i can't give everything away - david bowie

I’ve really not played Blackstar very much since that awful day in January.

 

I was so thrilled by this album when I got it on the Friday, played it loads over that weekend, really enjoyed it all, thought it was genuinely exciting and fresh and pushing into new territory for DB, a new way forward.

 

Then the news at 7am on that Monday and Blackstar became something… else. Something that was suddenly much harder to listen to, something that was now overburdened with sadness and sorrow. All that hope and what the future might bring was gone, replaced with a massive hollow void.

 

In the months since I’ve rarely played the whole album. I’ve dipped in and listened to the epic title song, the mad intensity of “Sue” and the gorgeously wistful “Dollar Days” quite a bit, but songs like “Lazarus” and “I Can’t Give Everything Away” have been too difficult, too full of sadness. “Lazarus” is especially hard – now we know what was happening in his life, the video takes on a stark and blindingly obvious meaning. David Jones is dying, he brings Bowie the rock star out for one last, frantic, dance - then puts him away, back in the cupboard, forever.

 

I’m still baffled as to how Bowie could have had the clarity of vision to come up with such a video, faced with what he knew were his final days. And I'm also baffled that no-one could see what he was saying. Until it was too late.

 

“I Can’t Give Everything Away”, released this week as a single, gives us the final lyrics of David Bowie... “this is all I ever meant, that’s the message that I sent…” the whole song is obviously a goodbye. But a goodbye that few spotted. I sort of realised that when I first heard it, but then it seemed more like merely a final-song-of-the-album type lyric than a final song ever. In an email to friends the day the album was released I pondered whether or not this song might actually signify Bowie’s retirement, though I fervently hoped that it did not.

 

But it did; a final, no coming back retirement.

 

The song has all sorts of neat touches, elements from Bowie's past - the harmonica lines lifted from "A New Career In A New Town", the guitar solo that is clearly inspired by Robert Fripp, the way the vocal alternates between soaring choruses and intimate verses. It's all sorts of Bowie trademarks in one glorious song, sad but oddly uplifting too.

 

The newly released animated video for "I Can't Give Everything Away" features the graphics from the album sleeve over star patterns and shapes, with selected words popping up throughout. At first I felt it was a little underwhelming, but after the finality of the “Lazarus” video where the hell could they go with this anyway? But my disappointment changed towards the end of the video when the starfield becomes full technicolour, and morphs into a mix of the 2001 Star Gate and the classic 1970s Doctor Who title sequence. We appear to be rushing towards some infinite unreachable point, and right at the end a little spaceman whizzes off into the far distance. It brings a wry smile to the face of anyone watching, a magical touch of humour to even out the loss and sorrow. And somehow this little spaceman graphic seems exactly right. Bowie’s career really kicked into gear with “Space Oddity”, largely inspired by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 A Space Odyssey. And spacemen have cropped up regularly throughout Bowie’s career. So it seems absolutely fitting to send that spaceman back into the infinite 2001 Star Gate, one last time. It seems to be the perfect visual goodbye, to accompany the perfect goodbye song. 

 

I think I'm ready to play the whole album later. There's still a big hole where David Bowie was, and it's almost impossible to comprehend that there won't be any more music from him. But Blackstar is bloody brilliant, and it deserves to be played, and, crucially, I’m sure that's what David Bowie would have wanted.