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A lyrical interpretation
by Jonathan Greatorex
Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
RCA BOW LP2
September 1980
`I don't like collections of people, whether it be politically, socially or artistically. I've always tried to ridicule those factors. I slummed out rock and roll when it got very cliquey, and have been known to slam out politics in a similar, exaggerated, cartoonist fashion. Gangs of people scare the hell out of me. I think it can crucify what's called a movement if it's made into a group of people. I much prefer to call them a group of individuals.'Bowie, May 1979
RCA, concerned about Bowie's current less than prolific persona, released the `vaulted' 12" Sigma Sound session of `John I'm Only Dancing' for the seasonal market in December `79. The thought, apparently, was that a past reincarnation was a far more acceptable and practicable proposition than the current `unknown quantity'.
Also during this period, Bowie temporarily extracted himself from semi-seclusion to fabric a short promotion for the turn of the decade's Kenny Everett Video Show' - a New Year special.
The song chosen, `Space Oddity', was probably the most elegant of all the arrangements - slow cool and mellow, featuring acoustic guitar, drums, bass, and strict piano chords on each bar. RCA released this superior rendition as the `B' side to the `Threepenny Opera' ,Weill/Brecht composition, `Alabama Song'.
On the latter, Bowie once more experimented, having the band change key with every verse, alternating his own vocal key in each chorus. The result was a cacophony which commercially sank without trace.
In February 1980, David and Angie were divorced, the singer managing to retain custody of his son, Zowie, (Jo).
`Scary Monsters' was recorded at the Power Station, New York, between March and June. New Musicians featured Chuck Hammer on guitar, Roy Bitten on piano, Andy Clark on synthesiser and guest solo appearance by Pete Townshend.
From the end of July 1980, he began a six-month portrayal of the grossly disfigured John Merrick, in Bernard Pomeranee's `The Elephant Man' beginning at the Denver Centre, Colorado, moving through Chicago's `Blackstone Theatre', to final four months at the `Booth Theatre' on Broadway.
Bowie accepted Jack Hofsiss' offer to play the part, indicating that it was undoubtedly the greatest single challenge of his career.
Acting on Broadway was the fulfilment of a dream which he had been unable to manifest six years previously with the `Diamond Dogs' tour. However, Bowie insists that it was his determination to make a Broadway debut in a legitimate play, as opposed to a musical that produced the personal triumph.
Director Jack Hofsiss, elected to dispense with any form of heavy make-up such as that employed by John Hurt in his highly acclaimed screen version of the story. This sentiment was endorsed by Bowie.
`When I took the part, I was determined to make audiences accept me seriously and not look on it as a theatrical gimmick...I feel that creating too monstrous an appearance detracts from the play's real message.'
There is a great difference between a `live' performance, and the semi-fantasy world of the cinema. `The Elephant Man' is not a horror show, rather the relationship between Merrick and those attempting to help him, and the way in which, through terrible suffering and perseverance, his true personality and character finally emerge. To this end both Hurt and Bowie produced exceptional portrayals within their own respective mediums.
To be able to produce the first outward stirrings of this unusual mind enclosed in it's shell of literally rotting flesh is no mean task in itself, made doubly difficulty since `The Elephant Man' depends entirely on the actor playing the part of Merrick to constantly project the man's awareness of his own predicament.
Bowie's evidently absolute immersion in the part of Merrick enables him to express every nuance that Pomerance intended. As Dan, (a member of the Chicago audience) remarked to me after Thursday's show, 'The play's the thing. It really doesn't matter who's Merrick as long as he's good - and yes, Bowie is very, very good.'
Angus MacKinnon September 1980
As with `Lodger', ten tracks split into five-a-side. The album opens with the same portentous feel to that of `Repetition' on `Lodger'. Following an unsuccessful first attempt, a small mechanical motor is sparked into life, and Bowie counts us into `It's no game' through a voice vocoder, to be met on the fourth beat by Fripp and Alomar's grating, almost manic confrontation.
Their music may sound hard, yet barely in the same league as the ferocity of Michi Hirota's spitting lyrics, translated from the original by Hisahi Miura.
To Bowie, the fascination with Japan was based on the pre-conceived notion of the old, wise, heavily cultured society, gradually being balanced against a great new modern advance. Hence the idealist/ sexist vision of the gentle, well-tempered little Geisha girl, is thwarted as Michi, refusing to kotow, storms in as a Samurai, wealding cutting blows as she repeats Bowie's English in curt Japanese.
Such is Bowie's conviction to the song, he appears hoarse after uttering the second syllable. His statements are totally veracious and inflexible, utterly in keeping with the import of the rest of the album. "Silhouettes and shadows watch the revolution." No longer do the black clouds drift on the horizon, they are here. Now.
The fascism, totalitarianism, sectarianism, and all other forms of oppressive human behaviour are blending into one malignancy. As the cancer spreads there is no longer the moderate policy of the spectator:- "No more free steps to heaven." David Bowie, the Realist, is speaking. What was inferred on `Lodger' is submerged in concrete candour here. He slaps his audience's face. `You think it's `easy realism', "Well it's no game `"
Bowie, confined to the logic of `homo Sapiens', is no bringer of glad tidings. The reasoning is beyond his comprehension, "I am barred from the event - I really don't understand the situation."
Whatever happened to the idealism he was so passionately adherent to ten years previously, is now viewed through the eyes of a committed realist.
Television, the great communicator, exposes the world's massive inhumanity, as the `fantastic voyage' abruptly ends for the starving and homeless. And to these poor wretches, their act's of defiance are as effective as throwing lumps of clay against the solid path of `progress'.
To "Draw the blinds on yesterday." viz. to shut out the hindsight that led to the first Atomic War, as if it were all now non-educational history, with no lessons to be learnt makes the present "All so much scarier."
Do we have our priorities in order, if millions of people are being destroyed by needless famine, disease and persecution. When, David Bowie, person, singular, commits suicide "And it makes all the papers."
So, he enquire where's the moral obligation of man, his responsibility to himself and his brotherhood. Any tampering into the present system by dissidents is retorted by the infuriatingly sinister "People have their finger's broken.
The finger, however crippled by complacency all around, will still raise itself to pinpoint the pseudo-patriots whose very existence is an insult in itself, making "It so degrading" to be part of the `thinking animals'.
Little wonder why Bowie wishes to be barred from the event.
Visconti' s almost `Hand Jive' opening to `Up The Hill Backwards', develops a false sense of security in the listener, for no sooner do the two riffs appear, than they are replaced by Bowie's relentless insistence upon facing the crisis developed in the first song.
With the opening lines, The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom, and the possibility it seems to offer. It's got nothing to do with you if you can grasp it... Earth keeps on rolling, witnesses falling. It's got nothing to do with you." The implication seems to be, on face value, that defeat is inevitable and there's nothing anyone can do to arrest it. However, the real admission is that something is definitely wrong. Yet perseverance, through grabbing the terror and disillusionment by the horns, is a far more favourable proposition than complacency, or pretended ignorance. In essence, the song is a reversal of the `Two steps forward, three backwards' apothem. Bowie is saying rule out the acquiescence that all is lost, and go "Up the hill backwards" because if this can be accomplished real achievement can be attained.
Ultimately, the song is a strange piece of music in that, as the final refrain, as that "Up the hill backwards" - It'll be all right" is reached, one feels that it has endeavoured to formulate some kind of commitment. A commitment which, upon first hearing, is shrugged off in an almost cynical `there's nothing we can do about it' attitude. This is made more credible by Bowie using a middle-of- the-road voice on the track. The initial impression is therefore one which sounds like the epitome of indifference. However, the song is one which needs to be interpreted in context to the music, and as it is blocked from beginning to end with the extraordinary high-energy Robert Fripp-cum-Bo Diddled rhythm, the book-ending music promotes another kind of switch. The song has far more power than it would at first seem. This helps to present it with a very strong commitment, disguised by indifference.
`All the stuff was flying around, buzzing around the skies. I could see it. Everywhere I looked there were these great demons of the past, demons of the future on the battlegrounds of ones emotional plane and all that.
The title-track can be interpreted as a pot-pouri of emotions, experiences and cross-references dating to the early Berlin days. Bowie launches himself into the song with his stylised cockney accent, occasionally being distorted by the vocoder. " She had an order of rooms, she was tired, you can't hide beat. And when I looked in her eyes they were blue but nobody home." `She', is possibly a fruit of Bowie's own soul. He had admitted having a penchant for the chemical sulphates, as inferred by his weariness in the opening line, the `horror' being the whizzing demons inside his head. The emotionless eyes could be those of the little girl, `so deep in her room', who says nothing in `What In The World' The re-opened strange doors that we'd never close again. also possesses the attributer of some semi-hallucinogenic state. And waiting at the lights", may be read in relation to the `kilometre s from the red light', found on the moribund, `Always Crashing In The Same Car'. Hence the dry aphorism, "Know what I mean?"
Asking him to stay, and his consequent theft of her room can be mirrored against the theme of `Sound and Vision' while, "She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind" possesses overtones of the solipsistic emotlon-free of `Station To Station"
"Now she's stupid on the street and she can't socialise. Well I love the little girl and I love her till the day she dies." One fact does appear a certainty, Bowie considers himself the last to go.
`Ashes To Ashes' was the first single to be lifted from the `Scary Monsters' album, being highly successful in reaching the No.l position in the British charts only two weeks following it's release. RCA boarded the bandwagon of superfluous marketing by releasing the single in three separate sleeves. On each, Bowie was either holding, gazing into, or listening to a shoe. (It probably didn't make any sense to him either) Also in the package came a set of `Bowie stamps'
The real curio, however, was that Bowie had written a song that was neither outward nor futuristic in it `s message.
Moreover, the theme was one of introversion and nostalgia. The flavour was ethereal and melancholic, and the-melody irresistible.
The subject of Ashes To Ashes is quite obviously the nursery- 4 e appeal of it, and for me it's a story of corruption.'
"Do you remember a guy that's been in such an earlier song. I've heard a rumour from Ground Control, oh no, don't say it's true. They got a message from the Action Man; I'm happy hope you're happy too - I've loved all I've needed love, (sordid details following)".
Bowie begins by developing a direct relationship between the original intentions behind `Space Oddity', and the idealism which surrounded his incarnation, balancing it against his present beliefs in realism. When he began writing the exploits of his first principal character, Major Tom, he was officious and pedantry, almost-opinionated, in a single word, inexperienced.
He thought he knew where everything began and where it should end. However, a casual glance through his seventy's albums exposes a defect of such pragmatic nativity, `Scary Monsters', being the culmination of all re-assessments and re-assertions, as indicated in this account's opening translation of the Major Tom saga, Bowie developed the technological American Dream to place a man in space, and once there, the individual is left to correlate his own thoughts for being there.
Bowie left him, rejecting the system which placed him up there by his own volition, with circuits dead.
In `Ashes To Ashes', the communication is re- opened, being developed in a semi-autobiographical way. "The shrieking of nothing is killing me. Just pictures of Jap girls in synthesis, and I ain't got no money and I ain't got no hair. - But the planet is glowing."
We discover this s new-decade-of-experience, Major Tom, (And Bowie, indirectly), realising that the whole process that got him to the stars, (and stardom), had decayed.
It was born out of decay and simply followed it's hereditary growth.
Major Tom, the experiment, the offspring from this decay, is also wasting. Yet he yearns to return to the nice round womb, the earth, from whence he started. "Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Major Tom' s a junkie. strung out in heaven's high hitting an all time low".
Bowie/Tom, in mid-career, through the LA scene, `Young Americans to 'Golden Years'. The dependence upon stimulants and cocaine gradually taking their toll until they blend into the cover of `David Live.' The final capitulation in Berlin with it's ensuing psychotic withdrawal symptoms.
Not for long however, "Time and again I tell myself, I'll stay clean tonight, but their little green wheels are following me - Oh no, not again. I'm stuck with a valuable friend. I'm happy. hope you're happy too. one flash of light. but no smoking pistol." This lyric can be approached on two levels, the most obvious being an expansion of the junkie/drug theme. No matter how often the inclination to quit arises, the `little green wheels' will find a way through the defensive shield, the result claiming to be a sensation of euphoria. An explosion of the senses in a journey to suicide, without the instantaneous `smoking pistol'.
A further interpretation can be credited to the requirements of the spirit - many times the prospect of retiring from the media has been contemplated in
calculated manner, yet the incentives to remain are constantly in pursuit, both literal and metaphysics being thrust upon the artist. Again the metaphoric trigger is pulled once more, the release denied. "I've never done good things, I've never done bad things, I never did anything out of the blue."
These three statements are perhaps at the heart of the song. There is also a temptation to accept them entirely on face-value, i.e. he is not to be judge, jury and executioner for his own mistakes and achievements. The last line indicates that, whatever the risks he took, during his career, they were, to an extent, calculated, and these he has to a degree exploited.
Bowie, was attempting to convey a very deep deeper personal reasoning. The lines are an expression of recognition, relating to a feeling of inadequacy he has pervading all that he has done.:
`I have an awful lot of reservations over what I've done inasmuch as I don't feel that much of it has any import at all. And then I have days when it of course all seems very important to me, that I've contributed an awful lot. `But I'm not awfully happy with what I've done in the past actually.'
Thus, Major Tom/Bowie, the astronaut/singer, with hippie/ idealist philosophies, is brought into the eighties following a period of psychotic withdrawal/enlightenment. As the spaceman frantically tries to pierce the atmosphere, he calls for "An axe to break the ice" of his dependency/past, of his dependency/past, insisting: "I want to come down right now !"
The final refrain brings once more a nursery-rhyme texture to the whole, made even more relevant by the child-like choice of words, "My mama said `To get things done, you'd better not mess with Major Tom'."
All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put Tom on that sphere again.
`I think that the nineteen-eighties nursery rhymes will have a lot more to do with the 1880's-1890's nursery rhymes which were all rather horrid, and had little boys with their ears cut- off...we're getting round to that again. I think that the Sesame Street `nice' nursery rhyme is possibly out-dated, unfortunately, but let's hope I'm wrong. I expect I am.'
It would be preferable to consider the thought behind `Fashion' by momentarily referring back to this chapter's opening statement made by Bowie in May 1979, in which he disclaims the notion of `collections of people' in preference to `a group of individuals'. The song has been misinterpreted as that of being `The National Front invading the dance floors.' Or, the `goon squad' as being representative of fascism.
The song was not intended to be an observation of such gravity. `I was trying to move a little from that Ray Davies concept of fashion'. (They seek him here, they seek him there. His clothes are loud, but never square.} `To suggest a more gritted teeth determination and uncertainty about why one's doing it "There's a brand new dance but I don't know it's name, that people from bad homes do again and again. It's big and it's bland full of tension and fear, they do it over there but we don't do it here."
Bowie began to wander into New York's `disco-scene' in the early seventies, in those days it was a very high-powered enthusiasm, spontaneous in direction and energy, which seemed to have a natural course to it. However, by the time the eighties came around, the inspiration and innovation were lacking, being replaced by a more insidious grim determination to follow suit and be `fashionable'. The biggest farce this side of the Atlantic being `Blitz', home of the Etonian and Rodene poseurs, paying homage,(and good money) to sacred cows such as messers Strange and Egan.
"Fashion, turn to the left. Fashion, turn to the right. We are the goon squad and we're coming to town."
It was as though fashion had become a vocation with a strange aura about it, and this is the feeling Bowie wished to capture in the song. Bowie considered that people were more than obliged, forced to participate in it, hence the almost regimented disco sound produced on the track.
Eno would have probably dubbed it `Music To March To'. "There's a brand new talk and it's not very clear, that people from bad homes are talking this Year. It's loud and it's tasteless and I've not heard it before. You shout it while you're dancing on the er, dance floor."
Bowie compared the feeling to `rather like when one goes to the dentist and has the tooth drilled. I mean you have to have it done-putting up with the fear and aggravation. It's that kind of feeling about fashion, which seems to have in it an element that's all too depressing.
`Is Teenage Wildlife addressed to anyone in particular?' enquired Angus Mackinnon. `I guess...no, I think if I had my kind of mythical younger brother, I think that it might have been addressed to him. It's for somebody who's not mentally armed.'
Bowie deliberately set out to write an atypical song. Not that this form of prototype is unique to his repertoire. From `Space Oddity' to `Sound And Vision' he had been experimenting in one form or another.
However, `Teenage Wildlife' is possibly one of his more successful ventures. "How come you only want tomorrow, with it's promise of something hard to do. A real- life adventure, worth more than pieces of gold."
Through the song he attempts to approach a fictitious young, unblemished mind that is not fore-armed to the hypocrisy he will eventually encounter. The form of person he envisages is truly romantic in a fresh, blossoming manner. "Blue skies above, sun on your arms, strength in your stride, and hope in those squeaky clean eyes." But he will receive "chilly receptions everywhere you go." from those hypocrites and other people who refuse to adopt any form of change. Bowie refers to this as being a `shell shock' of actually trying to assert oneself into society, and the newly- discovered values unearthed by adolescence in the form of personal responsibility. "So you train by shadow boxing, search for the truth, but it's' s all used up." Thus, change has to be accepted as a natural formality, and, in the purest sense of Zenism, succumbed into the `flow of life'.
If such teachings are ignored or rejected, and luck becomes a dependent priority, a tasteless manifestation occurs. "A broken-nosed mogul are you. One of the new-wave boss - Same old thing in brand new drag." By becoming revolutionary and reactionary, as Bowie learnt the hard way, through experience, the product is the bitter hate enacted all around. Bowie also insists that it is wrong for a young man, to develop his arrogance too quickly: "As ugly as a teenage millionaire, pretending it's a whizz-klds world." He does accept that this self-defeatism is realised more fully through experience. It is in response to this that the element of advice and it's worth is taken by the throat. "And you take me aside and say, `David what shall I do they wait for me in the hallway'. And I'll say `Don't ask me I don't know any hallways'"
Bowie does appear to concern himself with offering advice, possibly because few people ever asked him for it. `I often play question and answer time with myself, however momentarily. I don't seriously think I could offer anybody real advice at all.'
Bowie effectively feels like his hero, "Like a group of one-"
The endangered species, the individual, desires to spend his time in discovering whether he is still interesting to himself, whether he still feels and relates; if he still has the capacity tub understand where he is in relation to the very tight area of society within which he physically lives.
By broadcasting such doubts through his music, he discovers where his responsibility to others terminated thereby discovering his own responsibility limitations.
Bowie speculates that the afore-mentioned younger brothers is in fact his own adolescent self. He follows by denouncing those "midwives to history", who "Put on their bloody robes". These `midwives are the symbolic threat to the endangered teenage wildlife species - the people who become corruptive by denying fulfilment in the individual.
He is without preparations, seen as being the "hunted one, out there on his own."
Self-realisation, alluded to by the spiritual growing pains and the passionate agony of splitting the cocoon, to "breathe for a long time", becoming a part of society, discovering the wrongs therein which force him to "Howl like a wolf in a trap", until, fragile, "You fall to the ground like a leaf from a tree "
The enlightenment is transient, for as you "Look up one time at that vast blue sky," the mental arsenal proves ineffective. Ideals are shot down and, as the butchers move in for the kill, the rebellious cry rings out:-"No, no. I'm not some piece of teenage wildlife."
The final verse reveals a submission to the dogma of reality. Idealism has no place in society's jigsaw. "No one will have seen and no one will confess" to the brutality behind the induction. With pitiful despondency, the soul is forced to join the ranks of other non-conforming conformists, "Who'll whisper low, I miss you, he had to go, each to their own " The rare, enchanting, beautiful, once-free creature called youth, is unsympathetically immersed in the scab of mediocrity.
The true nature of his uniqueness being revealed as "Just another piece of teenage wildlife." One more stereotype and icon to fodder society.
`If you don't fall radically into some confinement or department, then they will stab away until they find something that is so superficially concrete, that it will become the flag that they will wave.'
Interestingly, Bowie, one of the principal advocates of change in his media, penned this song along an anti-high technology theme.
Indeed, the concept of a high-technological society should be regarded as mythical according to his belief.
It is difficult to assess what would bear close-proximity to this `H.T.' form of music, if in fact it does exist. The German new-wave synthesised rock bared slight resemblance due to it's `mechanical feel', whereas Vangelis, Philip Glass, Anthony Phillips, Eno, et al, although producing music from a technological base, (Synthetic Sounds), certainly amassed a large proportion of `flesh and blood' on a very personal, `people' level.
During a radio interview with Andy Peebles in 1980, Bowie suggested `The old symbolic street fighting thing will probably not be as symbolic as it was, but will become a reality.'
In England, within four months, following rather heavy-handed police action in the St. Paul's district of Bristol, major street-riots erupted throughout the country, most notably in Liverpool's Toxteth area, Manchester's Moss Side, and Brixton in London. `Scream Like A Baby' is one of Bowie' s future-nostalgia lapses, if you like, a past look at something that hasn't happened yet. Unfortunately, this particular prophesy was fulfilled very soon after it was been made.
`I think repeatedly, having got a nine-year-old son, that's an area where I try to talk to an age group that I've been through. `
Reading through the lyrics of `Because You're Young', and understanding that the song was written in a similar vein to `Teenage Wildlife', yet on a much more personal `advisory' level, the analogies between the "psychedelic girls and the "Little metal-faced boy" as being surrogates for David and Angie, (as then was), become irresistible.
Bowie feels " So war-torn and resigned", Angie "Can't talk anymore".
The imagery is not one of the blossoming romance of `Kooks' nor the sensual awakening of `Can You Hear Me'. Now the search is for reasons to keep them together, sadly a lost cause. "It's love back to front and no sides. These pieces (heart) are broken. These pieces are broken. Hope I'm wrong, but I know."
As an explanation to divorce, the words tend a little insight. Yet Bowie, retained custody of Zowie,(Jo), and he can re-direct his compassion to the child, although the tone is still one of lamentation - "Because you're Young You'll meet a stranger some night...what can be nicer for you. And it makes me sad, so I'll dance my life away."
The pathos is developed from the father-child-mother relationship. Bowie extols the novel virtues of discovering love, yet is only too aware of his own pathetic circumstances. His receipt from love is " a million dreams, a million scars."
The lines which follow are exceedingly direct and personal, pulling no punches and bereft of disguise. The only conciliatory aspect is developed in personification. "He punishes hard, was loving her such a crime. She took back everything she said, left him nearly out of his mind. They're people I know. people I love."
And pounding and hounding won't get you in here
`Though the memory lingers of when you were near
It's too late for us now there will only be tears
So be gone from my life, disappear from my mirror.
Steve Harley `Lay Me Down'
The eye of the hurricane has passed, the rage and vehemence of a passionate opening translation has subsided into a more mellow performance.
`It's No Game (No.2)' confronts the same situation as that unearthed in the opening track, yet there is an air of calmness to Bowie's voice, indicating that problems cannot be simply attacked and destroyed, they can also be accepted in defeat with grace. "Just walkey-talky heaven or hearth. Just big-heads and drums - full speed and pagan."
There is hope left in the squeaky clean eyes of the world's youth.
The album has been created by a man who knows only too well the bitter pill of conflict. A majority of the songs on the album are specifically directed at a `youth yet to rise', and Bowie uses his assets of experience when presenting his advice. Such advice is not given in concrete terms, but developed from reflection. He has no authority to sing that `the kids are all right', because age has caught up with him. However, his manipulation of time is also a unique blessing. Terms such as `The elder statesman' are superfluous, and Bowie himself would never accept such a liability.
His mission is not accomplished, maybe it never will be, yet the legacy he leaves is as stylised as a Tarot pack, providing explanations, observations and premonitions, leaving the answers to be written by his audience or time.
The seeds are germinating as "Children all over the world put camel shit on the wall." The revolving cylinder of a society within which they are imprisoned on all points of the compass, attempts to soften the blow of introduction and indoctrination without reserve of knowledge or feeling. They are left to sift through the rubbish excreted by their patriarchs in an attempt to discover the principal of their corruption. And, as Bowie quite rightly points out, for these children, "It's no game "`
`Scary Monsters' is a savage album, very astute, written by a person of considered intelligence in a peak of his wisdom. There is no impropriety in his lyrics, the album is total incorruptible in it's message, subjectively conveyed by a man committed by his responsibility to altruism.
