Song for Bob Dylan - Hunky Dory
It's not hard to see the Dylan influence on early Bowie, especially during the Space Oddity days; at least he comes clean about it in this awkward if sincere tribute. And the extra-musical influences too are easy to spot, especially the way Dylan, very early on, learned how to use the persona of the performing artist, to hide behind it or even use it as a prop. In a sense this song is really about a strange woman who comes around, "from the brow of the Superbrain", no less, and won't leave unless she hears a couple of Dylan albums. O-kay. Musically, it's pretty slight stuff, moving from an acoustic-by-numbers verse into a slightly, er, funkier chorus. Ronson throws in some very nice, melodic guitar licks, and the general atmosphere is pleasant but not particularly rivetting.
Hunky Dory is Bowie's namedropping album, for sure. Sit down sometime and see how many people get namechecked, from Dylan and Warhol to Crowley, Himmler, the Velvets, Churchill, Garbo, even the great Mickey Mouse himself. Only fair that Bobby should get a look in.
Oh and by the way: Todd Haynes has just brought out a brilliant, fascinating, thought-provoking film called I'm Not There. You should go see it. The character of Jude Quinn alone is much more interesting than the lumpy, vaguely approximate (and terribly acted) cypher that was Brian Slade in Velvet Goldmine. And sexier.
The Supermen - Missinglinksoneziggy (bootleg)
As Bowie tells it, he was a Velvet Underground fan from way back. Somehow he'd chanced on a white label of the Velvet Underground and Nico album before it came out and was even covering Waiting For My Man in early bands. The Supermen has always been one of the more perplexing songs in the Bowie canon; you can't help but wonder if all the scattershot images and mythical references add up to profundity or pisstake. In any event, I can't help but think of the Velvets roughing out some new tune in the studio when I hear this early demo version. It's sketchy and tentative but good fun. The tom-tom heavy drums definitely make you think of Maureen Tucker.
I'm not too sure when this was done, but the occasional snazzy guitar fill seems to suggest that Mick Ronson was on board by now, so I'm assuming that this demo is roughly contemporaneous with the album. The album version is a pretty well-wrought piece of rock'n'roll concept-building, with touches of Nietszche, Lovecraft and maybe a bit of Arthur C. Clarke thrown in. The demo is rough-hewn and sketchy but it's kind of fun.
Win - Young Americans
This is one of my favourite Bowie songs and I'm not really sure why. The lyrics are as oblique and vague as anything he's written. The backing is slick and expertly played, but that's the case for thousands of other songs too. It's just that there's real but indefinable emotional impact, and a certain kind of sensual delight, going on here that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
If it makes you feel good, it must be working I guess. Singer(s) and band strive together to conjure up a certain atmosphere, and you can almost see it in front of you: lush but dangerous, tropical but torrid. A smooth guitar comp underpins the easy, west-coast sounding verse but the chorus kicks things up a notch, built around some very Abbey-Road style guitar arpeggios.
Bowie went out of his way to work with the cream of backup musicians for this album; the whole idea was to cross over to R&B listeners and finally break it big in America. Carlos Alomar (that would be him on the sweet, flanged seductive rhythm guitar then) would end up being a fixture until the mid-80s, and vocal arranger Luther Vandross would go on to bring out, oh, one or two records himself, bless him. The star player on this track, though, is top-class session saxophonist David Sanborn, who sprinkles fairydust all over the tune with a simple, repeated hook played through a pickup and echoplexed from one speaker to the other.
A little touch, but it's one of those little perspective tricks that come at the right time, in the right place. It's pretty. Relax. Put your feet up. Get into the tropical fish. Try not to think about Kenny G...
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