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A lyrical interpretation
by Jonathan Greatorex
Hunky Dory
RCA LSP 4623
December 1971
The genesis of Hunky Dory is quite academic, but either through Olav Wyper or Tony Visconti, David Bowie met Tony DeFries in 1971. DeFries, a Shepherds Bush lawyer, following negotiations concerning the contractual obligations of Bowie to Ken Pitt, finally assumed control of the songwriter's managerial duties, procuring a recording contract from RCA. In the interim David had made his first trip over the Atlantic in order to promote the last album `The Man Who Sold the World'.
During his stay in New York he had met Lou Reed of The Velvet Underground. Their meeting had taken place at one of America's `nouveau renaissance' venues, "Andy Warhols Circus" at "The Factory".
The two sojourned around Max's Kansas City which at the time was the centre of New York `decadence'.
Hunky Dory, which as an album at one time may have seemed to be David's only optimistic contribution, had elements of the fiery `The Man Who Sold the World', still coursing through it. Indeed, much of the material had already been written and recorded before the airing of the John Peel Radio Show during June 1971.
DeFries had successfully introduced Bowie to RCA. Visconti had departed from the scene, replaced in the production capacity by Ken Scott. Also during this time Trevor Boulder, who had worked previously alongside Ronson and Woodmansey joined the band, thus completing "The Spiders from Mars".
Hunky Dory is an album mirroring Bowie's first obsession with America and the 'Great Dream' it professed to hold. Much of the material on the album is reflective of Bowie's visits to the States and the places and people encountered there. If a large percentage of 'David Bowie' and 'The Man Who Sold the World' is English in origin, then the Pentateuch of 'Hunky Dory', 'Ziggy Stardust', 'Aladdin Sane', 'Diamond Dogs' and 'Young Americans' must credit much of their existence to Bowie's thoughts while living West of the Atlantic.
Possibly one of the greatest influential attributes of the personality of David Bowie was the reformation of character that came with each new year. To speak of the man and his philosophy was also to mention the overriding permutations of his character. He described himself as a 'generalist', but this should not be confused with liberal generalisation. Each new role, concept or body he moulded was not unique, yet sprang from the fear of the 'monster' who inhabited 'The Width of a Circle'.
The need for 'change in man' can be argued well into the night, the difference lies not in our own philosophising and aspirations, but in Bowie's ability to put into concrete terms an ideal which many sad men simply muse upon. In an empirical sense he was 'the epitome of difference'.
'Changes' does not try to persuade, it merely informs of the various alterations and options which Bowie had discovered in himself. He starts by using reflective thought, "Still don't know what I was waiting for and my time was running wild"
He speaks of his many failures while searching for success and the bitter pills which had to be swallowed. He concludes that what was sought could not be found on the faces or in the pages of his learning, and he eventually had to refer to himself. In order to elude the contempt of critical defeat, he decided to jump from stone-to-stone, one step ahead of the scythe.
"I've never caught a glimpse of how the others see the faker, I'm much to fast to take that test" Arrogant perhaps, but he emphasises that success need not be obtained purely, in material terms, Don't have to be a richer man...Don't want to be a better man". But Eve's sweet serpent is constantly near to hand. Time alone will only prevail, and if there's one thing which change desires, then it's Time. "Time may change me, but I can't trace time." This song found a counterpart on Aladdin Sane, which will be discussed in due course. Back to the song, and Herman Hesse:
He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships to each other, all helping each other, loving, hating and destroying each other and becoming newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another. And all these forms and faces rested, flowed, reproduced, swam past and merged into each other.
Herman Hesse: `SIDDHARTHA'
Bowie had witnessed how people, (ripples), grow old, but can never escape the flow of life. However, the difficulty Bowie sees is that "the days flow thru my life, but the days still seem the same". This almost paraphrases the fact that my body may have stagnated like yours, yet still my mind remains generously thoughtful.
He attacks the Old Order as they attempt to stifle the lust of their youthful usurpers: And these children that you spit on as they try to change their world' This youth is aware of the betrayal and cynicism it is offered in the form of promise. He demands that the Old Order should search for it's dignity and admit it's responsibility, "Where's your shame ? You've five left us up to our necks in it "
The physical impossibility of being able to backtrack time found at the finish of the first verse is given an unsavoury twist when hurled at the faces of the old. "Time may change them, but you can't trace time".
With fingers pressed deep into his temples he begins to assume transcendence, and, as a seer premonitioning his own birth, calls to his audience: "Look out all you Rock n' Rollers!"
Oh You Pretty Things
In this song, Bowie opens with the ancestral reiterations of parenthood speaking to it's offspring. Wake up you sleepy head, put on some clothes shake up your bed". Adopting, and consequently identifying with the role of this young new race, Bowie fantasises in absolute terms the awareness of where the youth of tomorrow can discover the origin of it's birth. "A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me" The strangers who inhabited both H.P.Lovecraft's worlds and 'The Supermen', are here, declares Bowie, "and it looks as though they're here to stay" He then philosophises on the plight of the globe where over-population breeds discontent in the human spirit of adventure, His mind is drawn towards the promise of a future ordained by a follower of the Golden Ones, and advocates such a change to the youth the follower is trying to reach. He tells them that their Old Order parents are fraught with confusion, recommending that they "Better make way for the Homo Superior" He now adopts the role of one of these super-race, informing the Old Order that the new youth have seen the light. The earth as it stands "is a bitch" giving false promises and little hope for the future. The Old Order have peopled this planet but now their function has become obsolete, "Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use" and the strangers look as though their impression is one of permanence. Of the song Bowie observed:
`The crack in the sky is what HUNKY DORY is all about...there's a crack in the dome of the world and I know that I can write my problems out'
Eight Line Poem
The mood changes from one of people, to place, in fact this is the only track on the album which doesn't relate specifically to person or persons. Just as there are wheels within wheels, so there exists microcosms within microcosms. The prairie is a part of the earth, and the city is a part of the prairie. The West Side, is a part of the city. The room is a part of the West Side, and the cactus, taken from the prairie, is now part of the room.
They, the world, prairie, city, West Side, room and cactus, all relate to one another in time and place, or so we are led to believe.
In a natural sense there is no relationship. The prairie is empty, hostile and barren, yet it is real. The city too, is hostile and barren, but it' s make-up is artificial. It is a wasteland where `memory and desire are mixed'. The inhabitants of the city draw upon the natural vegetation of the desert as momento's for their window-sills and side tables. Replacements taken out of true context. Bowie's footnotes to the album claim the city as 'A kind of high-life wart on the backside of the prairie'. Ironically, the course of the city's establishment or the "keys to it's position is a result of the temperate climate found in the desert/prairie, where the warmth of the sun "Pins the branches to the sky."
'For Frankie', and also much of the melody structure can be found on Sinatra's version of 'My Way'. Bowie wrote: "this is a sensitive young girls reaction to the media". He also scribed that it was the same young ladies reaction to 'Songs like, My Way; films like Love Story and newspapers'. However, the latter comments were decided to be omitted.
On the opening of the song we encounter the confusingly surreal existence of this poor young girl at the point of despair. "It's a god-awful small affair to the girl with the mousy hair". The trivialities of living in a terrible world are crushingly made poignant as she keeps receiving negative replies from her parents. Her father simply does not want to know, and so she ventures comfort from her friends, alas they are "nowhere to be seen." Still in turmoil, she sinks into her own thoughts to seek a solution, or at best, a meaning. But as she ponders over her past, the weight of her depression becomes greater. "But the film is a saddening bore, for she's lived it ten times or more." "She could spit in the eyes of fools" who find enjoyment and gratification in watching drunken men fight each other. Society has been corrupted to a point where even the police, those defenders of the wronged, are used as instruments of torture by wealthy or influential vermin. They arrest, detain and hurt the innocent. "Take a look at the Lawman beating up the wrong guy...He's in the best-selling show". Violence is the biggest box-office taker. In consequence, hopeful determination is addressed towards some extra-terrestrial optimism. "Is there life on Mars ?" As the second verse opens, the role of the young girl, (youth), has been adopted by Bowie the Observers possibly from the vantage of the super-race. Earth, and `America' in particular, is looked down upon as if it were a historical tragedy with entertainment value. "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow. Now the workers have struck for fame, 'cause Lennon' s on sale again" Analogies abound. Mickey Mouse, the first real cartoon hero, who personified children's laughter of the macabre, being able to get away with gratuitous violence, has developed into a sacred cow, fixed in the imagination. It is now people and not animated illustrations that are being abused. Contemporary music has ambiguously suffocated the realm of the written word as it is now Lennon and not Lenin who is in demand by the 'workers'. The beings who gaze down upon "The mice in their million hordes" have attained a state beyond violence, to a degree which we listeners can only draw a parallel between our present selves and our pre-historic ancestors. But Bowie subconsciously fears the rhetoric maxim - "the world is doomed, we have no future". He is also aware that he must continue his pilgrimage of persuasion, hence: "'Cause I wrote it ten times before. "It's about to be writ again as I ask you to focus on.." The world he sees is grotesquely misshapen into the freakiest show resembling more a cinematographic representation of the surreal, than a process of civilised evolution.
By the legacy of one 'hit single', by the relative (if mediocre) success of 'The Man Who Sold the World', by the gaining importance of travel and projection, the new acquaintance, the opening up of the seventies, and, a nice big fat contract with RCA, Tony DeFries was helping to push Bowie towards fulfilling what the artist believed the public wanted...a Superstar.
Doubt about the future of mankind was one thing, the dilemma facing Bowie at this most crucial point in his career was by far the greatest problem that he would ever be required to take to task. On one hand he had the massive philosophical debate concerning his commitment to his belief in the underground 'ideal'. On the other he had met capitalism up-front on his visit to America. Was he to pursue the fight to overthrow and revolutionist or was he to accept the profit of stardom? His mind could possibly provide the answer to one, his pocket, welfare and need to communicate, the other. Whatever the moral decision, it had to be made, and whichever he elected, the other would cry hypocrisy. His own thoughts on the matter personified through 'Quicksand' were conveyed thus:- 'The chain reaction of moving around throughout the bliss, and the calamity of America produced this epic of confusion. Anyway, with my esoteric problems I could have written it in Plainview or Dulwich'.
He decides to battle out his problems on the well-trod field which combined the existentialist with the realist. He had an uncanny feeling that the future, for him, cloaked in the garment of fulfilment, was looming nearer and nearer. The confusion of what the future would bring was not so certain.
The honesty of the song is itself frightening: "I'm closer to the Golden Dawn immersed in Crowley's uniform of imagery". As mentioned earlier, Aliester Crowley, was a prominent figure of the esoteric Golden Dawn Society over which he assumed leadership in 1918. The Golden Dawn was a Hermetic order claiming descent from the ancient secrets of Chaldea in Egypt and the Hebrew rabbis. The leaders claimed to be in some kind of mystical contact with secret `Chiefs'. Being in their actual presence, it is maintained, presents a feeling so electric 'that one can hardly breathe'. Such Homo Superior creature ,and the potential they amassed, Bowie believed to be available as a latent source in all humanity. Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi second-in-command during WW2, had followed a similar path in that he had veered away from early devotion to Christianity. Akin to Bowie was that this transcendental impulse found another expression in a preoccupation with occultism. He believed in good and evil principals, which manifested themselves in human Organisations. The volkish or 'pure youth' movements had also been attractive to both sides. Another mutual association was belief in karma and reincarnation. In a speech at Dachau in November 1936, Himmler told his assembled Gruppenfuhrer that 'We have all seen each other somewhere before, and in the same way we shall see each other again in the next world.' Himmler had a vision of his SS as a sort of time-defying order of heroes with a special mission.
Bowie professed a similar vision for his 'youth'. "I'm living in a silent film, portraying Himmler's sacred realm of dream reality." Bowie is not so slow to realise that fascism was delivered from a misinterpreted version of his own beliefs. In consequence he is "frightened by the total goal." And the total goal of his liberated imagination was at a point of gravitational pull which could not be overcome. His destiny lay completely in the hands which beckoned from the crack in the sky. "I'm drawing to the ragged hole and I `aint got the power anymore."
The second verse contains statements and questions dealing with his personal being. This is in contrast to the opening of the first stanza, being more informative and riposte. He lives an agony of mime, envisaged as "The twisted name on Garbo's eyes". As he draws ever nearer to the ragged hole, the path to fulfilment, he muses over the Old Order's infatuation with hierarchical values and the 'Rule Britannia' jingoism which stagnated during the latter years of Queen Victoria's reign. Consequently, Bowie, a late-forties child, is a legacy of the patriarchal hope spewed upon the populous by the 'bright new tomorrow' philosophers. He is: "living proof of Churchill's lies, I'm destiny." He claims to be attracted to both the forces of good and evil, the difficulty is one of decision. Others may know which side of the fence is more favourable, but to him it is a bone of confusion."I'm drawn between the light and dark where others see their targets divine symmetry."
What is he to do? Should he, as mentioned in 'The Width of a Circle', adopt and condone the darker side of man's nature by kissing "the vipers fang ?" If such a course is to be followed, then surely it must involve an utter withdrawal from any optimistic promise for mankind, meaning that he would have to "herald loud the death of Man" Either way he is still slipping into the quicksand of his confusion and he no longer has any strength to overcome the tumult. The chorus refrain is then unleashed in which Bowie encourages: "Don't believe in yourself, don't deceive with belief. Knowledge comes with deaths release." This embodies the quicksand of his thought. Belief in the self is a misrepresentation of that belief: Marx:
'The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same point that mankind seems to master nature, man appears to become enslaved by other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our intentions and progress seems to rest in the endowing material forces with intellectual life, and into stultifying human life into a material force.'
Bowie quite erroneously proclaims, "I'm not a prophet", yet by the very nature of his psychology and charisma, he has to be. He attempts to justify the statement by attributing the reality that he's "just a mortal with potential of a superman." and as such he is living on. This appears to conflict with the notion that knowledge is gained through death's release, but does concur with the thoughts of `The Supermen' in 'The Man Who Sold the World'.
The final lines of the song bring to a head the initial dilemma. Should he abandon his idealistic beliefs nurtured throughout eight years purely because of his tethers "to the logic of Homo Sapien" with it's great salvation of "bullshit faith", when he expounds the certainty of a latent potential residing in every mortal? Apparently so, but he is tired of walking through philosophical debates of illogical conclusions. He resigns the idealism, and if he has not managed to clarify the manifesto fully, then it can be found in the mouth of the reincarnated author during his next visit. "If I don't explain what you ought to know, you can tell me all about it on the next Bardo." At this juncture Bowie finally cleaves himself from the speculations of the occult and associated dependants. The song needed to be written, either in Plainview or Dulwich, Somewhere or Elsewhere, for it marked the end of one era and the start of a new.
"There is a time and space level, just before you go to sleep when all about you are losing theirs...and woosh, void gets you with it's cacophony of thought - That's when I like to write my songs."
These three songs continue to flavour the 'personal' discourse of the album. As tributes/vignettes they reflect past and present influences on Bowie's career.
'Andy Warhol' is a humorous song in which the New York artist is satirised by Bowie who views Warhol's 'modernist' style with gentle, mocking contempt. He later described Warhol 'As a man of media and anti-message, with a kind of cute style' The song portrays Warhol as a personification of his own media. After taking a "cement fix", the protagonist wishes to be a "standing cinema where all the pretensions and 'arty-styles' are removed, showing the man and his aficionados as they really are, affected freaks. Warhol is ridiculed by his ostentation. The artist and his art, (known for themes of repetition), seem inseparable in their superficiality. "Andy Warhol looks a scream, hang him on my wall. Andy Warhol, silver screen, can't tell them apart at all." But, as Bowie indicated, Warhol, a frail pathetic-looking creature, possessed a naive trait, and the writer comments upon his absurdly abnormal, yet natural aspects. "Andy walking, Andy tired, Andy take a little snooze." The intricate man is human after all, even if he does continuously labour himself to the confines of his rather tedious pursuit. "He'll think about paint and he'll think about glue, what a jolly boring thins to do."
`Song for Bob Dylan' Song for Bob Dylan, originally entitled 'Here She Comes', takes it's opening line, "Hear this Robert Zimmerman, I wrote A .song for you" from the track 'Song for Woody' found on Dylan's first album, on which Bob proclaims they Woody Gutherie, I wrote you a song'. Bowie indicated that at the time the song was 'something I wanted to do. If Dylan was no longer going to try to unite us, I would at least try to lead the way' This comment declares the track's theme.
Dylan, more than a mere inspiration to the revolutionaries during the mid to late sixties, had, with particular reference to his more reactionary songs, `dried up' somewhat at the turn of the seventies. In consequence, Bowie was not so much speaking off his own back when he recalled, "His words in truthful vengeance could pin us to the floor. Brought few more people on, put the fear in a whole lot more". Bowie even uses his voice as a tender parody of the sixties hero, although the song is more of a poke at the man to get himself motivated, than a tribute in the conventional sense. "here she comes again, The same old painted lady from the brow of the superbrain." In this, the `painted lady' refers to Dylan's later work, which Bowie felt to be unjustified and superficial from a pen of the quality held by the 'superbrain'. "A couple of songs from your old scrapbook could send her home again."
The ensuing lines present a beautiful description of how Dylan, through his lyrics of truthful vengeance, had managed to unite a generation not by calling en-masse, but by the relatively untapped usage of the record media as a form of propaganda thereby appealing to individuals in isolation, and ultimately a far greater audience. "You gave your song to every bed-sit room, at least a picture on my wall. sat behind a million pair of eyes and told them why they saw"
There then follows a pitiful plea to Dylan. A request for him to be extricated from songs of self-indulgence and lyrical confusion. His audience needed guidance, because as the atmosphere becomes more intense, they would "rather be scared together than alone" And into the final verse where Dylan is required to reflect back into his past, in a sense to when the fullness of lyrical punch n' guts came from the anger of being abused by a sight of poverty and strife. The call is that the leader should not quit the field now when the writing is on the wall: "Give us back our unity, Give us back our family."
Dylan, whose words extolled the need for change, who could possibly provide some form of answer, is urged not to leave his disciples to the 'sanity' of political madness now prevailing. The solicitation is one of Protest, the answer is sadly crooned by the Painted Lady.
`Queen Bitch' There is not really a great deal to be said concerning this track, other than that it completes the Warhol/Dylan/Reed influence of side two. The template appears to be attributed to the Velvet Underground song 'White Light White Heat' Although it was most definitely written against a backdrop of New York, Bowie does indicate
`It's about London sometimes' `Buy'-sexuality is affronted as we are presented with a little dramatic piece concerning the antics of a male exaunt pursued by a hustler.
The enigmatic tour-de-force of the album. It is most commonly accepted that the lyrics, in part, concern themselves with Bowie and his relationship with his brother Terry, referred to in 'All the Madmen' on 'The Man Who Sold the World'.
Terry, seven years Bowie's senior was probably a great influence to the songwriter during his impressionable years of pre-adolescence. When Bowie was eight years old Terry and David, moved for a two-year stay to an uncles farm in Yorkshire. This was during 1955-58, a period often referred to as the 'beat generation', heavily influenced by jazz music. Terry gave the young Bowie the invaluable gift of `change' and `progressive thought'.
Before he had reached 14, David had been passed works by Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg - literature which predates many of Bowie's contemporaries by at least five years. Also, through Terry and his 'listen to this bit' enthusiasm, Bowie adopted an affiliation with the saxophone. However, true to Kerouac tradition, the spirit of adventure called to Terry and he enlisted in the Royal Air Force.
He returned a few years later, a broken man, deeply distressed. His lively gregarious nature had disappeared, his mind was broken, eventually he had to be institutionalised. Bowie was still at school when this happened, and naturally the traumatic experience of regular visits to the home where Terry was kept must have produced an equally devastating effect upon him. In his early twenties Terry eventually declined to speak to anyone.
The Bewlay Brothers is a poem spiked with imagination, metaphors, puns and conceits. The debate begins in the past, probably pre-dating Bowie's involvement in the music industry, when he and his brother would sit and discuss the intricacies of the world in which they lived: "And so that story goes, they wore the clothes. They said the things to make it seem improbable" The first murmurings of discontent with the order and running of society were invoked. The promise of a brighter tomorrow, heralded by the Goodmen of the mid-to-late fifties, before the abolition of National Service, was a "whale of a lie". And how they conformed with short-back-n-sides, holding pin-striped ideals gained from a Big Brother who would favour those who flattered and bent in subservience. The potential of the 'underground' was already beginning to adopt form : "And their heads of Brawn were nicer shorn. And how they bought their positions with saccharin and trust, the world was asleep to our latent fuss." The lines that follow can be interpreted in a variety of ways, an element of ascension being central. Bowie infers the process of growing up, rationalising with the petulant speech of "Wings that Bark" Argumentation and the paying up of verbal interaction: "Flashing teeth of Brass': Until he and his brother stood "Tall in the dark". They recognised the truth that they were the living proof of dogma based on hierarchical values and patriotic glibness, as passed by the "Dwarf Men" with their "Lack of conclusions".
There continues a narrative description of David and his brother in which Bowie exposes his fascination for his sibling's supple ability to control fluid emotions: "I was stone and he was wax, so he could scream and still relax, unbelievable. Their conversation was a compendium of ancient philosophy which became them, burning the oil into the small hours: "And our talk was old and dust would flow through our veins and Lo' it was midnight back o' the kitchen door." The time was as cold and earthy as the stoic medieval faces on the brasses of the church floor during those long exchanges.
The conclusions were moulded from concrete accounts and delineation, verbal, not written, for the interlocutor raced too fast. The ideal however, was etched onto the brain: "And the solid book we wrote cannot be found today. It was stalking time for the Moonboys."
Bowie believed that they had exchanged concepts reaching absolute levels, and like eels, could twist their minds around all possibilities. They, "were so turned on" it could have been easy for those not `tuned in' to regard them as contrived. Into the reality of the present, where one of the party no longer belongs. His "dress is hung" his "ticket pawned". He had begun something which nearly fifteen years later Bowie saw embodied at `The Factory' and at `Max's'. Brother, man of Wax, is liquefied, but remains a part of Bowie's persona:-"The Factor Max that proved the fact is melted down, and woven on the edging of my pillow." And the broken Moonboy becomes a metaphysical spirit, which may or may not exist in one man, in all men. "He could be dead. He could be not. he could be You."
Bowie proceeds to explain the many-faceted dimensions of his brother, and in doing so provides a self-description: "He's Camelian (sic), comedian, Corinthian and Caricature." They will always remain together, feeble, bad, blessed and cold, because the 'brotherhood' became a life commitment when, during those intense nights, they stripped the skin from their characters, became the masters of disregard and danced the psychic enclosure: "In the crutch-hungry dark, where we flayed our mark. Kings of Oblivion. We were so turned on in the Mind warp pavilion." Pitifully, the final refrain leads the listener from the fantastic `Mind Warp Pavilion' into the institution and the cold numbness of Terry's madness. The Bewlay Brothers is a passionate tribute from one Superman to another.
