STATION TO STATION @ 50

We open on a black and white movie. An old steam locomotive hisses thickly and rhythmically from one side of the field to the other. A distant wail of guitar feedback like an industrial era whistle. Piano notes plonk up and down and up and down like footsteps on a platform. The rest of the band join the progress, stopping to play a fancier figure before falling back into the grinding rhythm. Then a croon:

The return of the thin white duke, throwing darts in lovers' eyes.

You can see him, tall, gangling, in a Panama hat and cape, maybe a cigarette at the end of a long holder, in silhouette, walking dangerously toward you. Is he a vampire? A criminal mastermind? He breaks into song, a distant operatic caterwaul of travel and dark adventure, driving like a demon from station to station. Feels like Europe, mittel Europe, lightless nights, cocktails and betrayal. 

And then it launches into a big jaunty rock groove with a vocal that David Byrne would have replayed on a loop for whole afternoons. 

It's not the side effects of the cocaine. I'm thinking that it must be love.

And everything's too late. It's too late to be late again.

Bowie's strangest and most indefinable persona, the Thin White Duke, starts the only album he lived on with the biggest epic since Width of a Circle from his metal showcase The Man Who Sold the World. Is the Duke the same guy but older and more lethally experienced?

The European canon is here.

Maybe it is. This ain't Young Americans, this is regicide. The world conflicts of Aladdin Sane, the apocalypse of Ziggy. The post apocalyptic delirium of Diamond Dogs. And now this. 

The cover art is a still from his sci-fi film The Man Who Fell to Earth in which, impeccably cast as an alien, Bowie finally came through on the big screen like one of his stage identities. Pencil thin, his designer suits haning from his shoulders and his big fringed hair bright orange over his bloddlessly white face. Even the typesetting came into it. Red on white, sans serif font running together above the photo on the front and the same on the back with the strangely brief track listing. Six songs? Was he trying to outdo Led Zeppelin? The first track spills over the ten minute mark. Nothing's under four minutes, most are over five. This is not the guitar slinging of the Ziggy albums nor the big bright blue-eyed soul of the previous disc. It sounds like a band but the band is only allowed to play the songs, not drift into solos. More than Young Americans, this is a studio bound record.

Having put us through an itinerary of the dark and mystic underworld, Bowie then gives us a funk workout that is sharper than anything on his funk record. Golden Years starts with a delicious Strat riff that breaks into a dreamy dance track with big, modal, harmonised vocals chanting the title. It sounds like a ritual. The solo vocal comes in with a reassuring tone and follows the scansion of the bassline. He's talking to someone he calls (in falsetto) Angel. He offers her a bright life and his protection as they move from limousine to limousine and a cable of five star hotels. The cheerful handclapping disco is blended with the solemnity of the chorus chant which makes it sound like he means it. There's a video of Bowie miming this on Soul Train in late '75. He's a barely contained mess in the brief interview with he host who senses potential disaster and rushes the singer into the number. Once the groove comes up he's fine, though, mouthing every syllable and improv perfectly. One of the very few white artists to appear on the show, he towers on the riser above a crowd of happily grooving black audience and it feels both warm and alien. It would have been the weirdest sounding song they ever danced to. They seem happy about it.

Word on a Wing is the second epic of the album. Slow single notes on a piano. Someone's thinking about a melody. Slowly beneath it, a synthesised high string sound. The band comes in with a sweet sounding backing. Bowie's voice is confident to charming as he intones: "In this world of grand illusion you walked into my life out of my dreams." Like many of the other lines, this will be repeated to different effect throughout this intriguing song. It sounds increasingly like an earnest plea for meaning, connection and fulfilment. the chorus goes further by invoking a lord and the wish "my prayer flies like a word on a wing." Another thematic motif is the notion of a scheme of things. 

This is interesting. It's interesting as Bowie was an avowed atheist at this time, though he was dabbling in a host of mystical avenues. We might be getting presumptuous by thinking the lord he's addressing is the one of the Bible. Could be Nietzsche. Could be Crowley. Bowie was going through such a foggy lifestyle involving any number of self-medications like magical arcana and plain old drugs (he's already mentioned the cocaine). His appearance in the Soul Train video borders on alarming. He looks anorexic, not just thin and he's barely coherent during the hosts interview. He famously claimed that he couldn't remember writing and recording this album at all. Is Word on a Wing a real plea to a power, any power, to redeem him?

Or, and I'm not being flippant, is it just a creative exercise in imagining prayer, a character in desperation as his voice grows in intensity, circling back to the scheme of things, the age of grand illusion, settling on the cooing falsetto of the chorus? Then, when he is done, we return to the serenity of theopening moments, a high soprano voice descends but seems to transform into a synthesiser. It reminds me of a scene from Peter Carey's Bliss where a character facing execution is briefly elevated by the sight of a butterfly but then sees that it's just a lolly wrapper lifting and falling in the breeze.

The old side two opens with TVC15. A boogie piano plays a honky tonk figure as distant backing vocals lift the glottal stammer of The Yardbirds Good Morning Little Schoolgirl. The band and double tracked vocals come in with a story of a man whose girlfriend was devoured by a television. The story was Iggy Pop's from a night of tripping and Bowie took it more into the territory of David Cronenberg's Videodrome which was seven years from production. The verses are run on and ragged in scansion but have the meaty tone of a '70s band invoking a '50s band. A brief moment of order happens with Bowie crooning "transition, transmission," over stylised '50s palm muted guitar before the big chordy chant takes over: "Oh my TVC 15, oh oh, TVC 15. Repeat. Just a funny story or a tale of technological consumption? If nothing else, it's superior filler.

Stay is a hard funk workout with near metal guitar filling it out. The bass pushes past the guitars  and dances in the centre while the drums go on a gymnastic workout. Bowie's vocal sounds anxious as he tries to get her to stay the night. The melody is modal like Golden Years but its furrowed concern makes it constantly uneasy. This is like a Young Americans track that's woken after a nightmare. I finally got around to leaving this playing when listening to the whole album. It gives so little but insists so much. I used to skip it, even on the vinyl I knew it on, first. Bowie himself loved it or felt it needed resolution as he kept putting it into his sets into the following decade. The song ends on a lengthy solo that plays into the fade. Desperate but do I care?

Finally we come to the song that turned me on the record. Wild is the Wind is a cover of a song by Dimitry Tiomkin and Ned Washington and had become a standard by the likes of Johnny Mathis. A gentle sway of clean electric guitars and acoustics, drums, bass and piano. Bowie's vocal carries nothing but sincerity and his voices climbs all around its dolorous melody, melancholy but deeply romantic. It seems to curl out from the darkness of the night like a single plume of cigarette smoke that forms into a billowing cloud of silver cloud before it dissipates and fades. Utterly beautiful.

This was the first Bowie record I bought when it was new. The school cassette freemarket gave us all complete Bowie collections between tapes and vinyl and everyone had their favourites. I came to Station to Station almost by accident. I was studying for late high school exams, smoking too many cigarettes and needing something in the background that I wouldn't get distracted by and sing along to. This mostly neglected album suggested itself with its stark red song titles against the white of the sleeve. I put it on. The big gushing start of the title track took to the air and I was right, it would support not subvert my efforts at swatting. And I kept on turning to it, enjoying the sound of its brittle arrangements and big spooky vocals, sitting on the floor of my room with the lights out. It got to me as none of the others had. I don't mean I liked it better, it was more that I felt it got to me more directly. Like The Sex Pistols at the end of 1977, or This Year's Model in 1978, it was a record that knew me.

It is still an effortless listen. The arrangements all sound like they could be easily played live. The basic rock band of Ziggy to Diamond Dogs but with the particular sheen of Aladdin Sane, the shining piano and often beligerent guitars. It thankfully lacked the overproduction of Young Americans. Most of all it revisited the spooky Bowie of After All, Aladdin Sane title track, We Are the Dead, or The Bewley Brothers. That "I don't know what I was thinking but I had to follow it" sound. It does frequently freezes down to mechanicality, even the funk tracks and would lose a lot of Bowie fans going through the '70s albums. If you do step on to its platform, take a seat on the bench and wait. Here be treasures and they feel how you do.

THE MODERN LOVERS @ 50

"One two three for five six!" Bam bam bam! And we're into the iconic sleeper that punk bands would be putting into their practices for decades. Road Runner tells you almost everything you need to know about this record: the garage rock slam, the fewer the chords the better, the sing talk vocals and the relentless progression forward. You hear the whole band and above it Jonathon Richmond's idiosyncratic vocals, goofy here, poignant there, occasionally stinging. It's a song about personal freedom but also about getting your driver's licence, slamming in a car and driving anywhere, connecting, feeling the modern world like the breeze through the window.

This band began in high school but Jonathon Richman was already a veteran. He'd been touing his stuff on stages since 1967, supporting the Velvet Underground and hanging with them. By the time this recording was made, its songs were crafted and ready, not so perfect that they rode on prepared parts but not so loose as to get jammy and ditch form. The music is appreciably a band effort and can get a little wayward but by this stage it's down to Richman's control over the various personae he adopts. These characters guide the songs.

Astral Plane is a horny teenager slyly telling the girl who won't sleep with him that he'll see her on the mystical setting of the title. It's done in a kind of jazz age snap, two four and be there. Old world has future Talking Head Jerry Harrison shine on organ. He loves the '50s apartment house in the 1970s sun, he loves the secret knowledge of the past and the young man he is now. 

This album is made from demos, partially produced by Velvet alumnus John Cale. The debt is there in the simple chords and clean tone of the rhythm guitar. The first distortion is on the wandering lead break in Pablo Picasso, a lament in envy of the artist's power over women. No one ever called Pablo Picasso an asshole. It plays on a single chord and Richman's vocal stands on the footpath watching as the master of seduction (be he Picasso himself or any alpha scenester leering around the town).  End of side one.

She Cracked drives on beeping guitars and restless rhythm section beating forward as Richman tells us about a girl who seems chaotic to him but he likes it. He loves, he hates, she eats garbage while he tucks into health food. She's big with the students and it makes him feel inadequate. "She cracked, I'm sad but I won't..." The shouted chorus could be from 1967 or the 1977 to come. Punk before its time.

Then there's Hospital. "When you get out of the hospital let me back into your life. I can't stand what you do. I'm in love with your eyes." Slow descending chords on the organ sound like church. It always sounds to me like the boy from I'm Straight made his move and it ended in disaster. Now, he waits outside the singles bars she goes to, incel to stalker. "I can't stand what you do, sometimes I can't stand you. It makes me think about me, how I'm involved with you," he says in a rush and then, more quietly, "but I'm in love with this power that shows through in your eyes." He's never said any of this to her. When she does get out of hospital the only contact between them will probably be confined to visual, all those eyes, tear stained or worthy of obsession, and it will frustrate. It's not all droolingly superficial; he does think of her, how she would met the world as a young girl with wonder and, though the line is joking it's also scarifying, he goes to bakeries from a lack of sweetness in his life. Have you ever been this controlled by obsession? You have if you lived through the years fifteen to twenty. If you were dirven to poetry it would not have been this clear-eyed and empathetic. He's not puffing himself up, pretending his crises are two sided, he's admitting he has no power to change this and that any attempt at concilliation is doomed. It will ony mean more pain. The power that shows through in her eyes will only be directed toward him in self defence. The wrong person went to hospital. The slow circles of the chord progression roll on.

Someone I Care About is the kind of Kinks track that every garage band in the land tried out. He doesn't just want sex, he wants someone he cares about, ending the riff on the seventh with the cry, "alright, gentlemen". Three and a half minutes of exhilaration. Girlfriend's end of the party slumping slow rock. Richman himself sounds end of night. He walks into the gallery and looks at the art. He goes to the baseball stadium and feels the awe of the game. Both things let him understand the majesty of a girlfriend.

Modern World is all hand claps and spiky seventh riffing, distorted organ solo, call and response choruses and more Jonathan siging abou the girlfriend he needs. He likes the modern world because it's not as bad as all the students go on about. He likes it all. He's the same guy in the car with the radio on in Road Runner. Full circle.

This album sits by itself. I don't mean that it isn't as derivative as any record by a bunch of adolescent will be. I mean the derivations are just not important. Yes, I can hear the Velvet Underground in these grooves along with half of what went on Nuggets. I can hear Television, Talking Heads and a world of late '70s punk, as well. What I don't hear is the unpolished nihilism of a band that didn't quite fit into anything when it was recorded and didn't on its release years later.

The tracks were recorded and finished by 1972 but the LP didn't come out until 1976. It's a blend of sessions, remixed from the source tapes. Jerry Harrison donated his tape of Hospital. He was already in Talking Heads by then but happy to help. By then, the Modern Lovers no longer existed beyond this, their only official platter. By 1974, after a failure to turn these recordings into an album and a lot of internal unrest, the band dissolved, leaving Jonathan Richman to go it alone which he is doing to this day. So, why bring the thing out at all?

Well, this reminds me of a case from decades later and in a different medium. Tarsem Singh's film The Fall, a fantasy about the wonders of storytelling and the imagination comparable to The Princess Bride, contains some of the most arresting visuals you are likely to see but is held up by decent writing and performances that are pitch perfect. On its release in 2006 it did some festival business but stiffed whenever it was offered to everyday cinema audiences. Why? Because it's a hard sell. The international images are breathtaking, the humour works and the balance between it and the more serious concerns also works. But. There are character deaths, animal harm, some convincing gore and a central motivation of self harm. This is a kids movie that can't be shown to kids. 

The Modern Lovers wasn't very 1972 at all. It had strong songs that could rouse or provoke thought. The music was engaging all through. Richman's personality carried every track. But it just wasn't The Faces or Blood Sweat and Tears or Humble Pie or Led Zeppelin or Don McLean or Carol King or ... I could do this all day. If it had been released when the New York scene bands were springing up, it would have been one of the few records of that tribe that had a chance at hitting. But by that stage it was another seminal stack, one of the records everyone had and then other people wanted to sound just like it. It was hard to sell stalking and venerality that wasn't cock rock in the early '70s. 

Jonathan Richman's teenagers weren't Bruce Springsteen's, David Bowie's or even Alice Coopers. They had no glamour, no class or bravado, they were losers. By 1976 when it did get released, disco was young and appropriately mindless, love songs sounded like Boston. Over the pond, the stirrings of the so to be infamous snarls and walls of power that would be British punk were making room in the crowd for the likes of this record but it was and remains a personal discovery. People then and since hear the goofiness of Road Runner and think they're in for a bubblegum Velvet Underground. They probably give up after Pablo Picasso.

This record can be unlovely on first listen. It needs to be lived with, listened to while walking or doing the dishes so the spiky bits normalise and you start to hear what Richman is talking about. When the cute songs become one with the Hospitals and She Crackeds it sounds like a whole deal. Not bad for a record made in shifts months and even years apart. The CD releases are all good and include extra tracks that feel right like I'm Straight and Dignified and Old. Finally, an augmented record that improves on the original. If you come across this version, fine. If you come across the original version, fine. Just commit to a few times with it. You'll keep it because it'll keep you.

Listening notes: For this article I listened to thevery clean and full mastering at CD resolution from a legit retail online shop. It's the best I've heard it.