A Year With Bowie [Part 2] – January

I have something very important to tell you. You might want to sit down, as this is going to come as a surprise. I have seen the future. In the year 2046, we will be celebrating the career of Paolo Nutini. From his humble, some would say wretched debut album, he will go on to have a succession of triumphs, taking in a wide range of musical styles. In 2014 we will be marvelling at his reinvention into “Barry Mindbend and the Locusts of Twix”. In 2018 he will become The Chubby Red Jock, to much acclaim. The end of that decade will see him holed up in Butlins recording a trio of extreme death-metal albums. Few will care at his involvement in the band “Copper Engine”, but all will be forgiven with his “White Scarf, Nice Trousers” album in 2030. He is going to be amazing. He will straddle the planet. His music will be life-changing.

Of course, this is nonsense. Or rather I hope its nonsense. But if someone had said this to you in 1967 as you sat and listened to the debut release by David Bowie, you would be equally rammed to the gills with scoff. There is something so desperately needy about David Bowie, so eager to please, bobbing about trying to attract attention like an errant schoolboy. The music is so painfully twee at times, and the words, the hopeless lyrics, are equally trite.

What makes it even more of an ordeal are all the attempts at whimsy and humour that sound so utterly shoe-horned in. Shocking as well is how little Bowie seemed to care about credibility, happy to shackle himself to any musical style that might provide a hit. ‘The Laughing Gnome’ is thankfully not on the album, but forever linked with this period of his life. It’s actually not a bad little novelty song, amusing enough, but depressing in context as it shows just how needy Bowie was at the time. It gives the impression that he would have recorded himself taking a dump if he thought it might get him on Ready Steady Go.

For me, the nadir is ‘Love You ‘Til Tuesday’, with the full gamut of everything that is wrong here. Vomit inducing strings, attempts at humour and silly voices (“because its only me, sweet goodness“) are all thrown into the song. And the pitiful “Well I might stretch ’til Wednesday” makes me want to throw more than a lolly-stick at his face. ‘Rubber Band’ is full of oompah and mock shrieks of indignation, and ‘Uncle Arthur’ is a distant relative of ‘Tracey Jacks’, without the charm and intelligence. The majority of the lyrics sound like a Mighty Boosh crimp (“Monkeys made of gingerbread and sugar horses painted red“, I thank you), random word association and no connective themes.

Apart from ‘We Are Hungry Men’ of course, a song so incredibly offensive on all sorts of levels, advocating the use of infanticide, mass abortion, bemoaning the population crisis with the culling of the nations children the only answer. It’s completely baffling, out of place, and, like the rest of this album makes me start to Not Like David Bowie, rendering it a rather dangerous piece indeed. The rules of this project (yes, I am a boy, I have devised rules) are that I can only look back at Bowie, never forward. I can’t play ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ until November. I desperately needed to cleanse the Bowie palette with something good to rid the bad taste this album left, but sadly couldn’t. Hopefully Space Oddity will save us all…

As a space obsessed child, I was always slightly frightened by the song ‘Space Oddity’. I guess it was the fatalistic disposition, the sense of doom you felt for Major Tom as Ground Control try in vain to raise him. You picture him, slowly spinning in space as his oxygen runs out, driven mad by his situation. Nowadays, the song is all about how loud I can bellow along to it in the car, but as a child it was magical and unnerving and hearing it now does give me that Proustian rush back to those days. It’s a great introduction, as here is where Bowie really begins.

His second album, whilst by no means perfect, is streets ahead of his debut. ‘Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed’ is a blast, starting simply with strummed guitar, ending on a cacophony of harmonica and squally electrics. There are occasional lapses to the theatrics of his debut (‘An Occasional Dream’ in particular) but this is stronger, more passionate, and much more “Bowie”. ‘Cygnet Committee’ slowly unwinds into melody, whilst ‘Letter to Hermione’ is light and delicate. It ends well too – ‘Memory of Free Festival’, whilst far from being a masterpiece, allows him to stretch his artistic muscles into something with a lot less structure and a lot more experimentation.

It is here that Bowie truly begins. With the aid of Tony Visconti (and the benefit of hindsight) you start to hear the artist he was to become. In a way, it is fortunate his debut was such a failure, as it allowed to shift his focus away from whimsical, lighter music onto something with a bit more substance. What would the future have been like if ‘The Laughing Gnome’ had been a hit? Bowie could have been another Tommy Steele, nothing more than a showman, a Peter Andre for the sixties. Thankfully, history forgets his early years, allowing him to shine and change shape into the seventies. And for this, we should all be thankful.
David Bowie 24%
Space Oddity 62%

A Year With Bowie