DCV got us all on a David Bowie kick recently. He passed out a few albums he had, and the rest of us dug in deep. Personally, Hunky Dory(1971) is my favorite right now. It's got a little bit of everything, from good old fashioned rock songs like the ode to the Velvet Underground, "Queen Bitch" to the simple, piano driven fare of "Oh! You Pretty Things." The latter is an all-time Bowie favorite of mine. This album even has a song written for "Zowie Bowie" (aka Duncan Jones, David Bowie's son who is now a successful director of film), called "Kooks." Apparently he wrote this poppy little number for his newborn son, modeling it after early 70's Neil Young, whom he happened to be listening to at the time.
In addition to "Queen Bitch," directed at the Velvet Underground, there are a couple of other songs on the album directed at specific people. "Andy Warhol" is an acoustic song about, well, you guessed it. The song has a unique style to it, and the opening riff (which repeats itself throughout), has spanish tendencies. The sparse acoustic arrangement gives the lyrics and vocal melodies a nice boost, though sparse as it is, those acoustic guitars are still the driving force behind the entire song.
In my personal opinion, the lyrics of this song are well crafted and spot on (in accordance with my own impressions of the man). The vocal harmonies in the chorus are quite unrefined, yet perfectly pitchy. Of course the message itself is literal and poignant:
Andy Warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall.
Andy Warhol, Silver Screen
Can't tell them apart at all.
If you couldn't tell already, I'm a fan of this track as well, but apparently Andy Warhol was not. I could see a couple things that may have left Warhol a bit perturbed, but in the end, if David Bowie writes a song about you like this and includes it on his album, I'd take that as a positive on the whole.
Then theres "Song for Bob Dylan," today's SOD. It's a song written for the man himself, and I'm hard pressed to think it's coincidence that a song for Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan wound up on the same album. Especially when the chorus to the song is:
Ah, here she comes, here she comes, here she comes again
The same old painted lady, from the brow of a super brain
She'll scratch this world to pieces as she comes on like a friend
But a couple of songs from your old scrapbook,
Could send her home again
Now I've got to assume she is Edie Sedgewick, and though the song was recorded months before her death, it's all to germane that a month after her death, this album came out. On the heels of a tragedy Bowie seemed all to prepared for, the song holds a lot of significance. Though the song isn't written in a typically dylan-esque style per say (then again, after 50 year in the game, Bob's pretty much done all styles), there are flashes of Dylan in Bowie's vocal work for sure, and even in the cadence of some of the lyrics. Some of its actually quite amusing.
I quite enjoyed the first verse of the song, which seems to set the stage for how Bowie interprets Dylan:
Oh, hear this Robert Zimmerman I wrote a song for you
About a strange young man called Dylan
With a voice like sand and glue
Some words of truthful vengeance they could pin us to the floor
Brought a few more people on and put the fear in a whole lot more
I'd say Bowie had a pretty good handle on what Dylan was all about leading up to the turn of the decade, and he certainly must've had a great respect for him to dedicate the entirety of a song to him.
Also worth noting on this album is the song "Quicksand" which features a bigger more epic musical arrangement (with strings, acoustic guitars, a prominent piano part, and saxophone), and some very heavy lyrics as well. It has a broad and sweeping sound, and is also the second longest track on the album clocking in at 5:04. It's another personal favorite of mine.
Finally, and maybe I should've mentioned this first, the album opens with the song "Changes" which is one of Bowie's most recognizable and beloved songs (though it actually missed the Top 40 oddly enough). Bowie himself was the epitome of change, constantly reinventing himself, his persona, looks, and sound. To his credit though, he always maintained a steady relationship with his audience and the spotlight, and though all those recreations would've probably spelled doom for the vast majority of other artists, David Bowie embraced the change and made it a vital component to his formula for success. I've got a tremendous amount of respect for the man's creative force and musical impact, and I'm thrilled to be rediscovering him (and all the different him's) again. Props to DCV.
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