A Year With Bowie [Part 4] – March

“Pushing thru the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying”

If there is a greater album opener than this song, I am yet to find it. ‘Five Years’ represents Bowie at his very best, at his most challenging and artistic, opening his most flamboyant album to date with a song that at first sounds rather dour and oppressive. The brilliance though is in the writing, defying you not to imagine your own thoughts in similar circumstances. Five years is actually a long time. In the year of writing, 2013 is quite a way ahead, a mythical, far off land. Should news of the earth’s demise in that year come through today, you can imagine similar events unfolding.

It would start with panic, evidenced through the reaction of the newsreader, and the mothers in the market. You would hear people trying to reach each other, but also looking back, through the jangle of telephones, lines of communication, and the noise of people wallowing in musical nostalgia. Some would cope with violence, some though stoicism, whilst others, like the soldier, would rest in a trance. People would find solace in religion, which some would find hard to accept. But among all this is that feeling of time, that actually, five years is somewhere in the distance. So whilst you need no longer worry about cholesterol, and can indulge in the odd milkshake, for the time being life will go on. The events will seem unreal, as if you were in a play, and you would feel the urge to commune with family, but five years is maybe more than a lot of us have to live as it is.

There is a casualness though to the lyrics, terms that in these days (and probably then) sound offensive but necessary to the themes of the song. Blacks, disgusted queers – slang that only Bowie could get away with, due to his adoption of an other worldly persona, distinct from the rest of humanity. This pervades the entire album, where you almost start to believe in the existence of Ziggy Stardust. In ‘Soul Love’ the tempo swings, before ‘Moonage Daydream’; possibly the finest Bowie song not to make it as a single. It swaggers about the place, horns striking in a descending sequence until Ronson explodes into a furious cocktail of slamming guitar and reverb. His finest guitar work though is to be found on ‘Starman’. The riff is sublime, echoing all the melodies we have heard before and enhancing the power of the chorus, a strong contender for the finest song they collaborated on.

Even then after these heights, it gets better and better. ‘Lady Stardust’ shifts the tempo down a notch before ‘Star’ comes out in all its glam clobber and make-up. ‘Hang On To Yourself’ frugs and chugs about the place, full of delicious wordplay (my favourite Bowie lyric, “we move like tigers on vaseline”, featured here). ‘Ziggy Stardust’ is weaker on record than on the live album, but still stamps its mark down hard, before the glorious, theatrical ‘Suffragette City’. In itself, this would be the perfect way to close the album, but Bowie has one more trick up his sleeve.

Not content with having the finest album opener, he also has one of the all time great closers. ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’ encapsulates the entire album into one song, the wit and the glamour of Ziggy Stardust exploding in one glorious, totally over the top moment. It features melodies to set the pulse raising and the luxurious burst of strings at the end, as if the orchestra is struggling to draw breath, sending you scuttling to the repeat button to play the entire album over again. If there was any doubt as to Bowie’s genius, this is exhibit A.

Sadly, Aladdin Sane isn’t exhibit B. Louder and brasher than Ziggy, it sounds overly complicated at times, the force of the production leaving it confused in the mix. ‘Watch That Man’ is a good example where perhaps it would have been better to have toned things down a notch to allow the song to breathe, rather than swamping it with noise and shrieked backing vocals. In contrast, ‘Aladdin Sane’ is tender and delicate, though I find the much lauded piano solo indulgent and at times annoying. Though no-where as annoying as the doo-wop’s of ‘Drive-In Saturday’. Previously, the theatrics enhance the image and sound, whereas here they drown the purpose of the track in a stale sense of fake America.

‘Panic In Detroit’ and ‘Cracked Actor’, whilst both good songs, are again constructed with too much sound, the former a jittering, thundering piece of rock. And then ‘Time’, which features *that* lyric, not an activity I myself have indulged in but it is hard to listen to it without imagine Bowie having a go (probably whilst looking in a mirror). The cover of The Rolling Stone’s ‘Let Spend The Night Together’ moves at such a considerable speed its hard to take stock of what it sounds like, Bowie panting and gasping as if he can’t take the pace himself.

‘The Jean Genie’ though goes some way to redeem things, one of his great songs, snappy and full of life. Despite its similarity to The Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’ (which eerily was at number 1 in the UK when ‘The Jean Genie’ was at number 2) it is abundant with sleaze and boundless energy. The album closes with ‘Lady Grinning Soul’, a reasonable song but a world away from the quality found on the preceding album.

I expected a lot from Aladdin Sane. I expected it to be the equal of Ziggy Stardust, and it wasn’t. Conversely, I expected nothing at all from Pin-Ups. I thought it was going to be a mildly diverting collection of covers, nothing too controversial or interesting, just a stop-gap to keep the fans happy. Not a proper Bowie release, not something to give too much attention. How wrong I was. As it’s completely brilliant.

As I am only familiar with the originals of a handful of songs, it may as well be a new Bowie album to my ears. The Kinks, The Who, Pink Floyd, these I knew, but the rest was completely alien to me. And what fun he has, evident from the get go with ‘Rosalyn’, sheer excitement bursting from the speakers. ‘Here Comes The Night’ sees an influx of extra musicians, horns complementing Ronson’s guitar perfectly, taking us into the snazzy lines of ‘I Wish You Would’. The ending to this track is immense, a strangulated saxophone gasping for air to its conclusion. The cover of ‘See Emily Play’ maybe tries to hard and comes across over-complicated, but the enthusiasm on display here is so contagious, filtering into the whole album. From ‘Shapes of Things’ with its energetic call and response, and the powerful ‘Anyway Anyhow Anywhere’, you can tell Bowie is having a blast.

It ends with an amazing version of ‘Where Have All The Good Times Gone’, originally by The Kinks but made famous in later years by Van Halen. It swaggers, the band tightly organised around Bowie’s vocals in a fitting end to a fine album. And that is what is so great about this project. Without it, I never would have heard this amazing album, showcasing Bowie at his most vital. He has a clear passion for these songs and a desire to share them, and I for one and sure glad he did.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars 97%
Aladdin Sane 58%
Pin-Ups 84%

A Year with Bowie [part 1] [part 2] [part 3]