David Bowie: Aladdin Sane - 1973

  

"There was a point in '73 where I knew it was all over. I didn't want to be trapped in this Ziggy character all my life. And I guess what I was doing on Aladdin Sane, I was trying to move into the next area – but using a rather pale imitation of Ziggy as a secondary device. In my mind, it was Ziggy Goes to Washington - Ziggy under the influence of America" - David Bowie

In the spring of 1973, David Bowie was the name on everyone's lips. As a teenager, I waited with bated breath for that warm early April day when I held his latest album in my hands, took it home and my friends and I sniggered at every schoolboy's favourite line from Time. Heady days indeed. 

Aladdin Sane was the album where the character of Ziggy Stardust supposedly "went to America" (by Bowie's own admittance) to make himself an even bigger star. Bowie was simultaneously attracted and appalled by America and this comes over in the songs. It is like being on a tour bus taking in sights, experiences, good and bad, along the way. New York, Detroit, Los Angeles...what you get from this transatlantic trip, most importantly, though, is ten wonderful tracks that sees Bowie at the height of his "glam rock" phase. To this day it is my favourite Bowie album. 

Shakey's throwing a party....

What a start to an album the great glam rocker Watch That Man gave us. Yes, Bowie's voice is way further down in the mix than it should have been (intentionally but erroneously so, in retrospect) but do not let detract from what is a barnstormer of a track, with one of Mick Ronson's killer riffs taking centre stage. The guitar is truly magnificent on this, one of Bowie's glammiest cuts, and lyrically is is full to the brim with wonderful images, like "the Reverend Alabaster dancing on his knees..." and "there was an old-fashioned band of married men looking up to me for encouragement...". This was definitely a continuation of the messianic worship of the "Ziggy" character. Ziggy had come to the USA and people loved him at their druggy parties, that is how I interpreted it as a young teenager back in 1973. The song was also recorded by Bowie, Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder, Aynsley Dunbar and Mike Garson with Lulu on vocals. 

With Aladdin Sane (1913 - 1938 - 19?) we had a song which was initially not so popular with us singles and glam-honed teenagers at the time but in later years I have come to love it dearly, particularly that great bass and piano instrumental passage in the middle. Mike Garson was Bowie's new pianist and his creative stamp is all over this album. He really makes this superbly evocative track that deals with the themes of insanity that were always close to Bowie in the early seventies due to his experiences with his half-brother, Terry. The track has a loose, almost jazzy feel to it that points towards Bowie's musical diversification. He had not previously done anything like this. The song had a parenthesis sub-title (1913-1938-197...) that Bowie explained as being the dates of the years before the last two wars, and an unknown forthcoming one, which the often doom-prophesying Bowie was predicting. The song depicts the carefree decadence before the cataclysm. 

Drive-In Saturday was the album's big "new" single (The Jean Genie being released several months before the album) - full of doo-wop harmonies, parping sax and great hook lines it blew us all away. As with so many of the Bowie compositions on the album, the imagery is positively overflowing as contemporary culture and icons are mixed with nostalgic themes - "people stared in Jagger's eyes and scored", "she'd sigh like Twig the wonderkid..." were definite references and then there was "Jung the foreman...". Who was he? Jung the philosopher? The "foreman", though, what was that about? What was "crashing out with Sylvian"? Bowie explained that song was set in a post-apocalyptic world where people had to learn how to make love again by using books. All very futuristic and strange. Whatever the meanings, it is an uplifting, almost anthemic sax-driven pastiche. It was originally offered to Mott The Hoople as a follow-up to the Bowie-penned All The Young Dudes but they turned it down, now confident enough to choose their own Honaloochie Boogie, which charted for them. 

The infectious Panic In Detroit was one of my own initial favourites. This Latin percussion-influenced number stuck in my mind initially for its "he looked a lot like Che Guevara" wonderful opening line. Once more, it is brimming with lyrical imagery. It has an intoxicating conga-driven rhythm, some bluesy Mick Ronson guitar and great backing vocals from Mac McCormack, Linda Lewis and Juanita "Honey" Franklin. It gives off a lot of the same ambience as Watch That Man in its sound, although it is less glammy and the setting is decidedly more urban and decaying, as opposed to that of fashionable New York parties. 

That party decadence returns, however, with the riffy, glammy, slightly Stonesy rock of Cracked Actor. Sexual references are to the fore, especially with the risqué "suck baby suck" lyric. "I'm stiff on my legend..." sings Bowie, almost as Ziggy personified. Has the character become the man? Actually, Bowie is definitely singing in character as he says "forget that I'm fifty 'cause you just got paid...", but there is still that feeling that the Ziggy myth was becoming self-perpetuating. This was one of Bowie's most seedy songs to date. 

Talking of seedy, now we get one of the album's high points, Time, featuring every schoolboy's favourite line, of course - "time, she flexes like a whore, falls wanking to the floor.." and is packed full of melodramatic grandiosity. Garson's piano is simply supreme on this track as is Mick Ronson's mid-song solo. There are classical music influences all around the track, apparently. It is one of Bowie's most adventurous compositions thus far, again providing a sign as to his future directions in its smoky late night feel at times. I can't help but love its grandiosity most of all, though. It also references Billy Murcia of The New York Dolls -  "demanding Billy Dolls...", who had died only a few days before this song was written in late 1972. 

The Prettiest Star is a jaunty song that dated from 1970, it sits slightly incongruously on the album, but it is given a 70s boost by its more powerful, rocking (when compared to its original version) production here. It still sounds out of place though. It is far too light and breezy to fit in with the rest of the material. Bowie and the cultural zeitgeist had moved on from this sort of sub-hippy, folky stuff. It is redeemed. however, by Mick Ronson's very 1973 guitar solo and some lively fifties doo-wop backing vocals. 

A lot of people don't seem to like Bowie's energetic cover of the mid-sixties Rolling Stones' song, Let's Spend The Night Together, but I have always loved it. It rocks. Big time. Just check out that madcap, frantic piano opening. Bowie and the band really rip it and the pace doesn't up for a second. The guitar "thrusts" after the "let's make love" vocal bit was pretty daring for the time - Bowie had been quite pushing of the boundaries through this album, you have to say, with Time and Cracked Actor as well, plus the eroticism of Lady Grinning Soul.

The Jean Genie was the album's first big hit single and it had crashed into our consciousness back in December 1972 before the album was released. I remember one evening at youth club and one of the other boys came running up to me, beside himself with excitement. "What do you think of David Bowie...?" he breathlessly enquired. I shrugged in the way thirteen year old boys do but still went out and bought the single the next day with my paper round money. 49p it cost. The boy who asked the question was Pete Trewavas, later to achieve fame as the bass player in Marillion. The song contains absolutely killer bits of Ronson-Bowie guitar-harmonica interplay throughout and is one of Bowie's bluesiest piece of rock thus far in his career. The riff was approximated by The Sweet for their number one single Blockbuster in January 1973. It was, according to both parties, a complete coincidence and also, The Yardbirds had used it in the sixties in their live covers of I'm A Man. Another coincidence, stated Bowie, was the whole "Jean Genet" thing that supposed that the song's title was something to do with the French avant-garde author. The song and the accompanying Top Of The Pops appearance subsequently cemented Bowie's position in popular culture, even more than Starman did. By late 1972, many people were talking about David Bowie. The Ziggy Stardust audience had ballooned, hugely. He was a superstar now. 

Lady Grinning Soul is a rarely acknowledged Bowie masterpiece of piano and strings torch song mystery. Simply beautiful and bubbling over with smoky atmosphere. It is arguably the album's finest song, certainly its most beguiling. It was also quite erotic in its "touch the fullness of her breast, feel the love of her caress..." line. It was a unique song, quite unlike anything he had done before. Only Time and Aladdin Sane come close to its adventurousness. Surprisingly, though, even Bowie seemed to forget about it, as he never played it live. 

Bowie would drop a huge bombshell in July 1973 when "he killed the man" and jettisoned the Ziggy character in his now legendary "last show we'll ever do" at the Hammersmith Odeon, so continuing a change of image of the like that he would perpetuate for the rest of his career.

Finally, there is the now iconic cover, described as the "Mona Lisa of album covers" by The Guardian's Mick McCann. That made up Ziggy face, complete with red and blue lightning flash against the pure white background. The semi-naked gatefold middle cover image. There have been all sorts of interpretations of its meaning, the lightning bolt representing a duality of mind and so on, later backed up by Bowie. Whatever, it has gone down in history as one of the most striking rock album covers.

There is a song that was recorded in this era that was not on the album but has earned itself an honourable mention -

All The Young Dudes was the legendary anthemic song that Bowie gave to ailing mates Mott The Hoople in the summer of  1972 (they were originally offered Suffragette City) and they took right up the charts, making the song their own. Bowie's version was recorded in December 1972 and suffers in comparison to the Mott classic. The saxophone dominates this version (the Mott one was driven by acoustic and electric guitars) and, dare I say it, Ian Hunter's vocal is the definitive one.

A most interesting rarity is the version of that has Mott's original instrumental backing but Bowie's vocal that he recorded as a guide for Hunter to follow. I must say it has a certain appeal. It includes Hunter's spoken "outro" but Bowie sings the verses. It has a certain nostalgic fragility about it, especially in Bowie's ever so slightly tentative vocal.

By the way, I'm sure the "boogaloo dudes" line was inspired by Bowie's mate Marc Bolan.

Oh man, I need TV....Oh brother you guessed....I'm a dude, man.