Station To Station
RCA APL l

January 1976

As a footnote to `Young Americans', it should be pointed out that Bowie and Tony De Fries had parted company at the same time that the MainMan arrangement was dissolved. Tony Visconti and Harry Maslin took over the various roles of production until the release of the Baal project in 1982.

As in the past, Visconti had problems in organising Bowie. During the `Young Americans' sessions, Visconti reflected

"David was unloading his mind with video stuff. Mick Jagger took up his time partying, and I would be stuck in the studio. He mad] it to just two sessions, just like `The Man Who Sold The World' when he was preoccupied with Angie. Then he met John Lennon just before going back to London. He then calls me up and says, hope you don't mind Tony, but I went into the studio and recorded `Across the Universe' with John. I said fine, but what I did not know until I read the papers was that he had decided to bump my favourite, 'It's Gonna Be Me' with `Across the Universe'. Here I had been in the studio from August to January and he did not even call me."

It was true, Bowie had started immersing himself in various T.V. projects, so much so he was duped `Video Dave', taping such stuff as old Joe Tex numbers. He underwent the obligatory rock-star meanderings around Los Angeles, and began recording material with Iggy Pop, along with a solo composition, `Moving On'. This was in May 1975; at the same time, Angie was wandering around, popping up to perform lecture-entertainment shows for colleges. In England, Decca released the London Boys/Love You Till Tuesday single to little avail. However, Deram, also cashing-in on fame, brought out the double-album package, `Images', containing Bowie's 21 works recorded with them. In order to make the album appetising, it had a more recent photograph of David on the cover sporting his `new look', the original comic-strip cover being relegated to the centre gatefold. A month later, during legal hassles involving suing Tony De Fries for several million dollars, Bowie began work on his first major film role - that of Thomas Jerome Newton, in Nicholas Roeg's film `The Man Who Fell To Earth', distributed by British Lion Films. It was shot through the summer, under a blazing New Mexico sky. He co-starred with Candy Clark, and during lay-off in filming began work on a book of autobiographical short stories entitled `The Return of The Thin White Duke' A short extract from this can be found in Roy Carr and Charles shear Murray's `Illustrated Record'.

It was commented at the time that the character adopted by Bowie for the film, bore an equal restless imagination and forceful intellectual ambition to the personality of the actor himself. There was a degree of empathy felt between Bowie and Roeg which perhaps made the film more of a success than, say the lavish budget spent on David Hemming's `Just a Gigolo'. Both Bowie and Roeg believed that obscurity and double-meaning were useful in promoting Surprise and intrigue in their particular art forms. Such ambiguity enhanced their respective medium, raising contradictions in ideology and concept. Their audiences became apprehensive and excited. However, having said this, 'Station To Station became Bowie's least ambiguous work to date.

Bowie on the film and a prelude to the `Duke':

"There is a very strong story line, as it turns out, but that only provides the backbone to the meat of it. It works on spiritual and prime levels of an incredibly complex Howard Hughes-type alien. I still don't understand all the inflections Roeg put into the film, he's of a certain artistic level thetas well above me...I'd been offered a couple of scripts but I chose this one because it was the only one where I didn't have to sing or look like David Bowie.

Now I think that David Bowie looks like Newton."

It was in August 1975, following the filming of The Man Who Fell To Earth, that reports began circulating that Bowie was working on a soundtrack alongside a new studio LP

The `soundtrack', according to an interview with Angus Mackinnon of the `New Musical Express', was intended for The Man Who Fell To Earth:

"Only one piece survived and became `Subterraneans' on 'Low'....I was under the impression that I was going to be doing the writing for the music of the film but, when I'd finished five or six pieces, I was then told that if I would care to submit my music along with other peoples..." (The majority of the final soundtrack was composed by Stomu Yamashata)

September 1975 was a month rife with rumour. Bowie was supposedly going to take the lead role in a film biography of Frank Sinatra, he also formed The Bewlay Brothers Film Company with the intention to begin shooting celluloid versions of `Ziggy Stardust' and `Young Americans'. One item of concrete fact was that RCA re-released `Space Oddity' as part of their Maximillion Series. A month later it was Britain's No. 1, coupled with `Changes' and, to the songwriters extreme disapproval, `Velvet Goldmine'.

While Nicholas Roeg was putting the final touches to `The Man Who Fell To Earth', in London, Bowie was completing `Station To Station' at the Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles. As a preview to the album,(and a forthcoming world tour), `Golden Years' was released in November - disappointing to many as it seemed to be a continuation of `Young Americans' white/plastic/black/soul/funk. In reality however, the album it was culled from, marked Bowie's mid-seventies transition from role-playing to redefinition, introducing a completely new positive direction in his music.

Symbolically, it was the last album made in America until `Scary Monsters' in 1980, and with it, the last persona - The Thin White Duke. It was during the filming of `THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH' that Bowie decided:

"I'm going back to Europe, so I'll write a European album.. ..a salute to the East from the West."

For the project he used the abilities of Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis and George Murray, who became the nucleus of the ensuing three albums. As Alomar recalled, he was surprised with his request to play on `Station To Station'; "He, (Bowie) called and gave me two days notice...the album was more R & R than R & B. but it had that R & B feel to it."

Certainly, along with `Golden Years', `Stay' has that similar `Young Americans' feel to it. Ron Wood joined Earl Slick for a frenzied guitar session which Alomar thought "was our best ever session. I kept begging David to let me keep playing this particular section, and he gave in. `Stay' had lots of energy."

Either `Golden Years' or `The Return Of The Thin White Duke' were to have been the albums title, as Harry Maslin, producer, explained;

"David had no specific sound in mind..I don't think he had any specific direction as far as whether it should be R & B or more English sounding, or more commercial or less commercial. It was different than `Young Americans' where he wanted to expand his acceptance.'

Marlin's thoughts were later to be expanded by Bowie himself; "All the way through the making of the album I was telling myself I'll do a dry mix. And I gave in and added that extra commercial touch...I wish, I wish.. ..I wish I hadn't."

The lyrics to `Word on A Wing' appear to link themselves quite strongly to the film `The Man Who Fell To Earth', as do those contained on `TVC15'. Both have specific qualities which adhere them to particular scenes in the film.

Apparently, during the making of the film, there were days when Bowie's mind bordered upon psychological terror, through which he contemplated, without fleeting fancy, the `re-born, born again' state. It was the first time he had seriously pondered the existence of Christ or God. `Word on A Wing' was consequently viewed as a protection'. "In this age of grand delusion you walked into my life out of my dreams. I don't need another change-still you forced a way into my scheme of things." Bowie defends the many dissenting voices from critics by saying that the song came as a complete revolt against elements that he found in the film. one can follow this argument when set against the great passion of the song, and it's genuine deliberation. "Sweet name, you're born once again for me . Just because I don't believe don't mean I don't think as well-don't have to question everything in heaven or hell." In his last words defining the song, Bowie claims:

`The song was something I needed to produce from within myself, to safeguard myself against some of the situations I felt were happening on the film set.'

Such considerations are probably at their most poignant in the elegant phrase; "Lord I kneel and offer you my word on a wing. And I'm trying hard to fit among your scheme of things." As a hymn, it shows new optimism, severely lacking since `Hunky Dory'. Michael Lippman, a NBC organiser and friend of Bowie's during this time mentioned that Bowie, 'did a lot of painting then. The subjects were clear to him but not anybody else. My wife and he were good friends and they used to talk about his manifestations and dreams-or nightmares, all log the time. At one point we got him a gold cross as a gift. He also asked to have a mezuzah up in his room because of his revival and belief in religion, and felt that it would create more security for himself.'

His confusion with theological ideology is no more apparent than in the lines "It's safer than a strange land, but I still care for myself. And I don't stand in my own light. Lord, Lord my prayer flies like a word on a wing...Just as long as I can see I'll never stop this vision flowing. I look twice and your still flowing."

Bowie, on reflection recalls; `On the 23rd December, 1975, a friend pulled me over to the mirror and said `Look at us both. If you continue to be the way your being at the moment, you're never going to see me again. You're not worth the effort.'' Bowie travelled to Jamaica to practice for the upcoming Station To Station tour, `ready to shake the scheme of things'

This song has no particular depth of lyrics which offer themselves to clinical dissection, yet the theme is unusual in that it concerns itself with a hologramic T.V. set, into which the protagonists girlfriend jumps and is absorbed.

"Up every evening `bout half eight or nine, I give my complete attention to a very good friend of mine." The `very good friend' is the television. However, this instrument is not some dated piece of hardware, but a modern technological achievement. "He's quadraphonic, he's got more channels, so hologramic, oh my TVC15"

Lamenting the loss of his girlfriend, the singer cries: "Maybe if I pray every each night. I sit there pleading `Send back my dream-test baby"' (As opposed to screen or test- card)."She's my main feature."

Sadly for the protagonist, the set remains dumb, staring back unblinking. She full story of what happened is then unfurled. The narrator brought his girlfriend back tab his home and she "sat `round forlorn." However, this friendless mood was broken when she saw the TVC15. "She crawled right in, oh my...so demonic, oh my TVC15" The singer resolves that one day he may "just jump down that rainbow way" to be with his three-dimensional-square-eyed, "Love's rating in the sky.

E.F.E.F.E#

`Stay' is a vicious thrust back to the alienation and imperviousness to sentience felt by Bowie on `station To Station'.

Love and similar effusive vulnerability was, on that track, viewed as being only obtainable through a `magical' belief in it's ability to attach itself indiscriminately upon individuals. The pathos lay in Bowie's genuine ability to communicate with such passion without referring to the protracted mysticism behind what he considered to be it's cause. The result was a return to the impassive stupor of cynicism.

He consequently appears indefinitely doomed to the arduous and torturing loneliness of `Stay' - "This week passed by me so slowly, the days fell on their knees. Maybe I'll take something to helps me: hope someone takes after me." By suggesting that he may `take something' to help him, he becomes far removed from the person who was advocating that "It's not the side effects of the cocaine" on the opening track. He realises that sincere communication between himself and another party is impossible due to his own insensibility. There is a return of the spurious attitude conjuring an equally unreal romanticism: " I guess there's always some change in the weather This . time I know we could get it together. If I did Casually mention tonight that would be Crazy tonight."

Such a lust for love is beyond the capabilities of emotionalism, if it lacks the genuine enthusiasm of a complete belief in what is being undertaken: hence "`Cause you can never really tell if somebody wants something you want too." The sad irony of the matter is Bowie's inherent gift of injecting warmth and sentiment into a song which refutes it's very existence.

Although Carlos Alomar is stated as saying the track was recorded in the afternoon, Earl Slick insists it was laid down at five in the morning.

'I was very spaced out that night. I'd been waiting around for hours drinking a lot of beer. David basically wrote the song in the studio.'

Harry Maslin adds weight to this explanation -

`To understand the way David works, is to know that you cannot understand the way David works. He's always changing things-just changing completely, so it's hard to tell at times what he's talking about. Right before mixing se would change the lyrics of a song.

The solipsism exchanged in `Stay's final refrain, where he muses the uselessness of mere words to convey feeling. (`Cause you can never really tell when somebody wants something you want too.) reaches a total zenith on his following album - `Low'

This document last updated Saturday, 15-Apr-2000 15:37:21 EDT