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.
