The Man Who Sold the World

by Peter Doggett

  There were countless reasons for Bowie to step off the treadmill. He was completing a two-month tour of British cinemas, theatres, and civic halls: sixty-one shows in fifty-three days, crossing the country’s notoriously inadequate road system for a diet of anonymous hotel rooms, scrambled meals, and relentlessly enthusiastic fans. After a brief pause, he was booked to endure an even more enervating schedule in America. “There was a time when what I was doing didn’t seem to resemble anything anybody else was doing,” he recalled in 2000, describing his personality as “out of sync, not in touch.” Cocaine was now his main nutrient, with all its attendant fears and excesses: “You start on this trail of psychological destruction, and you become what’s called a drug casualty at the end of it all.”

  Bowie was exhausted beyond simple repair; he was bored with the repetition, of the constant ringing in his ears, the feelings of staleness and circularity. He did not want to be Ziggy Stardust, or perhaps even David Bowie, though he did not know what would remain if he gave up both of these assumed identities. There was also the problem of his band: not just that he wanted a new sound behind him, but the embarrassing fact that two members (Bolder and Woodmansey) had discovered that another member (Garson) was earning enormously more per show than they were, and so they wanted a raise that their manager, Tony Defries, would not grant them.

  Defries had another excellent reason for encouraging Bowie to stop. The proposed US tour was being promised as the most elaborate piece of staging in rock history: the stage would be covered in a large plastic bubble, surrounded by a skin beneath which gases of various colors would be pumped during the performance, to alter Bowie’s hue and maybe even, as far as the audience were concerned, his size. It sounded like an incredible idea; and incredible it was, since there was no money in the MainMan budget to cover the expense, while RCA Records—which had cleverly been landed with the fees for the loss-making 1972 US tour—were not about to be fooled again. Bowie’s US tour receipts could not possibly match the hype that surrounded him, so the planned itinerary would have been financially disastrous for MainMan, whereas operating on a restricted budget and smaller scale would have destroyed Defries’s reputation for grand gestures and coups de théâtre.

  So the American tour could not happen, although Defries dared not let his client find out why, for fear of losing face where it mattered most. Meanwhile, Bowie prevaricated, which is one reason why his band wasn’t told in advance. As Mick Ronson admitted, “In the end it was almost a last-minute decision.” If Bowie’s bodyguard, Stuey George, was to be believed, it wasn’t even the singer’s choice: “His manager decided just before he went on. He didn’t react instantly; he didn’t think about it until he’d done half the show. . . . He said, ‘What am I going to do?,’ and his manager said, ‘Don’t you worry, leave it all to me. I’ll tell you what we are going to do after.’ ” So, according to this account by someone who was at Bowie’s side for almost every moment he was offstage, Bowie swallowed hard and did as he was told. Then—the eternal mythologist—he phoned the pop press the next day and explained that he had elected to quit because he wanted to concentrate on working in films (notably a screenplay based on Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land) and “various activities that have very little to do with rock and pop.” MainMan added that Bowie would now be “writing the script” for his future: not just the Actor, then, as he’d been credited in the small print on Hunky Dory, but the Author as well. Soon Bowie was rationalizing his retirement as a conceptual climax to a conceptual experiment in inventing and achieving rock stardom. “The star was created,” he said, as if he were talking about a robot he’d invented; “he worked; and that’s all I wanted him to do. Anything he did now would just be repetition.”

  The tedium of life on the road aside, Bowie—acting as and on behalf of Ziggy Stardust—was being more astute than perhaps he realized. By 1973, most of his peers and elders in the business of rock’n’roll were already leaving their peak of innovation and creativity behind and embarking on the long (and, as it proved, highly lucrative) process of reproducing and feigning their youthful passion for audiences who pretended that the excitement was still real. “Will this be the last time?” the media asked at the start of each Rolling Stones tour, before realizing that in the hands of the Stones, the Who, and countless others, rock would pass almost without notice from an embodiment of youthful rebellion into a highly rewarding pension plan.

  Bowie could foresee the cynicism ahead, and several weeks before he retired Ziggy Stardust from the stage, he decided to come clean. “Maybe I’m not into rock’n’roll,” he confessed to the New Musical Express. “Maybe I just use rock’n’roll. This is what I do. I’m not into rock’n’roll at all . . . it’s just an artist’s materials.” But his words didn’t make sense from a rock star, to an audience for whom rock was a shared language, their way of comprehending the world around them. So nobody, perhaps even Bowie, understood them. It was like Hamlet, at the denouement of his tragedy, holding his script up to the audience and declaring that it was all a façade. Better to do what Bowie did: announce his retirement, and then immediately throw himself into a frenzy of activity and creativity that convinced his public his retirement was simply a career move.

  One thing was certain: David Bowie would no longer be Ziggy Stardust (or, for that matter, Aladdin Sane). There would be no more Spiders from Mars. So Bowie had to face an uncertain future without the props that had served him so well. He had created a rock star, and destroyed him. The challenge was to invent a second act for what had been intended as a one-act drama.

  [76] ROSALYN

  (Duncan/Farley)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  Bowie’s first step after his apparent retirement was to travel to Paris with all but one of the Spiders (Aynsley Dunbar replacing Woody Woodmansey) and record an album of songs from the heritage of British rock, 1964–67. The sessions lasted for just three weeks, during which time he also began to sketch out plans for an elaborate piece of rock theatre, and produced a single for another veteran from the mid-sixties, Lulu.

  Other motives aside, Pin Ups allowed Bowie to repay some overdue debts. His first single with the King Bees in 1964 [A2] had been an obvious attempt to emulate the Pretty Things’ own debut, “Rosalyn,” a riot of teenage lust and excess energy. Their hallmark was the slurred, snarling voice of Phil May, compared to whom Mick Jagger sounded like an elocution coach. By 1973, Bowie had realized that he couldn’t match May for incoherent aggression, so he substituted adolescent contempt instead, otherwise mirroring the original arrangement with skill but little passion.

  [77] HERE COMES THE NIGHT

  (Berns)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  In tackling this 1965 single by Them, Bowie was competing with one of Britain’s great vocal stylists, Van Morrison. Writer/producer Bert Berns had compelled Morrison to record the song, and a hint of his disdain could be heard in his rasping approach to the chorus. Elsewhere, he managed a reasonable facsimile of the uptown soul sound of Ben E. King, best known for “Stand by Me” and “Spanish Harlem.” Bowie’s attempt to channel King, via Morrison, resulted in a sly croon, reminiscent of his mid-sixties imitations of American R&B, while Aynsley Dunbar’s drums reduced the playful skip of the original to a plod. The rather awkward, almost squawking saxophone solo was presumably the work of Bowie himself, rather than session professional Ken Fordham, who played elsewhere on this album.

  [78] I WISH YOU WOULD

  (Arnold)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  One of just two songs on Pin Ups not to be offered in the same key as the original models, “I Wish You Would” was also the album’s first major piece of reinvention. Bowie’s arrangement hinted that he had begun to soak up the mechanical, European (and defiantly non-American) rhythms of Kraftwerk. Mick Ronson’s contribution was to remove “I Wish You Would” from the
repertoire of the 1964 lineup of the Yardbirds (with blues purist Eric Clapton on guitar), into the Pop Art–oriented Yardbirds sound of 1966–67, when (Ronson’s hero) Jeff Beck and then Jimmy Page were at the helm. One of Page’s trademarks was playing his guitar with a violin bow; Ronson and Bowie enlisted an electric violin player (from the French band Zoo) to similar effect. His spectacular inventiveness, culminating in a menacing rumble of feedback that suggested a distant explosion, provoked Bowie into an impressive imitation of Page’s colleague in Led Zeppelin Robert Plant. On every level—from classic rock cover to conceptual art project—this was a stunning success.

  [79] SEE EMILY PLAY

  (Barrett)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  If “I Wish You Would” marked one chronological extreme of the Pin Ups repertoire (the Yardbirds were performing Billy Boy Arnold’s American R&B tune by the end of 1963), “See Emily Play” represented the other. Pink Floyd’s second single, originally issued in June 1967, was the only song tackled by Bowie that came from the era of full-blown psychedelia. Written by Syd Barrett, an influence on Bowie’s songwriting in the late sixties and early seventies, Pink Floyd’s record was a breathtaking mixture of electronic experimentation and commercial pop.

  Realizing that it would be pointless to imitate their pioneering exploits in sound, Bowie chose to lean on his strengths: the hard rock theatrics of Mick Ronson’s guitar, his own insight into the psychology of alienation, and his willingness to use vivid colors in his arrangements. Pink Floyd’s trippy playfulness was forgotten; instead Bowie introduced the eerie vari-speed vocal ensemble he’d used on “After All” [20] and “The Bewlay Brothers” [51], as if he were signaling that there was an inevitable path from the lysergic adventures of the so-called flower power era to mental disintegration. Mike Garson’s typically free-spirited keyboard solo revived memories of his work on “Aladdin Sane” [70], while alluding to Wagner’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” theme.* Ronson’s string arrangement widened the cultural horizons still further, as it moved seamlessly back in time from the twelve-tone experiments of the early twentieth century to close with a melody borrowed from a Beethoven symphony.

  [80] EVERYTHING’S ALRIGHT

  (Crouch/Konrad/Stavely/James/Karlson)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  Few records issued during the British beat boom of 1963–64 came close to matching the naïve excitement of the debut single by the Mojos, who were briefly one of the rawest of the era’s Liverpudlian bands. Everything thrilling about their performance—Stu James’s rasping vocal, the untutored energy of the band, the sense that nobody quite knew what was going to happen next—was lost in Bowie’s arrangement, which sounded like a parody of rock’n’roll from a West End show. His track had no center, least of all his own vocal performance, which slipped from shoddy Elvis impression to mock R&B without any apparent purpose. The final insult was the Beatles pastiche (from the climax of “She Loves You”) of cooing vocals and major 6th chord: it was impossible not to imagine the entire band going down on their knees and posing for the camera with their “jazz hands” held high.

  [81] I CAN’T EXPLAIN

  (Townshend)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  The Who’s first single under that name, “I Can’t Explain” was a compact portrait of Mod incoherence, sweetened just enough by producer Shel Talmy to pass as an acceptable 1965 pop hit. Bowie trimmed the signature guitar riff from four chords to three, lowered the key from E to C, cut the tempo, and emerged with a track that approximated the feeling of swimming underwater. Strangely, this rethinking worked, from the crunch of guitar, cymbal, and steam-whistle sax that opened the song, through Bowie’s intensely arch vocal interpretation, set to a robotic dance rhythm. Mick Ronson reproduced the famous guitar solo from Johnny Kidd & the Pirates’ 1960 hit “Shakin’ All Over” to add to the joyous sense of confusion.

  Bowie chronicler Kevin Cann suggests that an earlier version of this song was recorded during Ziggy Stardust’s brief infatuation with covering rock standards in 1972 (see [53]). The Spiders certainly performed the song in concert a full year before the Pin Ups sessions.

  [82] FRIDAY ON MY MIND

  (Vanda/Young)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  As an exhibition of the dynamics of pop music, the Easybeats’ 1966 single “Friday on My Mind” was virtually unbeatable. It captured the essence of the divide between the working week and the weekend perfectly, the tight, almost neurotic tension of the verses exploding into the release (and relief) of the chorus. Bowie’s reinterpretation completely ignored that dichotomy, acting instead as a demonstration tape of the Many Voices of David Jones—every one of them a pastiche, from Peter Sellers to Elvis Presley. He also introduced a layer of background vocals that robbed the song of its anxiety (and at one point reached an unfeasibly high E, the summit of Bowie’s vocal exploits during the seventies).

  [83] SORROW

  (Feldman/Goldstein/Gottehrer)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  The one performance on Pin Ups that suggested a real emotional commitment to the song, rather than distant nostalgia for the memory of a record, was Bowie’s revival of “Sorrow”—originally cut by the US garage band the McCoys, smoothed out for British consumption by the Merseys in 1966, and recalled affectionately by George Harrison during the fade-out of the Beatles’ “It’s All Too Much” the following year. If the cumulative effect of Pin Ups was to remind Bowie of the bands he’d wanted to lead in the mid-sixties, “Sorrow” seemed to evoke an entirely different career path, in which he might have abandoned rock entirely to become an elegant interpreter of pop’s many facets—a cross between P. J. Proby and Scott Walker, perhaps.

  There was a very real sense of melancholy to his vocal, with none of his customary theatricality, yet at the same time an amused playfulness, as if sorrow were all he had long since grown to expect. The arrangement was rich, with tenor sax to the fore, baritone honking underneath, strings that shimmered to eerie effect, an elegiac piano coda, and an entire verse on which Bowie was supported by urgent backing vocals, representing his last vain opportunity to break free.

  [84] DON’T BRING ME DOWN

  (Dee)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  The successor to “Rosalyn” [131] in the Pretty Things’ 1964 release schedule, “Don’t Bring Me Down” represented British sixties pop at its most carnal. When Phil May snarled that he had laid the heroine on the ground, any crime seemed possible. Bowie had already discovered he couldn’t outgrowl May, so once more he subjected the song to parody, crooning away all the lustful aggression of the original. Mick Ronson’s guitar offered some compensation, though any impact of his solo was lost amid the cluttered mix. Even when Bowie tried to sound like a confused adolescent, he emerged gauche, not wired. May had sung with a mixture of anger and amazement; Bowie seemed supremely self-satisfied, ridding this erotic encounter of all its apocalyptic edge.

  [85] SHAPES OF THINGS

  (Samwell-Smith/McCarty/Relf)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  Mick Ronson had emulated Jeff Beck’s vicious, stuttering finale to the Yardbirds’ 1966 “freakbeat” single on “John I’m Only Dancing” [63]. Faced with the song itself, he dragged out the repeated growl of guitar to the point of self-parody (and then repeated the trick on “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere” [86]). The Yardbirds’ guitarists always stole attention from the band’s rather anonymous singer, Keith Relf, but Bowie avoided that fate with a deliberately mannered lead vocal (note the bizarre vowel sounds of “shapes” and “lonely”), heavily phased voices in the chorus, some cacophonous antics from saxophone and bass, and a string section that continually tried to pull the track into a different key. The core of the Yardbirds’ record was Beck’s solo, played with a vio
lin bow over howls of feedback. Ronson probably realized that he couldn’t surpass it, so he settled for a showcase of two harmonized guitar lines, supporting rather than overshadowing Bowie’s starring role.

  [86] ANYWAY ANYHOW ANYWHERE

  (Townshend/Daltrey)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  Nothing on Pin Ups came closer to replicating the sound of the original record than Bowie’s rendition of the Who’s second single from 1965. The blueprint was all about tension and release, with Nicky Hopkins’s piano valiantly attempting to stabilize the track while Keith Moon’s drums rumbled and Pete Townshend unleashed a masterfully controlled blast of dynamic aggression, shaping his guitar feedback into an expression of teenage frustration.

  Bowie was twenty-six, not nineteen, so he had to manufacture the adolescent fury of his voice. Aynsley Dunbar valiantly emulated Moon’s chaotic frenzy behind the drum kit, deliberately echoing the percussive crescendos that had powered the Who’s 1966 single “Happy Jack,” while his cymbal crashes were carefully phased. Ronson added some flickers and snorts of guitar feedback to the mix, while Bowie topped them both with a final screech of falsetto.

  [87] WHERE HAVE ALL THE GOOD TIMES GONE

  (Davies)

  Recorded July 1973; Pin Ups LP

  * * *

  Ray Davies of the Kinks was already lamenting the end of an era in 1965, when most of his contemporaries believed that it was only just beginning. Like Davies, Bowie was a defiant nonbeliever in the manifesto of sixties optimism, so the Kinks’ ramshackle exercise in disgust and ennui was the perfect choice to bring down the curtain on an album, and an era. Bowie certainly achieved the required degree of disinterest in his vocal, marshaling a more metallic sound (reminiscent of his own 1970 recordings) only in the chorus. Around him, the band tried to imitate the Kinks without capturing their essence, though Mike Garson’s vaudeville piano did at least hint at Davies’s love of the London music hall.