie’s galacto-KY threat to the nuclear family and Western Civ. Story Number Two is shorter and more heartening for Bowoids: a friend who has just turned 30 and never been heavily into the mutant fringes of rock bizarritude told me one night that “The Jean Genie” was his favorite song. He couldn’t get enough of such a rhythmic mindfuck, he said: “I’d suck David Bowie’s cock till the blood came just to hear that song again!” It’s worth noting that this fellow has never sucked dick to any kind of denouement or even dropped hints of such desires previous to this, as well as that until he clued me in on it I’d merely assumed with all the other rock critics that “Jean Genie” was just a dispiriting runthru of the old Yardbirds/ Bo Diddley “I’m a Man” paces. Obviously it had worked some sort of magic benign or not on my friend which had completely eluded us old jades, and the reason is just as clear: we knew too much.

David Bowie faces a similar problem in his career right now. Even as he’s gained mass acceptance if not the macrostardom his hype asserts, Bowie’s already lost his status as a true cult figure idolized ferociously by a small herd of vicarious sociopaths. With Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust he hit big and fast as the first notable critical/cultist pet of the 70s. In spite of the obvious pretensions of those records, in spite of the fact that Bowie came straight from the theatrical/music hall tradition and seemed to regard rock ’n’ roll as just one more universe for him to conquer and thereby show how groovy he was, his apologists let themselves be swept away in a torrent of adulatory mystification which was so intense and basically artificial that it could be headed nowhere but disillusionment.. Sure enough, when Aladdin Sane came out the rank and file of Bowie fandom turned tail—they hated it.

If you were like a lot of us, though, you had to conclude that the Bowie fanatics were even crazier than you’d always known. Because Aladdin Sane was Bowie’s most outright rocker to date. As for the lyrics, all that stuff about Fatha Time wanking in a quaalude haze was of course as mortifyingly awkward and overdone as ever, but you could take ’em with a chuckle and ride on Ronson’s wranglings if you thought all of Bowie’s lyrics from “Love You Till Tuesday” to “like some cat from Japan” were pretty silly.

So with one brittle swipe Bowie alienated a sizeable fraction of his oldest worshippers and picked up a veritable slew of rock ’n’ roll kids who always thought he was a sissy till they heard this new churn. It’s the same thing that happened to Elton John with Madman Across the Water, when Bernie Taupin’s lyrics passed from the Hallmark Card kitsch of “Your Song” to the blatant cartoon mishmosh of “Jesus wants to go to Venus” and thus became entirely loveable to all who had previously considered him a pompous pud.

With Pin Ups Bowie finally hacks all the way into the mainline of rock ’n’ roll, and one of the nicer things about it is that this is one time you won’t have to put up with any of his goofball versifying. Because this is Bowie’s tribute to the peers and heroes of his adolescence: remodels of great oldies by the Yardbirds, Pretty Things, Pink Floyd, Them, the Who, Easybeats, Kinks, Mojos and Merseys. Nary an original in sight—true to its sources, this is almost 100% rave-up—and you can decide once and for all whether Bowie makes your grade as an out-and-out rocker.

There are two ways to listen to this album. One is as eyebrow-cocked jade, all too familiar with the original performances of these songs and perhaps ready to see Bowie take a real dive. Which is where we find a lot of his old poohbahs, still licking their wounds from Aladdin Sane. I spoke to one on the phone the other day, and he told me the album was a total disaster, “like 12 retakes of ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together.’ It sounds like he did it just to prove how shitty everything that came before him was.”

Bullshit. The commitment which Bowie brought to this seeming offhand project is evident in every cut, and I'd even go so far as to say that he actually surpasses the model on at least one occasion. Great songs, performed (for the most part) vibrantly—what more could you ask? As for suggestions of Bowie commiting unnatural acts upon the sanctified corpus of Rock Standards, the only real complaint I have is that he’s at times too faithful Cuts like “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere,” “Don’t Bring Me Down” and “I Wish You Would” are so literal and rote you almost forget you’re listening to a cover. But they have enough of the originals’ fury to make them sustain even if you’ve heard the earlier versions time and time again.

Only one moment of true transcendence occurs: “I Can’t Explain” is, in this reviewer’s opinion, actually better than the Who’s epochal single. For once Bowie allows himself to really mess with the song’s mood, taking it at a much slower, more slurred and languorously dazed tempo which finally fits the message better than the Who’s Liverpool Beat Combo rigidity. In his best singing of the album, Bowie proves that he can really put across a vocal without resorting to all the laryngeal bends and squiggly postures he’s resorted to in the past, and the sax is as smoky and raunch-lumbering as Ronson’s gutscraping solo.

The second way to listen to Pin Ups is if you didn’t know the original material at all, which a major portion of Bowie’s audience certainly doesn’t. I didn’t know either “Sorrow” or “Everything’s All Right,” and I found them just about as exciting as everything else here. Jesus, just think if you’d never known the chills and thunder of those great mid-Sixties English milestone sides! You’d lose your mind and conclude immediately that Bowie had created a stunning album and turned unaccountably into a concisely eloquent songwriter to boot. But no matter how you hear it, Pin Ups is Bowie’s Nuggets and almost good enough to make the world believe Mainman’s incredible hype. It’s so good that it doesn’t have the sickly reek of mouldy-oldie nostalgia, and that and the fact that Bowie didn’t find it necessary to camp the material up may be the highest tribute of all.

Lester Bangs

DIAMOND DOGS (1974)

David Bowie

D-d-d-decadence, that’s what this album’s all about, thematically and conceptually. You’ve all heard of that stuff, and now you can buy it red hot and regurgitated from the poor stiffs who actually have to live it and your local platter vendor. Only trouble is we gotta question whether Bowie of all people actually does live it. Aw hell, he’s a goddam family man, he doesn’t hardly take drugs, and perhaps the most perverted thing about Bowie’s music is that in troweling on the most studious sort of retching emotionalism he always comes out precisely as cold as we know him to be. Lou Reed’s always talking about atrophied sensations, but Lou really can feel (that’s his problem); I don’t think Bowie can feel, and the irony is that in making albums about future brats’ hysterical detachment from feeling he really does them feelinglessly. All the hysteria is contrived.

But that’s okay, because the same thing applies to the great Sonny Bono’s vintage work, and Diamond Dogs reaffirms what an incredible producer Bowie is even if most of the songs are downright mediocre. The decadence angle comes in mostly because Bowie knows how cool it was in 1972 to be wasted, so even though he’s not wasted himself he’s put up a big front in the form of a wasted-sounding album. He was always weary, and pretentiously likes to think of himself as the prescient chronicler of a planet falling to pieces, so this again is a quasi-Orwellian concept album about a future world where the clockwork orangutans skulk like dogs in the streets while the politicians etc. and blah blah blah. Also this is the sloppiest Bowie album yet, so if the theory goes that it’s better the more decadent it is, and decadence is not caring at all, then this must be Bowie’s masterpiece, since he really doesn’t seem to care as much as he used to. Or maybe that’s all part of the total set-up: what’s certain is that for the first time his production has a dense, smoky, eccentrically rough and claustrophobic touch, and it can’t be an accident because he doesn’t have any which is one of the things that’s wrong with him.

“Future Legend” opens the beast with a snarl of noise reminiscent of the intro to Berlin, from which Bowie emerges with his thickest-tongued quasi-poetics yet: “And in the death, as the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare..Sounds like Tom Wilson’s “Let them rot in the stifling air of their flowerspun graves” rap at the beginning of the first Beacon Street Union album. A brief off key snatch of “Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered,” and Bowie screams “This ain’t rock ’n’ roll, this is genocide.”

Which isn’t the dumbest line on the album. All production phantasmagorias aside, I’m getting a bit tired of his broken-larynxed vocals that’re so queasily sincere they reek of some horrible burlesque, some sterilely distasteful artifice. It’s the same old theatrical delivery of pretentious lyrics: “Your’re dancing where the dogs decay/ Defecating ecstacy” :: “Oh, I love you in your fuck-me pumps” : :“Choking on you lightly.” Really. There are moments when his words are less embarrassing: at one point you can’t tell if he’s saying “my friend Celine” (great line if so) or “I keep the vaseline” (bad one but good comedy maybe). I’m glad he didn’t enclose a lyric sheet with this sludgesluice.

Musically the album is uneven. “Rock ’n’ Roll With Me” and “We Are the Dead” are mediocre ballads unredeemed by vocal melodramatics, “Sweet Thing/ Candidate” is two jumbled songs saved only by brilliant production, and the title track is a sloppier, slushier “Watch That Man” out of “Brown Sugar” and New Orleans R&B complete with saxes. It’s supposed to be some spew of get-it-on desperation, but really sounds pretty tired in spite of some earnest garage Keith Richard guitar work by Bowie. You miss Mick Ronson consistently, but Bowie’s playing is somehow oddly satisfactory because it’s so like a kid— proud, a bit off, showoffy.

Meanwhile, he’s singing more like Jagger than ever, which falls flat in “Diamond Dogs” but makes “Rebel Rebel” one of his best ever: solid guitar hook, and the whole thing remixed from the single to give it the same density as the rest of the album. Great lyrics for once: “You’ve torn your dress/ Your face is a mess... Hot tramp, I love you so.” If only Bowie could settle for that kind of simplicity all the time.

I think that Bowie was attempting a sort of futurist Exile on Main Street here, trying to put across a similarly hazy, messy brilliance, an equally riveting vibe. I think he failed, and the reason he failed is that Exile contained real commitment, a certain authentic last-ditch desperation which Bowie has not really captured since The Man Who Sold the World. That doesn’t mean, of course, that Bowie fans aren’t going to find a way to like this, or that other listeners won’t find a certain amount of entertainment in the murk.

Lester Bangs

YOUNG AMERICANS (1975)

David Bowie

Since that fateful night Bowie hit Radio City with a funkadelic thud last November, I’ve been dreading this album’s release. Could it be Dave’s decided to bite the hand that feeds, post-Diamond Dogs? He can warble “Nothing’s gonna change my world” on Young Americans to his ego’s titillation, but I fear the irrevocable worst is upon us: Bowie’s thrown in the towel on rock and concept music, preferring to boogie down to prosperity instead. Okay, Dave... shortchange us perfervid dupes who put stock in ya, even though we knew your financial intentions all along and considered it fine because only fools don’t worry ’bout making a buck.

I personally feel gypped. By stifling his contemptuous tone, skirting scorn for things pathetic and mundane that haunted his prior work, Bowie is neglecting statement. By devoting himself to disco-soul, playing a purely commercial idiom in lieu of making new strides, Bowie is shunning art. With an image attached to about seven elpees with costume changes to match, it’s impossible to tell who the real Bowie is anymore. Once the Spiders disbanded, Bowie’s truncated Ziggy schtick was de-sapped. Tinsel to the wayside, his act deliquesced into prophecy, warning of holocaust and a host of other chimerical feasibilitiesduring his Diamond Dogs—Burroughs influenced phase. Supposedly theatrical, I viewed last summer’s Diamond Dogs tour as ineffectual spectacle. Sure, Dave assembled and performed a fine show, but the scenery and backup band were so disappointing that the concert became an ultimate let down. As for the last Bowie tour, it literally didn’t pay to blow twelve and a half bucks in order to witness blase renderings of Bowie oldies juxtaposed with his new stuporific soul bro pastiche, regardless of the bodacious Mike Garson Group. I recall having the fierce urge to upstage Bowie during “Changes” or besiege his manager to order a month’s total rest immediately after the show, because it seemed Bowie could barely manage onstage.

Never mind that Bowie wants to be in the mind, heart, and record racks of Young America; he also wants to be the Young American—a vicarious spade, a victorious name. Never mind the title song concerns our emetic socio-political situation (“Do you remember President Nixon... the bills you have to pay, or even yesterday?...”), adding discodanceable components like snappy sax runs and gospelfied chorals, wrapping up with the obvious “I want the Young American.” It’s disturbing enough to think how easily Bowie could finagle the latter with his chameleon-like savoir-faire, knowing how a little condescension can work wonders. Bowie seems to hope he’ll inveigle American youth through solidarity, relating on a common level, predicated on sheer capitalistic desire.

I’m unconvinced Young Americans is anything but commercial, unless it’s another Bowie transition. The words trite, unenthralling, and masturbatory come to mind. Young Americans ain’t got the visceral verve connected with most Bowie material; it’s the epitome of every shoddy, self indulgent delusion Dave could muster, have pressed into vinyl, and try to sell. I wonder why John Lennon even bothered to give his vocal and co-writing support (“Fame”), much less subject “Across the Universe” to Bowie’s washed-out histrionics whilst accompanying the ensuing atrocity on guitar. “Fame” is structurally identical to “Time” on Aladdin Sane, repeating the title, then enumerating its consequential drawbacks. Composed by the Bowie-Lennon-Alomar team, “Fame” is a study in wretched rockstar commiseration, John and Dave apparently taking turns writing lines as if an impromptu word game. “Fame—Makes a man think things over... Puts him there, where things are hollow.” Probable Bowie-Lennon interplay, viz.: (“Fame-”) “What you get is no tomorrow (Dave)” “What you need you have to borrow (John)” “Is it any wonder -You’re too cool to fool (John)” “Bully for you, chilly for me (Dave)” “Got to get a raincheck on pain (John).”

Whereas open interpretation was necessary on Diamond Dogs, lyrics are included with Young Americans—although improved mix quality make them a requisite convenience which would’ve been appreciated more with the former cryptic David Bowie album. Doesn’t matter on Young Americans anyhow: “Can You Hear Me,” “Win,” “Fascination” rely on love themes, funky sound and beat more than lyrical content. “Young Americans” and “Somebody Up There Likes Me” temper racial motifs with overtones of pathos and dat oletime religion: “He’s got his eye on your soul—his hand on your heart, He says ‘Don’t, don’t hurry baby,’ Somebody up there likes me.” An eerie two stanza Bowie tune, “Right,” figuratively encapsulates his career through gauzed wide angle lenses (“Taking it all the right way... Never no turning back”), the second verse sounding like the combined euphoria of success and cocaine has pulverized Bowie, verily gone to his head: “Flying in just a sweet place, Coming inside and sail... Never been no, Never been known to fail.”

Not yet, perhaps. But even though I stuck with Bowie during his last stylistic change— wouldn’t listen when Diamond Dogs was vilified left and right—Young Americans is a retrograde effort earning my heartsick disdain. I’d still be raving over Bowie if only he’d stop reaffirming his superstar status with tacky contrivances... if only he’d produce music of a consistent caliber (rock, R&B, jazz, whatever— though I’d say Bowie excels in rock and wish he’d return to the fold after his fling). Hope this Young Americans in-strut-with-the-times sidetrack is just a passing caprice, as was the Diamond Dogs round-the-corner cataclysm. Lord knows we need a lot more auspicious artists and a lot less jive.

Trixie A. Balm

“HEROES” (1977)

David Bowie

Since before I can remember almost, there was never a “genuine” David Bowie character. Ingeniously (?) glittered-out onstage, attired in make up and hair dye with acoustic 12-string guitar strapped across his narrow chest as he gazed into space (the stage lights, really), this Bowie was sometimes known by his Christian name, “David”.

Something changed. Again and Again. That’s not unusual—he’s the epitome of Change for Change’s sake (self-discontent, perhaps?). Anyhow, Bowie’s always been interesting— partly for that reason.

Bowie (no longer David, ever, you’ll notice) has always also, effortlessly it seems, devised mystique and controversy around himself more cleverly than eight Brian Epsteins combined.

I’ve had more fun arguing about, and hearing other people’s reactions to, Bowie: another reason he’s interesting. Any move made by him provoked the most inspired inanities. One of my former friends (asshole) still persists in thinking Bowie’s God (a 70’s Krishna—I’d say some sort of Zeitgeist, to be technical).

Low came out and John Rockwell in his N.Y. Times column quoted from “Be My Wife.” Disco and all, he guessed he liked it. Made me crack up. I hope Heroes perpetuates this trend of absurd reading-in-profundity controversy over Bowie; at least as a character he will keep on entertaining me.

Artistically, as a musician-singer-songwriter, me-thinks Bowie’s begun to be a bore. Okay, I admire his integrity and courage in pursuing the new, trying to blaze unforaged (pop?) musical turf (experimental music, call it), and living vicariously through Iggy (bless ‘em both). Most of side two on Heroes, though, bores me—like the Fripp/Eno albums of “atmospheric music”. I don’t care about time and effort spent in studios overdubbing tapes/loops/synthesizerized subwhite noise that make no recognizable musical sounds per se. Let’s hear some hooks, guys!

Side one of Heroes fits the bill, more or less... at least there are songs with lyrics, guitars, keyboards, percussion, and OK vocals. First hearing “Heroes” on radio, I thought an earnest Bryan Ferry imitator was singing. (Shows that Bowie still cares about being a vocalist—all right!) Seeing the album cover, I thought an imitation Gene Pitney, thinned down and blow-dried, was posing. But let’s not get carried away with analogies; or spiteful in tone (me? never!). Bowie’s an original sum-total of his influences. Even if he wasn’t aware that (Andalusian Dog—aka Un Chien Andalou) was a pretentious, unhip film to show before his performance, during the Station To Station tour, credit the man for trying.

Bowie’s not bland yet—but I feel he will be, if he veers into more cryptic lyricizing and discoid blah-shit (guitarist Carlos Alomar, bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis his consorts, along with special guests Eno and Fripp assisting).

In the final assessment, Heroes doesn’t rock. It kinda leans against the wall, acting real cool, absorbing the world in a test tube. Dig?

Trixie A. Balm