Bowie and Blackstar

Back in the day, Twitter used to be a friendly place where you could connect with a group of friends to chat about anything that took your fancy. You would accumulate loose networks of common interests with people across the internet, and occasionally closer bonds would form. One such group consisted of people who had realised that if we picked an album and all hit play at the agreed time, then that meant we could share our experiences of listening to music together, even though we might be worlds apart.

We started with the odd album at lunchtime, then came up with some rules to add to our choices - the idea was to pick 5 albums by the same artist (their first, their last, the fans choice, the controversial choice and the wild card) and I coined the hashtag #5x1 (for five by one) as a way of tying everything together. The comedian Michael Legge then suggested listening to every album by a particular group or artist at the rate of one a day, so we went through the discographies of Sparks, Gary Numan, Queen and eventually David Bowie, with the tag #BowieADay starting with ‘David Bowie’ and ending with ‘The Next Day’, the final album at the time.

We all loved Bowie, and so when we heard rumours that a new album was coming out we made plans to stay up after midnight to listen to it as soon as it was released. We laughed, we made jokes, we appreciated the joy of hearing something new and important from our Hero for the first time - it felt like a message from him straight to us and we all knew that we would be puzzling over the lyrics for a long time to come. What was with all of the references to him dying? What was a Blackstar anyway?

We went to bed happy that night, and then woke up two days later to the awful news that David Bowie was gone. We were numb with grief and clung together virtually to process how we felt.

I couldn’t face listening to Blackstar again for a long time - it was simply too painful to think that he knew he was dying as he wrote it. It took almost a year before we undertook another #BowieADay journey, knowing that this one had a final ending point.

The second time around was more poignant than the first, and I saw more of the connections that had always been there right from the very beginning to the bitter end. Of course there were Low points on the way and the second hearing of Blackstar was both agonising and cathartic, and the beginning of appreciating how much we lost on the day he died.

Of course, I’ve listened to Blackstar again in the ten years since then, but every time has felt like an occasion. It’s not an album to be streamed at random or added to playlists. It demands attention and ritual. To be listened to on the best speakers, with the lights dimmed and with full attention.

Our original #5x1 group is now dispersed across different platforms, only sometimes reconnecting, but it’s not quite the same now. I have new friends in different places, but we still have common bonds in a love of music, and especially with this album that still holds a special place in my heart.

Rest in peace, Starman.

https://album.link/i/1676286487

Blackstar by David Bowie

Bowie started working on this album on the 8th of January 2015, his 68th birthday. He was working in the same low-key, no publicity way as the Next Day, with Tony Visconti as producer again. What no one, not even the musicians he was working with, realised at the time is that he was suffering from terminal liver cancer while recording this.

The album was released a year later, again on his birthday in 2016. We all stayed up past midnight, hitting refresh in Apple Music waiting for the downloads to appear. What we got was easily one of his best albums, experimental and jazzy, with callbacks to the vocal style of his earliest albums, the haunting sounds of the Berlin trilogy and the world music themes of his later work.

The title track has the line ‘Something happened on the day he died’ and I distinctly remember feeling a shiver go through me the first time I heard this, wondering also exactly what a Blackstar was. The second track, Tis Pity She Was a Whore also caught us by surprise - Bowie said cock! The cheeky scamp!

Lazarus returns to the theme of mortality - ‘Look up here, I’m in heaven. I’ve got scars that can’t be seen’ - accompanied by a haunting saxophone line. The song concludes ‘Ain’t that just like me?’ and is followed by Sue, which sounds like one half of a cryptic conversation with references to x rays and saying goodbye, sounding like someone putting their affairs in order, saying things that needed to be said, accompanied by a frantic jazz beat that builds to a wail of feedback.

Girl Loves Me gets even stranger with lyrics in a mix of gay Polari slang and the Nadsat constructed language from A Clockwork Orange. ‘Where the fuck did Monday go?’ he asks and we feel like time is running out. Dollar Days combines a soulful sax arrangement with lyrics wondering about never seeing the English evergreens again and the lines about ‘I’m trying to, I’m dying to …’ as the song builds to a pitch, crossfading into a beat as we reach the final track.

Seein’ more and feelin’ less
Sayin’ no but meaning yes

This is all I ever meant
That's the message that I sent

As the music faded out with one final, endless chord, we knew we’d heard something extraordinary, a message from someone we’d known all our lives.

Two days later we woke up to the news that he’d died.

We came together on our social accounts, sharing a mix of disbelief, grief and also appreciation for a lifetime of music that had soundtracked our lives from those early days on Top of the Pops, to teenage discos, to discovering hidden gems and scouring them for hidden meanings, to 80’s cool (and cheesy pop), the blast of Tin Machine and the Buddha of Suburbia, and then rediscovering it all again.

Rest in peace Starman.

https://album.link/i/1676286487

The Next Day By David Bowie

After Reality, David Bowie pretty much disappeared from public view. Unlike some aging rock stars on endless money spinning greatest hits tours, Bowie was happy to quietly spend time with his young family. However, he had a surprise for us - some time in 2011 he started working with old pal Tony Visconti on a series of tracks, with recording sessions kept low key and private, until the unexpected release of the single ‘Where are we now?’ on the 8th of January 2013, Bowie’s birthday.

The album cover is based on the classic picture from Heroes, partially obscured by a white square with the album title in stark, black text on top. The songs continue the theme of picking up where he left off, as if no time had passed. The lyrics are as bold and challenging as ever, and if the music sounds familiar it’s because at this point Bowie is free to draw from over forty years of experience. He was also able to draw the ire of church leaders in his pointed criticism of religious hypocrisy on the title track and especially in the accompanying music video featuring Gary Oldman as a corrupt priest. 

https://album.link/i/1676277418

Reality by David Bowie

For this album, Bowie was focused on pulling together a set of songs that could be played live and form the heart of an extensive live tour, calling on regulars Mike Garson and Gail Ann Dorsey amongst others. Also returning as producer was Tony Visconti, as reliable as always, playing bass on the recording sessions as well.

The tracks are all solid rock songs, and sound pretty much timeless with callbacks to the 70s, 80s and 90s. There are two covers - one from the Modern Lovers and a George Harrison song from 1973. The lyrics seem to be about Bowie’s thoughts on aging, not really surprising as he approached the mid point of his 50s. The title track is an absolute banger, as he sings about his failing eyesight and mortality. The jazz themed Bring Me the Disco King is another highlight for me, with some of Garson’s best piano work accompanying some of Bowie’s most introspective lyrics.

The Reality Tour was the biggest that he’d ever attempted, running from 2003 into 2004 and generally acknowledged to be one of the best he’d put together. It was unfortunately cut short near the end when Bowie suffered a heart attack on stage in Prague requiring an emergency angioplasty to clear a blocked artery. Fortunately he seemed to make a good recovery from surgery, but all future appearances were cancelled.

After that, all went quiet and we thought that he’d retired …

https://album.link/i/1676545706

Heathen by David Bowie

Bowie had just become a dad again at the age of 55 when he wrote this, so there is a mix of introspection, worries and looking to the future on this album. He’d reconciled with Tony Visconti after their falling out, so they were able to work together for the first time in over twenty years. There is an assured mix of styles, including some interesting choices of songs to cover from Pixies, Neil Young and Legendary Stardust Cowboy.

The two tracks that really stood out for me were Afraid, which is one of his very earliest songs that he had been working on for the Toys project, and A Better Future which was obviously written with his newborn daughter in mind.

https://album.link/i/1677228660

Hours … By David Bowie

This album has a more traditional pop sensibility than the previous two, but definitely one of the more unusual origins. The video game director David Cage had been working on an incredibly ambitious game called Omikron : The Nomad Soul and invited Bowie to contribute music for the soundtrack. Eventually, Bowie (as well as Reeves Gabrels, Gail Ann Dorsey and Iman) also ended up acting in the game via motion capture.

The songs were mainly introspective and emotional, dealing with mortality and spirituality (re-incarnation into different bodies is a theme of the game), and harking back to the style of Hunky Dory in places, especially on the track Seven. Bowie denied that it was autobiographical, but you have to wonder, especially as the cover shows an apparently dying older Bowie being cradled by his younger self.

In an another internet first, Bowie ran an online competition for his fans to contribute lyrics and backing vocals to one track and then made the whole album available on BowieNet before it was available in the the shops, seriously upsetting major retailers at the time.

https://album.link/i/1053991355

Earthling By David Bowie

If long term Bowie fans were surprised by Tin Machine then the drum ‘n’ bass opening to this will have knocked their Union Jack socks off. This is Bowie at his most confident, surfing the wave of Britpop cool and pushing boundaries again. This probably has the ultimate Bowie backing band for me - Reeves Gabrels, Carlos Alomar, Mike Garson, Zack Alford and Gail Ann Dorsey are super tight on this. 

Bowie produced this himself and seems to have been focussed on getting the most out of his cut-up process for song writing and experimenting with new sounds. He also broke new ground as the first artist to release a track on the internet in September 1996 with a 250,000 downloads - an amazing number for the era of slow dial up modems.

https://album.link/i/1053944724

Outside by David Bowie

This is another hidden gem of Bowie’s, and one that almost didn’t get released - there were various bootleg versions of this floating around and the record company were very reluctant to release it or give it any promotion.

He re-united with Brian Eno for this one for the first time since the mid 70’s, leaning into the oblique strategy cards again and tying the songs together with a Twin Peaks style narrative of a detective called Nathan Adler investigating the murder of a young woman. The story is non-linear and told through spoken narration between the tracks (including one that sounds like The Laughing Gnome!) as well as copious liner notes. The music harks back to the Berlin trilogy in places (naturally enough) while also bringing in some absolutely banging beats on Hallo Spaceboy and some sublime jazz piano from Mike Garson underpinning it.

This one feels like a secret album, only known to a handful of us, and definitely one of his best!

https://album.link/i/1053947320

The Buddha of Suburbia by David Bowie

Despite the title track, this is not really a soundtrack to the BBC TV series of the same name. It’s more of an album inspired by the themes of the book - sex, religion, queer identity and growing up feeling like an outsider in south London. It didn’t make much impact at the time but Bowie said it was one of his favourite albums and who am I to argue with him. I love the jazzy bits, the ambient soundscapes and especially the track Strangers When We Meet.

https://album.link/i/1745520756

Black Tie, White Noise by David Bowie

Two things inspired this album, firstly Bowie’s marriage in 1992 to Iman and their experience of seeing the LA riots at first hand the next week. The music sounds bold and confident, and definitively Bowie, featuring guest appearances from Mike Garson and Mick Ronson as well as anticipating the rise of Britpop and 90’s dance. The highlight is a down tempo cover of I Feel Free, which expresses Bowie’s new found artistic confidence.

https://album.link/i/1596765495

Tin Machine by Tin Machine

In 1988 Bowie was in need of a boot up the backside, so he teamed up with Reeves Gabrels and old pals Tony and Hunt Sales to put a band together. They needled each other in just the right ways, performed unannounced gigs in small clubs and recorded two albums worth of raw, swaggering, good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. A Bowie fan I worked with at the time absolutely hated this, I absolutely love it. The standout is Under the God which is just as relevant now.

https://album.link/i/696663789

Never Let Me Down by David Bowie

After a lacklustre album of mostly covers where he was just singing, Bowie returned to playing instruments and writing new material again. However, something went badly wrong somewhere and Bowie said later that he felt that he ended up just being a session musician on his own album. The production is peak 80’s with overly compressed drums, brassy synth stabs and warbling sax. I’ve still no idea what Glass Spider is supposed to be about!

https://album.link/i/1475495292

Jazzin’ For Blue Jean

I remember seeing this at the cinema as a B Movie accompaniment to Company of Wolves!

https://youtu.be/DXvAaNcXNzI

Tonight by David Bowie

It’s generally acknowledged that Bowie was pretty much burnt out at this time, exhausted from touring and out of ideas. This album has only two original songs, the rest being covers and reworkings of earlier collaborations with Iggy Pop. The experiment with reggae is deeply ill advised, and even a duet with Tina Turner can’t save the title track (which has a xylophone part that sounds uncannily like the Monkey Island theme).

Looking on the positive side with the two original songs, Loving the Alien is a haunting classic and Blue Jean (and the accompanying Jazzin’ for Blue Jean mini movie by Julien Temple) is a fun 50’s pastiche.

https://album.link/i/1475004488

Let’s Dance by David Bowie

The early 80s were a busy time for Bowie. After Scary Monsters, he’d spent a lot of time on acting and other artistic pursuits. He was also deeply affected by the murder of his friend John Lennon, cancelling a planned tour. When he came back to music in 1983, he was looking for another change of direction and picked Nile Rodgers as producer. Unfortunately he didn’t tell Tony Visconti, who found out about it from a third party, which led to the two men falling out for nearly twenty years.

This is Bowie’s biggest selling album and it propelled him into the mainstream as one of the biggest rockstars in the world, with some of his biggest hit singles. Going back to it now shows some problems - the production is that bright, brassy, radio friendly 80s style that doesn’t really suit David’s voice. Apart from the hits, the other songs are not that memorable. Oh, and I’m only giving China Girl (which manages to be both racist and sexist) a pass because he was doing it to help out his old friend Iggy who had got himself into financial trouble and needed the royalties.

https://album.link/i/1475002920

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) by David Bowie

It’s incredible to think that there were only ten years between Space Oddity and Ashes to Ashes, which brings back the Major Tom character (and also firmly established Bowie as the figurehead of the New Romantic scene). After being aware of Glam Bowie when I was young, I’d missed the Berlin years so this album was my re-introduction to him as an icon of 80s cool. However, he was already kicking back against this label with the sharply cynical Fashion.

https://album.link/i/1347896167

Lodger by David Bowie

This is the often overlooked conclusion to the Berlin trilogy, but I think that it easily stands comparison with the other two. If Low was a wail of despair and Heroes reaching out for a way forward, then Lodger is Bowie set free and playing with his artistic process. The experiments here are playful, venturing into world music and setting the tone for much of what was to come in the 80s. My highlight is the motorik beat inspired Red Sails.

https://album.link/i/1347846467

Low by David Bowie

It’s no exaggeration to say that Bowie’s friendship with Iggy Pop saved both their lives. They moved from America to France to escape the drugs scene, working first on Iggy’s album the Idiot, and then Bowie threw himself into experiments with the soundscapes and cut up vocals that would become Low. He worked with the legendary Brian Eno and co-producer Tony Visconti doing more on this record than many people realise.

The final production and mixing for the album then moved to Hansa Studios in Berlin giving a much needed focus for this album and the next two that form the Berlin Trilogy.

https://album.link/i/1347895593

Station to Station by David Bowie

Another transitional album, opening with the ten minute title track that starts with the sound of a hissing train and toys with prog krautrock beats and icy electronica. At this time Bowie was deep in the middle of an extended period of cocaine addiction, burnt out and paranoid, and morphed into the new persona of The Thin White Duke, a repellent European aristocrat with some very troubling opinions to say the least.

Thankfully Bowie quickly clarified that this was just an act that did not reflect his actual beliefs and the Duke didn’t hang around. The rest of the tracks build on the previous soul sound, with the highlight for me being Golden Years, one of his best.

Off to Berlin next!

https://album.link/i/1195104858

Young Americans by David Bowie

Even in 1975, America wasn’t quite ready for an androgynous alien with wonky teeth, so Bowie transformed again into a matinee idol and took his love of American soul music into the studio with Luther Vandross and Carlos Alomar to produce this great album. We also get a great cover of Across the Universe and a sharply observed collaboration with John Lennon on the final track that once more points to where we are heading next, warning about the poisonous effects of fame and celebrity.

https://album.link/i/1195107061