david bowie

Put the iPod on Shuffle, select all my David Bowie tracks and this is what happens. An hour of randomly selected Bowie tracks...  

"Underground" from the Labyrinth soundtrack. This is actually a terrific song. The fairly clunky 1986 percussion and faux gospel choir during the second half predates Madonna’s remarkably similar "Like A Prayer" by well over a year. DB sings brilliantly.

Staying with the 80s – "Glass Spider" – well, it would have seemed like a good idea on paper. A moody spoken word intro over swathes of even moodier synths before launching into a propulsive rock song. I mean, it worked brilliantly on Diamond Dogs. However, the spangly synths are the very opposite of moody, and the narration is so absurdly po-faced and nonsensical that it provokes laughter rather the desired sense of awe and mystery. Once the song itself begins it’s not actually that bad - a great little melody and a genuine sense of urgency with the ‘gone, gone, the waters all gone’ lines. But the damage has already been done with that twinkly and pretentiously daft intro. I’m all for DB being pretentious, but really, what was he thinking? He could have done with Graham Chapman marching in and saying ‘stop this song, it’s far too silly. What started as a perfectly good idea with spiders acting as oblique metaphors for alienation has just got silly. And that awful haircut has to go as well, far too silly.’

"Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" – ok so the haircuts were silly in 1973 too, but what a great cover this is, from Pin Ups. Not many people can take on the Who and win, but DB does here. And Aynsley Dunbar outdoes Keith Moon as well. Amazing.

"My Death" from the final Ziggy show. I like how DB starts the song, then pauses and tells the crowd to be quiet. And they do as they are told! Until the very end, when he pauses again after, ‘for in front of that door, there is…’ and thousands of little voices shriek ‘Me! Me! Me David, Me!’ and he casually stops the song there with a very cool ‘thank you’.

"Always Crashing In The Same Car" live at the BBC in 2000. As much as like this song there’s something about live versions of it (and he performed it on every tour from 1997 until the end, though never before that) that just don’t quite work. It’s too… safe. The original has a paranoid, jumpy feeling about it, it’s understated and effective. Here, although it’s beautifully well played and sung, it’s lacking that edge that made the original so good.

"Hang On To Yourself" from the Reality tour. A great blast from the past and one which the band clearly loved playing. Loads of energy and a great sense of fun and enjoyment. DB’s vocals are excellent as with virtually every song he dug up on this tour.

"The Dreamers" – the final track on Hours… and a song that with hindsight strikes me as an early attempt to achieve the sound and feel of "Heathen (The Rays)". It doesn’t quite come off for two reasons – firstly that the song itself isn’t strong enough (although the vocals are superb), and secondly because the production of the song is really quite clunky (something that afflicts quite a few songs on Hours…). Nonetheless it was good to hear this track again.

"It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City" – an out-take from Young Americans. Or is it? There has been much discussion over on one of the DB boards about the true origins of this remarkable song. Some releases of this track even refer to it as a Station To Station out-take. It most certainly isn’t. Tony Visconti’s unmistakable strings and Mike Garson’s distinctive piano rule that out as neither were anywhere near Cherokee Studios in October 1975 when STS was recorded.

Both were involved with Young Americans, but here we have a problem in that the YA sessions were quite concise and a core band of musicians worked on them. We have no musician credits for "Saint" but it’s clearly a different drummer and Earl Slick has confirmed that it’s not him playing guitar.

So the conclusion that has been reached is that the song actually dates from late 1973 / early 1974. Visconti was brought in during the latter stages of Diamond Dogs, Aynsley Dunbar played some drums on that album (and it does sound like his busy style) and DB himself played guitar (and the guitarwork is quite Dogs-ish). The fact that it sounds more soulful (and thus Young Americans-ish) than the other Dogs material in no way rules this theory out as, during the same period, DB recorded soulful tracks with the Astronettes (basically his backing singers) and with Lulu, who, after the success of "The Man Who Sold The World" in autumn 1973 attempted to record a whole album with DB in early 1974. One of the songs written for this project was "Can You Hear Me?" which DB reclaimed for Young Americans after the Lulu project fell by the wayside.

Anyway, after all that, "Saint" is a marvellous cover of an unremarkable Springsteen song, complete with gravity defying vocals and whizzy strings. Great fun.

"Black Country Rock" – almost actionable Bolan impressions aside this is probably the weakest track on The Man Who Sold The World. Repetitive and simply not interesting enough, this song backs up Visconti’s recollections that DB lost interest in the album half way through and left Mick Ronson and Tony Visconti to come up with the remaining tunes to which he then added half thought-out words. Although most of the album thankfully doesn’t really sound like that was the case, this song and "She Shook Me Cold" (basically a verse with a guitar berserk-out added on) do come across as rather unfinished.

"And I Say To Myself" – I find this 1966 track rather charming. The call and response vocals are great, especially towards the end when he sings ‘and I say to myself you’re a fool’ and the backing vocals mockingly sing back ‘you’re a fool..!’ It’s simple stuff, fairly unremarkable really and would probably have disappeared entirely if it wasn’t early DB; but it is, and I like it, and that’s that.

Ten years later and DB was recording Low. "Art Decade" – great track, very atmospheric, conjuring up dark alleys and drizzle through neon lights.

"White Light / White Heat" from one of the 1972 BBC sessions. This is the better of the two BBC versions of "WL/WH" in which he changes the words to ‘white light makes me feel like Lou Reed’ thus giving Reed one of his first ever mentions on Radio One. Ronno rules this track.

And finally – "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" the original Giorgio Moroder version, and the full six minute 12" mix no less. Check out those subterranean vocals at the beginning! And listen to how DB explodes into life ‘with GASOLIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNE’. Thrilling stuff. Much as love this version it must be said that Moroder’s backing track is rather Euro Rock at times, and it’s really the superb vocal that totally carries the song. And it’s miles better than the far inferior arrangement on Let’s Dance – quite why DB redid it is beyond me.