The Man Who Sold the World

by Peter Doggett

  It was surely not a coincidence that “Quicksand” was written in America, of which Bowie said in 1971 that it had “opened one door,” and a crucial one at that. Like his readings in the occult, which had preoccupied him for the previous year or more, America offered alternate views of his future; took him out of his everyday environment, and the thinking associated with it; and freed him to experience life in a more direct and fulfilling way. Everyone is familiar with the feeling of liberation that can come on vacation, when you decide to quit your job, leave your partner, or simply stop worrying about the mundane pressures of life at home. Except: when you get home, it takes only a few minutes for the old routine to regain control, and all of that transcendence is lost. Bowie’s breakthrough—his escape from the quicksand—was that he was able to use his first visits to America as a means of avoiding those traps. Hence “Changes”: Bowie had discovered how to access his unconscious and bring its treasures to the surface.

  Yet, as the small print of “Quicksand” revealed, this was not a painless or reliable process. “Sometimes I don’t feel as if I’m a person at all,” he let slip in a 1972 interview. “I’m just a collection of other people’s ideas.” And here they were, a bewildering collection of voices, each threatening to impose thought onto the unconscious. Many of them were tantalizing, because they seemed to be seeking the same thing as Bowie: that explained the appeal of the occult teachings of the Order of the Golden Dawn, or the man who effectively destroyed that organization, Aleister Crowley. No wonder Bowie declared that he was torn between light and dark—white and black magick, trusting in human potential, or seeking the help of Satan. From Nietzsche he had already felt the lure of being human, with potential of becoming a “superman”; he had been raised in a culture soaked in the “bullshit faith” of Christianity. Most of all, he had been attracted for many years by the promise of transcendence offered by Zen Buddhism,* the philosophy of which was neatly summarized in the chorus. Now even Buddhism might be suspect in Bowie’s search for enlightenment—a quest for the total goal that, as he admitted elsewhere in the song, terrified him at the same time he realized its inevitability.

  This was a song that begged for academic annotation, to discuss whether, for example, Churchill’s lies were those alleged in a notorious late sixties play about the death of the Polish wartime leader Sikorski, or whether he was considering intimacy with a snake because he had recently attended a late-night screening of the classic film noir Kiss of the Viper Woman. But in the context of this song, all that is quicksand: conscious, distracting thought; a neurotic need for explanation and consistency. The music offered another choice: between the tight and tense melodic framework of the verses, almost Dylanesque in their construction, with a questioning rise at the end of several lines; and the choruses, which were all ebb and flow, effortlessly sweeping to a high Bb with an ease that suggested Bowie had already discovered one way of transcending the everyday.

  On his original acoustic demo (included on the extended CD of Hunky Dory), Bowie set the song higher than on the finished record, with the result that he sounded like a child bewildered by ideas beyond his grasp. The ragged edge to his voice also conveyed the immediacy of the song’s drama: he did not yet know whether he could escape the quicksand. All of that uncertainty had vanished when the song was recorded professionally—the irony being that it was the careful nature of the arrangement, the product of conscious thought rather than unconscious instinct, that conveyed the power of Bowie’s message. The opening gambit of acoustic guitar and shimmering vibes gave way to an epic canopy of sound, with massed guitars (and multiple Bowies, in the chorus) decorated by a lavish string score, Rick Wakeman’s flamboyant piano, and a succession of urgent drum fills from Woody Woodmansey. Yet the genius of Ken Scott’s production was that the overwhelming impression left by “Quicksand” was of a solitary man looking for a solution, the almost decadent arrangement merely reinforcing the existential drama of Bowie’s song.

  [51] THE BEWLAY BROTHERS

  (Bowie)

  Recorded July 1971; Hunky Dory LP

  * * *

  Bowie told producer Ken Scott that the final track on Hunky Dory was deliberately meaningless,* designed to bamboozle American rock critics with its obscure imagery. The artist was merely covering his tracks. “I like ‘The Bewlay Brothers’ so much, only because it’s so personal,” Bowie conceded in 1972. “I’m sure it doesn’t mean a thing to anybody else, and I’m sorry if I inflicted myself upon people with that track.” He subsequently told his cousin that it was actually a portrait of his relationship with his brother, Terry, and confirmed this interpretation during a 1977 radio interview. Certainly the song retained great significance for him, as he used its name for his music publishing company, founded in 1976. But the title was only obliquely personal: Bewlay’s was a chain of London tobacconists (something Bowie signaled at the start of the track by striking a match and lighting up).

  Even though none of his potential audience would have been able to pierce the skin of his secret, Bowie made sure that he kept any identifying details under heavy wraps. Only an occasional reference to madness and mental dislocation suggested the subject of his song. This dense, deliberately obtuse lyric was as much about the play of language and the joy of its sound as it was about two human beings. The first line insisted that this was all mythology—or, like Herman Melville’s epic novel, “a whale of a lie.” It would be possible to deconstruct every line in search of meaning: was the reference to a dress harking back to the cover of The Man Who Sold the World? Were the Moonboys a teenage gang in Beckenham? But the song didn’t respond on those lines.

  You could learn more from the cramped melody of the verses, and their suburban claustrophobia, and the way that the chorus burst into open space when “we were gone”—liberated, or unrestrained by the bounds of sanity, perhaps. The initial intimacy of the vocal, matter-of-fact like a well-worn story, gave way to the double- or triple-tracked voice of the chorus, attacked by the sweeping gulls of Mick Ronson’s interjections of backward guitar. From the second verse, the singer was accompanied by a spoken voice, as if his personality were shearing apart. A sense of urgency took hold, which grew until the strange relief of the coda. Then a mock-Cockney music hall ditty (compare Cream’s “Mother’s Lament,” and remember Terry Burns’s breakdown after a Cream concert) mutated into a congress of hobgoblins, as the vari-speed voices of 1967 returned with evil intent: the stuff of nightmares, conjuring up the eerie mental landscape of the man who had once shaped Bowie’s world.

  [52] LIFE ON MARS?

  (Bowie)

  Recorded August 1971; Hunky Dory LP

  * * *

  Having lost the race to the moon, the Soviet Union redirected its space scientists into another battle with the United States: the first landing of a probe on Mars. Two Russian craft were launched on May 19 and 28, 1971, with the admirably simple names of Mars 2 and Mars 3; on May 30, America retaliated with Mariner 9, which trumped its rivals by arriving in Martian orbit first. Even though an earlier mission, Mariner 4, had debunked the notion that there were canals on Mars, and therefore some form of recognizable life-form, this flurry of interplanetary activity was enough to spark headlines around the world, asking the age-old question: Is there life on Mars?

  David Bowie had already decided to claim Ziggy Stardust’s backing band as Martian invaders: the Red Planet had fascinated him since he was a child, when he had heard Holst’s The Planets suite, and he had later devoured science fiction about Mars, such as Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (published in Britain as The Silver Locusts). But “Life on Mars?” had no connection with our planetary neighbor, beyond a title that was simply a reference to a media frenzy, of the same brand that could envelop a film star and a fan in a symbiosis of desire.

  Ironically, the song developed out of a side effect of that relationship. Bowie had watched enviously as Frank Sinatra, whose movie persona he admired, had achieved the biggest success of his recording ca
reer with “My Way.” Like Bowie’s own “Even a Fool Learns to Love” [A50], it was an English adaptation of Claude François’s “Comme d’Habitude”—the publisher of which had opted for Paul Anka’s interpretation rather than Bowie’s own. It was impossible to fault that decision on artistic grounds, but the perceived slight still rankled with Bowie, who determined to exact his revenge by reusing elements of the song to his own purposes. Hence the coy dedication on the back cover of Hunky Dory: “Inspired by Frankie.” Carefully avoiding copyright infringement, he borrowed the chord sequence from the opening lines of “My Way” and reproduced it as the opening to “Life on Mars?”—but with a different rhythm and melody line.

  Like “Changes” [48], “Life on Mars?” evolved on the piano, with a single-finger bass line descending in the stately fashion that was something of a Hunky Dory trademark. Once it was transferred from the fumbling hands of Bowie to the classically trained Rick Wakeman, the accompaniment assumed flamboyant proportions. It was an epic journey from the single piano note that opened the song to the climax of Mick Ronson’s gargantuan orchestral arrangement. Besides his own guitar fanfares (and a solo apparently inspired by George Harrison’s “Something”; Ken Scott recalled that Ronson nailed it in a single take), Ronson’s score featured grim-reaper cellos, echoing the bass in the chorus, and a tumultuous finale involving a full string section making eight descents in just two bars, each beginning a note above where its predecessor had ended, till it gained the force of a river torrent. After the cellos made one last climb up the scale, 2001-style timpani sounded a funereal farewell. But Wakeman’s piano refused to die with the rest, and tinkled on until, deep in the mix, a phone began to ring and a voice could be heard saying, “I think that’s the one.”

  Bowie’s vocal—also a first take, according to producer Ken Scott—was equal to the majesty of the arrangement, as he hit a high Bb at the end of the chorus and held it for three whole bars. The passion of that climax contrasted with the acerbic, almost nasal tone of the verses, Bowie’s sardonic voice rising to exasperation as he lamented the predictability of Hollywood. (Perhaps it was not a coincidence that while Bowie was lambasting Hollywood, he revised a line from the Hollywood Argyles, whose 1960 hit “Alley-Oop” ended with a very similar line about a caveman.) America’s movie capital was the key motif of the song, a manufacturer of dreams and stars that have become stale with repetition. The girl in the first verse—a refugee from “London Boys” [A21], perhaps—can no longer believe in the fantasies she is being fed.

  As Bowie widened his sights, so more icons crumpled beneath his gaze: Mickey Mouse, Lennon (up for sale, like any other pop star, regardless of his political ideals), all the heroes of those hordes of what Leona Helmsley would call “the little people.” And where did that leave Bowie, pouring out his heart one more time for people he despised, over a chord sequence that everyone had heard ten times or more? The clash of cynical despair and passionate commitment was almost shocking—not least for what it revealed about how Bowie saw his own role as a star in the making, at the end of this remarkable performance of a deeply unsettling song.

  HUNKY DORY LP

  Arguably the most commercial album David Bowie ever released, Hunky Dory was a statement about stardom, and the creation of fame, by a man who was not yet a star. In retrospect, when so many of its songs have become pop standards—“Life on Mars?” [52], “Changes” [48], “Oh! You Pretty Things” [30] among them—it seems remarkable that Hunky Dory didn’t establish Bowie as the most credible successor to the Beatles that the new decade had yet produced. Instead it passed almost unnoticed, its profile erased rather than boosted by Bowie’s decision to proclaim “I’m gay” a few weeks after it was released.

  There have been rumors since that either Bowie or Tony Defries, or both of them, chose not to promote Hunky Dory in anything like an orthodox fashion, because they were holding back for the launch of Ziggy Stardust just seven months later. “It was an interim project to get me through the recording contract,” Bowie explained later, “which meant that I had to have an album out.” If Hunky Dory’s quality had won out, and the album had been a significant success, then the Ziggy experiment might have been abandoned: the impact of Ziggy was all the more intense because it was unexpected.

  If Ziggy represented a concept being brought to life, then its predecessor was an attempt to explore what stardom, and notoriety, might represent. “Song for Bob Dylan” [40] and “Andy Warhol” [47] examined two of the era’s dominant figures in Pop Art (in the widest sense); “Life on Mars?” asked whether, ultimately, everyone was for sale; “Changes” found Bowie testing out his own willingness to adapt or compromise to achieve success.

  The album cover was both ironic and iconic in its use of star imagery: Bowie arrived at the photo session clutching a volume of Marlene Dietrich portraits, and singled out the image that he wanted Brian Ward to replicate. This was stardom of the old school (a theme he would revisit on Young Americans), and the result was a photograph every bit as ambiguous about its gender as “Lady Stardust” [33]. Indeed, Bowie’s new record company, RCA,* had to be persuaded to accept the design, because it feared that the W. H. Smith’s chain would refuse to display such a confusing image of a man.

  The London underground newspaper International Times astutely noted that Hunky Dory “has very little to do with David Bowie the poet, something to do with David Bowie the performer, lots to do with David Bowie the artiste, and most of all with David Bowie the public relations expert. He’s caught up in a lot of games, so he plays them properly.” And the games were only just beginning. Alongside the strength of his songs, Bowie was teaching his audience that all stardom is an illusion, everything authentic is a fake. It was time for Ziggy Stardust to ram the lesson home.

  [53] ROUND AND ROUND

  (Berry)

  Recorded November 1971; single B-side

  * * *

  When the Rolling Stones covered Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” (the B-side of his 1958 “Johnny B. Goode” single) in 1964, they were acknowledging one of their heroes, in the studio where the original recording had been made. By 1971, when Bowie and the Spiders revived the song for Ziggy Stardust, they had shortened the title and quickened the pace, in the same way that Elvis Presley was speeding through his fifties hits in Las Vegas in a vain effort to make them seem as exciting as they had once been. Throughout the seventies, it was almost obligatory for rock bands of every ilk to offer their audiences an encore of fifties rock’n’roll classics: it was, they assumed, the shared heritage of their audience. Some artists made a living from pretending that the fifties had never ended (Sha Na Na, the Wild Angels); others, such as the Flamin’ Groovies (particular favorites of Bowie’s at this point), channeled the spirit of Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard into their contemporary music, as if the sixties had never happened. Or as Marc Bolan explained in 1971: “What I’ve been trying to do is recapture the feeling, the energy, behind old rock music without actually doing it the same technically.”

  Bowie’s performance of “Round and Round” seemed to have been conceived in a similar spirit. Had it been included on Ziggy, as Bowie originally intended (and as the title track, no less), it would have punctured any fantasy that the Spiders were exotic rock stars from another planet. They’d have been exposed, instead, as leaden-footed and crass, fronted by a man who had learned little about how to generate rock’n’roll excitement since “Liza Jane” [A2] in 1964. Mick Ronson’s instantly recognizable guitar sound—the tonal product of a wah-wah pedal, a Marshall amp, and a 1968 Les Paul—was perfect for Bowie’s material, but overdramatic for a twelve-bar rock’n’roll tune. The Spiders’ “Round and Round” worked only if the previous interpretations could be wiped from history.

  Berry’s song wasn’t the only borrowed tune to feature in the Spiders’ stage shows, though it was their solitary homage to the fifties. Bowie preferred to revisit more recent memories, which is why he treated Cream’s “I Feel Free” t
o a turbulent makeover, Ronson regularly indulging in a lengthy guitar solo while Bowie changed costumes backstage. Lou Reed’s “Waiting for the Man” [A44] and “White Light/White Heat” were also in Ziggy’s repertoire: “white light makes me sound like Lou Reed,” Bowie sang hopefully but not entirely accurately. His occasional version of the Beatles’ “This Boy,” a B-side from 1963, was interesting to imagine but not to hear. More intriguing, in retrospect, was the medley of two contemporary James Brown cuts that Bowie concocted in 1972, combining “You Gotta Have a Job” with “Hot Pants.” This was unusual territory for a rock band: although Mod acts such as the Who had tackled some of Brown’s early R&B hits, no British performers had dared to attempt the propulsive funk that was his current bag. Bowie’s audience must have been baffled as he strutted the stage like the R&B legend he’d dreamed of becoming in 1965, manfully squeaking his soprano sax in imitation of Brown’s sidekick Jimmy Parker. All would become clearer in 1974, despite Bowie’s promise two years earlier that “I’m never going to try and play black music because I’m white. Singularly white!”

  GLAD TO BE GAY

  In 1971, Bowie visited America in a man’s dress and told the Daily Mirror, “My sexual life is normal.” In 1972, he told Melody Maker’s Michael Watts, “I’m gay, and I always have been, even when I was David Jones.” Watts astutely noted Bowie’s “sly jollity” during that January interview: the campness of someone who presented himself as “a swishy queen, a gorgeously effeminate boy” and displayed gay magazines prominently on his coffee table when journalists were due. Sexual preferences aside, this was a carefully chosen pose, for all Bowie’s subsequent claim that “It wasn’t a premeditated thing.” It certainly worried his mother, who asked him, “What’s happening, David? Are you changing your sex?” “Don’t believe a word of it, Mum,” Bowie assured her.