Often Copied, Never Equalled: David Bowie unleashes Scary Monsters

David Bowie : It's No Game (Part 1)

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Scary Monsters for me has always been some kind of purge. It was me eradicating the feelings within myself that I was uncomfortable with… You have to accommodate your pasts within your persona. You have to understand why you went through them. That’s the major thing. You cannot just ignore them or put them out of your mind or pretend they didn’t happen or just say ‘Oh I was different then.’
-David Bowie

On September 12, 1980 David Bowie released Scary Monsters...(And Super Freaks), his first #1 UK album since Diamond Dogs. Recorded in New York City without Brian Eno, the album is a departure from the Berlin Trilogy. Producer Tony Visconti says Bowie, perhaps inspired by the success of Gary Numan, wanted to make a commercial album. The tag line for album promotions would be "Often Copied, Never Equalled".

At 33, Bowie had become an elder statesman of the rock scene and like most of us older fellows, he thought less of the current strain of music. In "Teenage Wildlife" he is almost certainly targeting Gary Numan in the lines

Same old thing in brand new drag
Comes sweeping into view
As ugly as a teenage millionaire
Pretending it's a whiz-kid world

Numan's reaction:

"I was quite proud about it at the time, to be honest. Even though I'd fallen out with him it still made me feel, Wahey!I'm in a Bowie song. That's cool."

Sessions began in March of 1980. Although Adrian Belew had been paid for the sessions Robert Fripp did most of the guitar work. Both Pete Townshend ("Because You're Young") and Tom Verlaine, whose "Kingdom Come" is the only cover, made appearances at sessions, but Verlaine, like Belew, is absent from the recording.

 The original songs took months to evolve. "People Are Turning to Gold" would become "Ashes to Ashes" (previously discussed) ; "It Happens Everyday" became "Teenage Wildlife" and "Jamaica" became the second single "Fashion". ( Bowie's acting skills would come in handy during the video age. Here he plays both an iconic star and his biggest fan).

  Bowie took the New York tapes with him and eventually came up with the lyrics. The vocals were recorded in London at Good Earth where actress Michi Hirota added forceful Japanese narration to the title track.

Sean Mayes, the pianist on Lodger and the Stage tour, later recalled listening to Scary Monsters with Bowie. " David was depressed – as he always is after completing a project. He was sure it was terrible and would be a failure. But then he laughed and said this was how he always felt!”

That's not how critics felt. Record Mirror's Simon Ludgate awarded it seven stars out of a maximum five. Robert Christgau gave the album a B+ writing

 No concepts, no stylistic excursions, no avant collaborations--this songbook may be the most conventional album he's ever put his name on. Vocally it can be hard to take--if "Teenage Wildlife" parodies his chanteur mode on purpose the joke's not worth the pain, and if you think Tom Verlaine can't sing, check out "Kingdom Come"--though anyone vaguely interested has already made peace with that. Lyrically it's too facile as usual, though the one about Major Tom's jones gets me every time. And musically, it apotheosizes his checkered past, bringing you up short with a tune you'd forgotten you remembered or a sonic that scrunches your shoulders or a beat that keeps you on your feet when your coccyx is moaning sit down.

Scott Isler, writing for Trouser Press:

Bowie's current high-relief music may not be to everyone's taste, but Scary Monsters represents a plateau in a career made up of plateaus. Its songs are quirky, intriguing and meticulously presented; musically, only Fripp has any leeway, and his solos total about a minute and a half for the whole album...Bowie continues to amaze. 

And from Smash Hits:

 Scary Monsters doesn't have the consistency of my favorite Bowie albums. Not all of the songs are up to the standard I associate with Bowie. Apparently critics felt this was a high water mark because every album of the 90's would be called the "best Bowie album since Scary Monsters". He wouldn't top it until his final years.

Shaun Cassidy and Todd Rundgren team up for 1980's most unusual album

Shaun Cassidy : Rebel Rebel

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On September 1, 1980 Shaun Cassidy released Wasp, one of the most unusual albums of 1980, because it was produced by Todd Rundgren whose band Utopia performed on the songs. Six of the tracks are covers including the single, David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel". 

Cassidy told Trouser Press Rundgren selected most of the songs.

I'd been listening to rock n roll ever since I can remember; "Da Do Ron Ron" (his US#1 hit) was the first single I ever bought...I had enjoyed the album Todd did for Grand Funk, but I really wasn't familiar with what he had been doing with Utopia. Todd gave me a list of records to familiarize myself with --some of them great, some of them terrible, but all material he thought I should know.

I enjoy Elvis Costello more than I used to. The B-52's are real dumb...I like that

Overall my attitude toward music has changed. I used to haver to like the songs or the way the performer would sing. Now, I'm more interested in commitment. I like Tom Petty's work a lot. Bruce Springsteen, too, though he seems to be in a bit of a rut.

David Cassidy's younger brother's own career was in a bit of a rut . His previous album failed to chart. So Shaun followed Rundgren's suggestions, recording covers of The Who's "So Sad About Us" The Four Tops' "Shake Me Wake Me (When It's Over)", The Animals' "It's My Life", and Talking Heads' "The Book I Read". The latter is especially egregious.

Rundgren also offered up some of his own originals including the title track. Hard to imagine what a young fan might have thought of this album. Wasp failed to chart , bringing he 21 year old singer's musical career pretty much to an end.

Bowie's Ashes To Ashes is a UK#1 nursery rhyme about spacemen junkies

David Bowie : Ashes To Ashes

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On August 8, 1980 David Bowie released his UK#1 single "Ashes To Ashes". Right from the start it sounds like nothing else, combining the funky bass playing of George Davis with a piano played through an Eventide Instant Flanger. Session guitarist Chuck Hamer came in with a newly invented guitar synthesizer.

"He gave us a quick demonstration of how he would pick a note, and out of his amplifier would come a symphonic string section.” co-producer Tony Visconti recalled.  “The sound was glorious. It’s the warm string choir you hear on the part that goes, ‘I’ve never done good things, I’ve never done bad things...’”  

The song revisits Major Tom from 1969's "Space Oddity" (“Do you remember a guy that’s been/ In such an early song.” ) and he is not doing well.

 Bowie has said that the song has elements of autobiography. The case is made by Nicholas Pegg in The Complete David Bowie:

The “Action Man” who has fallen so low might well parallel the former “Main Man” whose music went from “funk to funky” in 1975 as he became “a junkie” in the City of Angels (“strung out in heaven’s high”), before hit- ting the depths during The Man Who Fell To Earth (“I ain’t got no money and I ain’t got no hair”), and relocating to Europe for creative and spiritual rebirth (“hitting an all-time Low”), but still yearning to demolish the frozen emotions and paranoiac isolation to which he had fallen victim (“Want an axe to break the ice, I wanna come down right now”). If ‘Space Oddity’ was in part a metaphor of space travel as celebrity as drug-taking as sensory isolation, then ‘Ashes To Ashes’ represents the pay-off.

The song ends with a nursery rhyme:

My mother said
To get things done 
You better not mess with Major Tom

"It really is an ode to childhood," Bowie told NME in 1980. " If you like, a popular nursery rhyme. It's about space men becoming junkies (laughs)."

Smash Hits: "Not a hit"

  In an interview with Performing Songwriter in 2003, Bowie explained the influence of Danny Kaye's performance in Hans Christian Anderson: 

“Something like ‘Ashes to Ashes’ wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t have been for ‘Inchworm,’” he said. “There’s a child’s nursery rhyme element in it, and there’s something so sad and mournful and poignant about it. It kept bringing me back to the feelings of those pure thoughts of sadness that you have as a child, and how they’re so identifiable even when you’re an adult.”

The music video was shot at Beachy Head and Hastings in May 1980 on a budget of £25,000, making it the most expensive pop video of its day. It uses the new-fangled Paint- box technique to turn skies black and seas pink, and premiered one of his best-remembered looks, the sad-faced clown . 

Bowie storyboarded the video for director David Mallet and recruited some of the nattily dressed new romantics from The Blitz.

 Future Visage frontman Steve Strange is one of the four following Bowie, pursued by a menacing bulldozer

“My robe kept catching in the bulldozer,” Strange later told biographer Marc Spitz. “That’s why I kept doing that move where I pull my arm down. So I wouldn’t be crushed. Bowie liked the move and used it later.” 

The album that nearly killed Iggy Pop's career

Iggy Pop : Knocking 'Em Down (In the City)

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In February of 1980 Iggy Pop released Soldier, an album almost as lifeless as the zombie Pop appears to be portraying on the cover. On paper, it should have worked. Iggy recorded the album with former Sex Pistol Glen Matlock, ex-XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews, Steve New, formerly of Rich Kids, and Ivan Kral, Patti Smith's former bass player. A reluctant James Williamson of The Stooges was  hired to produce the album after doing such a fine job writing and producing the songs on New Values. Arista Records wanted a record that would make Iggy a star.

The magic did not happen a second time.  As Paul Trynka writes in Iggy Pop ( Open Up and Bleed), Iggy was unhappy to be recording in Wales. The recordings were leaden. The songs dull. Williamson was bringing a bottle of vodka and a revolver to the sessions. The musicians assumed it was loaded, but nobody ever asked. 

"No on was flying the plane," Andrews told Trynka.

The only highlight of the sessions was the day David Bowie visited, wearing a cape. He sat down in the studio dining room and entertained the band as well as members of Simple Minds who were recording next door. Bowie captivated the room with a story about infamous British gangster John Bindon, his giant cock, and his affair with Princess Margaret. 

On the spot, much to Williamson's chagrin, they decided to record a song about the gangster. Bowie recruited Simple Minds to sing back-up.

 "It was fairly easy to song," recalled their lead singer Jim Kerr to Mojo April 2012. "In his diplomatic way, Bowie said, 'Why don't the people who sing professionally step nearer the microphone, and those who don't step well back? That's how I came to find myself sandwiched between David Bowie and Iggy Pop, singing that song. Astonishing."

All lyrics about the gangster and Princess Margaret were taken out before final mixing. The world has never heard the line "I wish I was Johnny Bindon with the biggest fuckin' dick in London and a private income..."

In fact a lot seemed to be missing when the album was finally released. There were some kind reviews noting a "quirky" sound but Soldier quickly vanished without a trace. 

Barry Andrews had to buy his own copy of the album. He tells Trynka about the first time he heard Soldier:

"I was flattered there were so many of my keyboards on it. Then, quite quickly, I realized it had none of the virtues of a good Iggy Pop record."

He would forever refer to it as "the one that came after the good ones."

Annie Lennox's All Time Top Ten

The Tourists : I Only Want To Be With You

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The Tourists' cover of Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want To Be With You" was a U.K. Top 4 hit when Annie Lennox provided Smash Hits with her all time Top 10 Hits, a list heavy on classic hits from the 1960's. Watch below and you'll see how strong and confident a performer she is. The band would break up in 1980 but she and Dave Stewart would soon find success as The Eurythmics.

Though he recorded "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" months before Gladys Knight and the Pips, Marvin Gaye had to wait until the Pips version ended its chart run ( at US#2 and R+B#1) before his version came out, topping the R+B and pop charts in both the U.S. and U.K.

"Fame" was Bowie's first #1 hit in the U.S. Here he is performing the song he described as "nasty and angry" on the Cher Show in 1975.

Dusty Springfield scored a U.K.#3 hit in 1964 with " I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself". 

Boogie Down With David Now

David Bowie : John I'm Only Dancing (Again)

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On December 10, 1979 David Bowie returned to the U.K. charts with the highest charting debut single of the week, "John I'm Only Dancing (Again)", a funky re-recording of his 1972 hit single made during sessions for Young Americans in 1975. Culled from a two-hour jam session it features Bowie doing his best James Brown impression as he delivers the line “It’s got you reelin’ and rockin’/ won’t you let me slam my thang in?” Unnecessary. 

All Time Top Ten Richard Jobson

From the July 12-25 edition of Smash Hits: The Skids frontman with the flakey dance moves proves he's an art rocker at heart with generous selections of David Bowie and Bill Nelson's Red Noise. The odd choice is June Tabor's version of "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" from her 1976 Airs and Graces album.

I'll Steal Your Chords

Adam and the Antz : Zerox

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On July 6, 1979 Adam and the Ants released their second single, "Zerox", inspired by a David Bowie confession that when it came to finding inspiration for new songs, he was a "human Xerox machine". The song was a number one hit on the UK Indie Chart, but failed to chart on the UK Singles Chart upon its initial release. Following the success of their second album, Kings of the Wild Frontier, it reached number 45 in January 1981 upon re-release.

Here's Adam Ant miming the song all by himself:

A Bit Roughed Up

David Bowie : Red Sails

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“Brian (Eno) and I did play a number of ‘art pranks’ on the band. They really didn’t go down too well though".
-David Bowie

On May 18, 1979 David Bowie released Lodger. It is often considered the last of the fabled Berlin Trilogy recorded with Brian Eno even though the album was recorded in New York and Montreux where Bowie had homes. Still, Eno's impact on the album can be heard to an even greater degree than on Low and Heroes, especially in the way his Oblique Strategies cards encouraged accidents in the studio. Not all of the musicians enjoyed the experiments. Carlos Alomar called some of Eno's ideas "bullshit...I totally, totally resisted it"

Adrian Belew played guitar on most of the tracks:

“When I arrived they had about twenty tracks already done: bass, drums, rhythm guitar, but no vocals. They said, ‘Adrian, we’re not going to let you hear these songs. We want you to go into the studio and play accidentally – whatever occurs to you’ ... I would just suddenly hear ‘One, two, three, four’ in the headphones and a track would start ... I didn’t even know what keys the songs were in or anything. The one particular song where I remember I lucked out on was ‘Red Sails’, ‘cos I started the guitar feeding back and it was right in key. Anyway, they would let me do this maybe two or three times and by then I might know something about the song, so it was over.”

Some of the songs on Side One reflect Bowie's travels. "African Night Flight" is about a group of German fighter pilots Bowie met in Kenya. "Yassassin" combines Turkish melodies with a reggae beat. "Red Sails"  sounds like Neu recording a song set in the South China Seas. Side Two contains the hits ( "Boys Keep Swinging" and "D.J." as well as the final single from Lodger, "Look Back In Anger") . David Mallet returns to direct the music video.

RCA exec Mel Ilberman came out with the early spin on Lodger:

“It would be fair to call it Bowie’s Sergeant Pepper, a concept album that portrays the Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life’s pressures and technology.”

But, of course, record execs don't write the reviews. Writing for Rolling Stone Greil Marcus hoped for something bigger on the even of the 80's:

Lodger might have been an event, if only as a record we would someday look back on as work that mapped the territory between past and future. Instead, it’s just another LP, and one of his weakest at that: scattered, a footnote to “Heroes“, an act of marking time.

Robert Christgau was more taken with the album, giving Lodger a grade of A-:

I used to think Bowie was middlebrow, but now I'd prefer to call him post-middlebrow--a habitue of prematurely abandoned modernist space. Musically, these fragments of anomie don't seem felt, and lyrically they don't seem thought through. But that's part of their charm--the way they confound categories of sensibility and sophistication is so frustrating it's satisfying, at least if you have your doubts about the categories. Less satisfying, actually, than the impact of the record as a whole. 

Life Is A Pop O' The Cherry

David Bowie : Boys Keep Swinging

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On April 27, 1979 David Bowie released the single "Boys Keep Swinging" b/w "Fantastic Voyage" in the U.K. (though not in the United States). Both are tracks from his forthcoming album Lodger and both feature the same chord progression. The major difference is the band, following a suggestion from Brian Eno's deck of Oblique Strategies cards, swapped instruments. Guitarist Carlos Alomar plays drums and drummer Dennis Davis plays bass. Both are solid musicians, but the best musical moment is the guitar solo by Bowie's touring guitarist Adrian Belew., who may have inspired the song with his endless enthusiasm.  He told Uncut Magazine 

"In New York, David was doing vocals for 'Boys Keep Swinging.' He played me it and said: 'This is written after you, in the spirit of you.' I think he saw me as a naïve person who just enjoyed life. I was thrilled with that."

The single peaked at U.K.#7, thanks in part to the video featuring Bowie in drag.

About the song Bowie told Busted Magazine in 2000: 

"The glory in that song is ironic. I do not feel that there is anything remotely glorious about being either male or female. I was merely playing on the idea of the colonization of gender."

Is it better to be one or the other? 

" That is, in my opinion, an absurd question."

The Small Red Box

David Bowie : Red Money

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On January 13, 1979 Melody Maker published an interview with David Bowie in which he told journalist Michael Watts he was finishing up an album ( the last of the Berlin trilogy) to be called either Despite Straight Lines or Planned Accidents. ( It would actually be called Lodger, released in May of 1979.).

Bowie thinks it contains some of his most intimate lyrics ever and says that although he still uses cut-up techniques, he's also going back to narrative. "But in a more emotionally driven way rather than from an objective point of view."

Bowie also says he plans to focus on his painting over the next couple of years, but he is scared of exhibiting his art publicly.

In February, Bowie would be in London to promote the UK release of Just a Gigolo, a film he made with director David Hemmings and featuring a 78-year old Marlene Dietrich in her final role. Of the critically derided film, Bowie said:

Everybody who was involved in that film – when they meet each other now, they look away [covers face with hands, laughs]... Listen, you were disappointed, and you weren't even in it. Imagine how we felt... It was my 32 Elvis Presley movies rolled into one.

Dredging the Ocean

David Bowie :  Station to Station

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On September 8, 1978 David Bowie released Stage, his second live album. Apparently a contractual obligation, the album comes just 4 years after the uninspired David Live. This one is better. Stage documents the Isolar II tour and consists of new songs from his Berlin albums Low and Heroes as well as some crowd pleasers from his earlier career. Curiously,  the album was rearranged so songs appeared in chronological order instead of the way they were presented in concert. 

So you will hear "Art Decade" and "Breaking Glass", "TVC-15" and "Station to Station", with some innovative lead guitar by Adrian Belew. What you won't hear is much in the way of audience noise. They were mixed down, giving the album a sterile feel. The last thing you might want from a live album.  

From Robert Christgau, who gave the album a B+ score:

If James Brown is the only rock and roller who deserves more than one concert album, then the Bowie to ban is David Live. Stage kicks off with some well-chosen Bowie oldies before moving into refreshingly one-dimensional versions of his best songs since 1975, including the key Eno collaborations, which were often oversubtle to begin with. For fans only, of course. I'm one. 



From Tom Carson, writing for Rolling Stone:


 Though Stage was obviously put together for purely commercial reasons — to regain for the Thin White Duke the audience he’s lost since becoming the Thin White Computer — it’s a curiously uncompromising album. With the exception of the furiously energetic “Hang On to Yourself,” the Ziggy Stardust songs designed to suck in the dollars are given dispassionate, let’s-get-this-over-with treatment. “Fame,” another popular number, is attractive and glossy, but doesn’t add anything to the original. 

 Paradoxically, it’s on the electronic cuts from Low and “Heroes,” and on the title track from Station to Station, that David Bowie really delivers — and more warmly than he ever has on record. Live, the new material comes clearly into focus: it’s as if the built-in drama of concert presentation has given these songs the added dimensions they needed. The long instrumental, “Warszawa,” boasts an icy magnificence, and “Speed of Life” bounces along as merrily as some imagined, futuristic Pepsi-Cola jingle. The whole of side four (“‘Heroes,'” “What in the World,” “Blackout,” “Beauty and the Beast”) is almost perfect, as Bowie plays — and plays with — the role of a Sinatra-like romantic crooner. There’s also a raucous, very funny version of “TVC 15,” with singer and band trading yodels like mad mountaineers on a binge.

 Shelving his recent “I’m just an average bloke with a synthesizer in me pocket” pose, Bowie here presents himself as a superbly professional entertainer — and one whose graceful clarity is a welcome antidote to the messy hash of 1974’s David Live. Whether he’ll be able to merge this stance with the avant-garde experimentalism of his current music is still uncertain. But I can’t think of another performer with sufficient bravery to challenge a rock audience to sit still long enough to watch him try.

Slaughter in the Air

David Bowie : Beauty and the Beast

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On January 5, 1978 David Bowie released his follow up single to "Heroes". "Beauty and the Beast" is the unhinged, funky monster that opened Bowie's 'Heroes' album. Bowie sounds paranoid,  singing of "slaughter in the air" and "protest on the wind" while Robert Fripp played four menacing guitar lines throughout. 

 The B side, "Sense of Doubt" is one of the moody instrumentals on side two of the album, created with the help of Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies" cards. Eno's card said "Try to make everything as similar as possible" while Bowie's read "Emphasize differences".

The single would peak at #39 in the U.K charts later in the month and never made an appearance on the Billboard charts.

When Bowie went on tour it was with Zappa sideman Adrian Belew on guitar who, just a year earlier , has been playing in a Nashville cover band. 

Elvis Costello's Fave Albums of 1977

Ian Dury : Sweet Gene Vincent

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In 2000 Elvis Costello looked back on his own Class of '77 and put the following albums into a list he made for Vanity Fair of his 500 Favorite Albums. The song selections are his.

David Bowie Low, “Always Crashing in the Same Car”
                      Heroes , “Joe the Lion.”

Ian Dury: New Boots and Panties!! , “Sweet Gene Vincent.”

Richard Hell and the Voidoids: Blank Generation , “New Pleasure.”

Iggy Pop: The Idiot, “Nightclubbin’”
                Lust for Life, “Some Weird Sin.”

 The Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols , “Pretty Vacant.”

Television: Marquee Moon, “See No Evil.”

The 50 Best Albums of 1977

Wire : Ex-Lion Tamer

Here at last is my list of the 50 best albums of 1977. As you may know, I've spent the past year--musically at least --in the year the two sevens clashed. Many of the albums I've loved the longest survived the year. There were a few I did not really  know ( Pacific Ocean Blue, The Belle Album, Heart of the Congos, Suicide, ) that made the list. Some sentimental favorites that I actually owned within a year of their release ( News of the World, The Stranger, I Robot, Deceptive Bends) probably took the place of something more deserving but it's my list so fuck off. 

Wire Pink Flag
Television Marquee Moon
The Clash s/t
Brian Eno Before and After Science
Talking Heads '77

Elvis Costello : (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes

Elvis Costello My Aim Is True
David Bowie Low
Steely Dan Aja
Ramones Rocket To Russia
Bob Marley Exodus

Cheap Trick : Downed

Cheap Trick  In Color
Fleetwood Mac Rumours
The Jam In the City
Sex Pistols Never Mind
The Saints Stranded

Dennis Wilson : Farewell My Friend

Dennis Wilson Pacific Ocean Blue
Al Green The Belle Album
David Bowie Heroes
Kraftwerk Trans Europe Express
Earth Wind and Fire All'n'All

The Ramones : Swallow My Pride

The Ramones Leave Home
James Taylor JT
Ian Dury New Boots
Culture Two Sevens Clash
Cheap Trick s/t

Iggy Pop : Lust for Life

Iggy Pop Lust for Life
Richard Hell and the Voidoids Blank Generation
The Damned Damned Damned Damned
Dwight Twilley Band Twilley Don't Mind
Billy Joel The Stranger

Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane : My Baby Gives It Away

Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane Rough Mix
The Congos Heart of the Congos
Dead Boys Loud Young and Snotty
Ultravox! s/t
Queen News of the World

The Stranglers : Hanging Around

The Stranglers Rattus Norvegicus
Vibrators Pure Mania
Peter Gabriel s/t
Electric Light Orchestra Out of the Blue
Iggy Pop The Idiot

Alan Parson Project : I Robot

Alan Parsons Project I Robot
Weather Report Heavy Weather
Dave Edmunds Get It
Suicide s/t
Parliament Funkentelechy Vs The Placebo Syndrome

Eddie and the Hot Rods : Quit This Town

Eddie and the Hot Rods Life On The Line
Garland Jeffreys Ghost Writer
Mink DeVille Cabretta
Townes Van Zandt Live at the Old Quarter
10cc Deceptive Bends

Bing and Bowie

Bing Crosby and David Bowie : Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy

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On November 30, 1977 CBS television viewers witnessed one of the most unlikely duets in music history: between the frail 74 year old crooner Bing Crosby and 30 year old art rocker David Bowie. The taping for Crosby's TV special Bing Crosby's A Merrie Olde Christmas happened September 11, a month before Crosby's death.

Mary Crosby remembered the the meeting of two icons with People Magazine:

“The doors opened and David walked in with his wife,” she told the Associated Press in 2014. “They were both wearing full-length mink coats, they have matching full makeup and their hair was bright red,” she told the summer TV critics’ tour Wednesday. “We were thinking, ‘Oh my God.’ ”

 “They sat at the piano and David was a little nervous,” she continued, but eventually, “Dad realized David was this amazing musician, and David realized Dad was an amazing musician. You could see them both collectively relax and then magic was made.”

Slaughter in the Air

David Bowie : Beauty and the Beast 

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On October 14, 1977, the day Bing Crosby died, David Bowie released "Heroes", the second installment of the Bowie/Eno/Visconti Berlin trilogy. This was the third Bowie album I ever owned, following ChangesOne and Aladdin Sane. I was 17 and at first I was put off by the disjointed, angular sounds (courtesy of Robert Fripp, Bowie and Eno) ,  the sinister undertones ( not just a reflection of the album cover) and almost an entire side of ambient experiments. 

How was I to know that I was listening to the future?

A few cool facts : Robert Fripp, who plays lead guitar on six songs, spent a total of six hours in the studio. Some of his tracks were laid down the first time he ever heard the songs.  

Bowie and Eno used Eno's Oblique Strategy cards, drawing inspiration from instructions. For the duet "Sense of Doubt", Eno's instruction was "Try to make everything as similar as possible", while Bowie's was "Emphasize differences". 

 Finally there are quite a few allusions to alcohol, the fuel with which Bowie replaced cocaine:  some songs are all set in bars while the narrator of "Blackout" has been drinking rotten wine. And then there's the line in the title track, "I drink all the time".

The album topped the NME Best Albums list that year, but since then Low has taken its place as the great Bowie album of 1977

From Rolling Stone critic Bart Testa :

Heroes is the second album in what we can now hope will be a series of David Bowie-Brian Eno collaborations, because this album answers the question of whether Bowie can be a real collaborator. Like his work with Lou Reed, Mott the Hoople and Iggy Pop, Low, Bowie's first album with Eno, seemed to be just another auteurist exploitation, this time of the Eno-Kraftwerk avant-garde. Heroes, though, prompts a much more enthusiastic reading of the collaboration, which here takes the form of a union of Bowie's dramatic instincts and Eno's unshakable sonic serenity. Even more importantly, Bowie shows himself for the first time as a willing, even anxious, student rather than a simple cribber. As rock's Zen master, Eno is fully prepared to show him the way. 

 Like Low, Heroes is divided into a cyclic instrumental side and a song-set side. "V-2 Schneider" is an ingeniously robotic recasting of Booker T. and the M.G.'s -- at once typical of Bowie's obsession with pop dance music and a spectacular instance of an Eno R + B "study" (a going concern of Eno's own records). "Sense of Doubt" lines up an ominously deep piano figure with Eno synthesizer washes, blending them into "Moss Garden," an exquisitely static cut featuring Bowie on koto, a Japanese string instrument. Low had no such moments of easy exchange; Bowie either submitted his voice as another instrument for Eno to play the part of art-rock keyboard player.

The most spectacular moments on this record occur on the vocal side's crazed rock and roll. Working inside the new style Bowie forged for Iggy Pop, "Beauty and the Beast" makes very weird but probable connections between the fairy tale, Iggy's angel-beast identity and Jean Cocteau's Surrealist Catholicism, a crucial source for Cocteau's film of the tale. 

 For the finale, Heroes explodes into a trilogy of dark prophecy: "Sons of the Silent Age," "Heroes" and "Black Out." It's a Diamond Dogs set that, this time, makes it into the back pages of Samuel Delaney's post-apocalypse fiction, pushed by a brilliant cerebral nova among the players. Bowie sings in a paradoxical (or is it schizo?) style at once unhinged and wholly self-controlled. With a chill, the listener can hear clearly through Bowie's compressed lyrics and the dense sound. 

 We'll have to wait to see if Bowie has found in the austere Eno a long-term collaborator who can draw out the substantial words and music that have lurked beneath the surface of Bowie's clever games for so long. But Eno clearly has effected a nearly miraculous change in Bowie already.

From the dean of rock critics, Robert Christgau who graded the album with a B+

When I first heart the Enofied instrumental textures on side two, as background music, they struck me as more complex than their counterparts on Low, and they are. Low now seems quite pop, slick and to the point even when the point is background noise; in fact, after I completed my comparison, I began to play it a lot. But what was interesting background on "Heroes" proved merely noteworthy as foreground, admirably rather than attractively ragged. Maybe after the next album I'll get the drift of this one.

And finally from Mark Bennett writing for 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die:

Riding the wave he had found with Low, "Heroes" -- the second part of the so-called "Berlin trilogy" -- saw David Bowie continue his gradual reintroduction to humanity. Fresh from a liberating stint as keyboard player on Iggy Pop's Idiot tour, Bowie was now living with Iggy in West Berlin. Relatively drug-free, the pair immersed themselves in seedy Berlin nightlife, miraculously avoiding falling back into old habits. 

 "Heroes" gives the trilogy its decadent splendor, its dramatic, performance art-influenced black-and-white cover photograph, and the darkly evocative song titles clearly inspired Bowie's new home. Where Low mapped the internal landscape of Bowie's fractured psyche, "Heroes," like Iggy's The Idiot (1977) is all about Berlin, from the denizens of its nightclubs in "Blackout" to the gloomy Turkish immigrant quarter in "Neuköln." 

 Featuring many of the musicians who had played on Low (producer Tony Visconti, collaborator Brian Eno, guitarist Carlos Alomar, and rhythm section George Davis and Dennis Davis) the album was recorded in the summer of 1977 at Hansa Studios, a former Gestapo ballroom near to the Berlin wall. Eno, Visconti, and Bowie distilled their location's powerful atmosphere in view of the Red Army guards at Checkpoint Charlie. 

 Like Low, "Heroes" mixed avant-garde pop songs with ambient instrumentals. Eno's influence is felt on the title track, a Velvets-like stomp taken somewhere different by Fripp's inspired, fluid guitar. Re-contextualized by its performance at 1985's Live Aid concert, the song's current existence as stadium fodder belies the emotional complexity of its pare

That's Really Polaroid!

T. Rex : Debora

[Purchase]

On September 28, 1977 the final episode of Marc Bolan's series, Marc, aired on Granda TV. David Bowie taped Marc, The T.Rex frontman's TV series. Chris Welch of New Music Express was at the taping September 7th. This article came out on the September 17th issue, the day after Bolan's sudden death.

"Oh that's really Polaroid! You've gotta keep the ending!"

David Bowie rocked with laughter and Marc Bolan wiped away the tears that had threatened to turn his finest hour into a nightmare. The great day when David and Marc were reunited for a TV show will pass into the history books as one of the funniest episodes never filmed. Perhaps one should say never video-taped for the last show in the series Marc put together by Granada TV turned out to be a drama of such pathos and uproar that it made Coronation Street seem dull, if that's at all possible.

There were tears, outbursts of swearing, bitter rows and the breaking of light bulbs when everything seemed to go wrong when David joined his old chum for rehearsals and recording at Granada's Manchester studios last Wednesday. The clash between old wave and new wave was further heightened by the power of trade unions and the congenital inability of rock people to get it together in anything like a normal, orderly fashion. It was ten breaks and split-second timing versus artistic temperament and inexperience.

 I thought it funny but I'm sure producer Muriel Young didn't, nor did the manager of Generation X who turned up three hours late without any equipment, nor Barrie Masters and his famous Rods who never got to appear on the show after waiting around for two days.

In the event, by the miracle of editing and technical wizardry, the show will go out complete with the Rods, and David making a rare British television appearance on all ITV regions on Wednesday, September 28 at 4:20 pm. But it would have been more exciting if they had videoed the dramas taking place in and around the studio. Marc was in his element as a television star and part-time artistic director.

 As one studio boss was forced to ejaculate when Marc was bellowing instructions: "I don't know why I'm the floor manager" Said Marc: "When you've got your name up in lights, you've gotta take responsibilities".

The show was born out of Marc's dream to be a media man, dating back to when he once did some interviews for London television. Here he could invite his favourite guest artists, do a bit of chat and generally camp it up in time-honoured Bolan fashion. As a cross between Judy Garland and Louis B. Mayer he was brilliant.

But one of the lads in the heavy rock combos booked for the show stopped me dead in the gents by demanding: "Is he queer?"

"Nah, course not. Straight as a die, our old Marc" I protested.

A few minutes later Marc sailed past us in the corridor calling out coyly: "What shall I wear? I know, the green dress with black suspenders."

In fact he turned up wearing a leopard-skin creation that even a leopard might have baulked at.

The whole day was worthy of being turned into one of those probing documentaries where people bare their souls and the holes in their socks before cameras so discreet that nobody seems aware of their presence. It was just like the World About Us. The cast of characters included Marc's PR Keith Altham, recently recovered from a nervous collapse that he threatened would be brought on again if Barbara De Witt said another word: Barbara De Witt, David's American PR lady who wanted to know what Keith Altham was doing bringing so many press in her artist's wake; Bob Hart of the Sun, anxious to see Keith Altham, buying him a drink ("You're the only publicist I can't afford to have lunch with"), Jeff Dexter, Sixties hippie deejay, and now partner with Tony Howard in Marc's management, the said Mr Howard resplendent in genuine 1968 teddy boy jacket, and Eric Hall the man from EMI.

The whole party descended by train upon Manchester and spent the day being hustled out of the studio by David's bodyguard, a charmingly polite gentleman who kept appearing in front of us saying: "You'll have to leave – now".

I half-expected to meet him at the front gate when I got home that night, holding up both hands to bar any further progress. The main targets of his life's work (sending people in the opposite direction from whence they came) were Marc Bolan's manager, his press officer, and various friends hoping to see David after his absence from the scene for many years.

"Ain't it strange what some people will do" was the rather apt song being dance to by Heart Throb, the show's troupe of girl dancers who had chosen to wear plastic see-through bowler-hats for their routine.

 On came the Rods – Barrie Masters in jeans and shirt – miming to their backing track on "Do Anything That You Wanna Do."

"It's a bit Mick Mouse, this show," he said as he came off the rostrum, indicating that he and the boys had been hanging around in the studio all day waiting to do their bit.

Generation X arrived red of hair and pink of cheeks, somewhat breathless from a disastrous day spent on the M1. A broken-down van, no equipment available – the bad news experienced by many a group. But it didn't stop them adopting the aggressive attitude expected of a new wave combo. As offers were being made to lend them equipment they discussed jokingly, whether or not to smash up Marc's guitar, "What will it cost us – 400 quid?" Eventually guitars were lent, including Rod Paul Gray's bass (he told me that if the X-men smashed up his bass guitar, he would smash them up).

Miraculously, amplifiers and instruments were procured and Generation X stormed into their big number "Your Generation" and Billy Idol their pretty lead singer looking aggressively angelic. In fact they played so well I found myself clapping their performance, lone applause that must have sounded almost insulting in the silence of the studio as the echoes died rapidly away.

 But Generation X discomfort was not over. They had to play a number at least five more times, constantly being stopped by the technicians, something all musicians detest.

Marc had to keep repeating the same introduction "This is Generation X. They have a new singer Billy Idol who is supposed to be as pretty as me. I ain't so sure. Check it out." Eventually he stumbled over the words by the sixth attempt. "Me brain weren't connected to me leg" he explained with a grin.

Meanwhile more rows were breaking out between Generation X's manager and producer Muriel. As Stewart bellowed abuse across the studio floor, Muriel, a very ladylike professional, simply walked away.

"It's appalling" said Stewart "Now they are only going to show half the song or pull it out. We'll do Top of The Pops instead. Let's go!"

He made a move for the exits, but the band stayed on and later Granada confirmed that X would be in the show. While the September 28 show was still being recorded the day's edition was going out featuring Marc singing "Let's Dance" the old Chris Montez hit which sounded pretty good given the Bolan treatment as well as his new single "Celebrate Summer."

Now it was time for the studio to be cleared while Marc and David rehearsed their big number. Momentarily eluding the bodyguard I managed to hide behind a piece of scenery as Bolan and Bowie joined forces with Herbie Flowers, Dino Dines and Tony Newman. It sounded like a bit of a shambles to the uninitiated. In fact the song was only just put together in time and remained untitled, a bit of casual rock jamming. But it was fun to see them together and they sounded pretty funky with Marc blazing enthusiastically on lead guitar. And to complete the atmosphere of revivalism, Marc launched himself into "Deborah" a new version, which had to be cut when the backing track seemed to go out of sequence.

"I don't mind lip-synching but when it's the WRONG verse… " complained Marc tartly.

Suddenly there came a bellowed announcement "Will anybody not on the show please leave the studio!"

Once more we were herded outside. "Oh why did we come?" said the Rods, also hustled away. But a kindly floor manager keeping remarkably cool, swiftly let the entourage back in again to witness the final historic chapter.

David readied himself for his solo number "Heroes" from the album. With his jeans carefully rolled up to reveal lace-up boots he stood cooly before the microphone, careless of the chatter of the studio. Ignoring some impudent feedback he began singing, slowly and lowly at first with a deep voice that always comes as a surprise from one of such slim build. There were pregnant pauses between bars and then suddenly he bellowed forth "I will be king and you will be queen… we can be heroes just for one day, we can be heroes!" it was a remarkable performance even in a cold TV studio.

Now it was Marc's big moment when he was to join David for the taping of their hastily sketched-out number. While David had his face made up, Marc called anxiously to the floor manager: " Do you want me front or back?" "Just tough your toes, Marc, " called out one of the Rods waiting to do their number on the opposite rostrum. The mighty duo began their number and, said Billy Idol approvingly from the sidelines: "It's got that disco beat all right"

"What an old pooftah" grumbled a roadie uncharitably.

Suddenly there was competition on stage as the number ground to a halt.

"We're getting electric shocks up here" shrieked Marc pointing towards the microphones. Nobody moved. Time was ticking dangerously away.

At 7 pm the union would pull the plugs out and head for home and beauty sleep. Attempts were being made by the production team to stop the band.

"We're rehearsing actually" said Marc somewhat put out. David stood quietly to one side smiling and unperturbed but suddenly he frowned.

"That wasn't the actual take, was it?" he asked as the truth began to dawn

"What do you mean, not really? Either it was or it wasn't:"

"1-2-3-4!" and Tony Newman uncertainly set the drums rolling once more.

At this point Marc fell off the stage with excitement.

"A wooden box for Marc please" said David "Look we've got to do that again, it wasn't finished".

But the studio man was calling "Let's have the Rods please."

 The Rods obediently scrambled onto their rostrum to start recording and David and Marc instantly started jamming.

At 7 pm precisely all the lights went out and the technicians disappeared.

"You've got a black-out mate!" called a voice from the floor. A furious row broke out between the Rods and the producer when it was realised there was no time for the group to do their number.

"This is really unfair" said Barrie Masters. "We've been waiting here all day to go on, and we came up from London yesterday to do the show. That's two days wasted."

The Rods stormed off to their dressing room where a certain amount of swearing went on. Bolan was allegedly locked in his dressing room in tears and Bowie languidly viewed the results of the day's work on the video tape machine. All was smiles when it was realised they had something of a classic in the can, even it if was a shambles.

If there was any acrimony it evaporated later. On the train going back to London, David sat next to Barrie and the rest of the Rods shared beer, wine and chicken legs.

"I want to do a tour of Britain in the New Year" he said "Starting in Glasgow and working my way down. I really want to play again. Today was great fun."

David also said that he had recorded a Christmas show with Bing Crosby of all people, and had also been recording album tracks with Marc. But it was good to see him back again, and perhaps next time we see him he'll be hero not just for a day but a whole tour.