Here we are at an album that I played a lot once upon a time, although for some reason I’ve always thought it came before The Man Who Sold The World. It doesn’t, it’s the one immediately after. Maybe because The Man Who Sold The World feels more Ziggy Stardust while this one seems more akin to the Bowie of Space Oddity.
Regardless, instrumentation on this album
is spare, mostly driven by acoustic guitar and Rick Wakeman’s superlative piano
work (without which some iconic tracks on this album would not be as iconic, I
think). Guitarist Mick Ronson is responsible for strings arrangements that also
highlight some of the best tracks.
Back in 2016 when Bowie died (or we entered the crap timeline), Life On Mars was
one of the tracks that got played the most on the radio, and I’ve long since
pondered if it’s not the most quintessential Bowie track. Certainly the mix of
typical Bowie lyrics, both mundane and poetic at the same time, with the music building
to a glorious crescendo is typical of many of his best songs. Unlike many of the One Everybody Knows, this tends not
to outstay its welcome (although, to be honest, by the end of 2016 it was
beginning to...). My Wikipedia fact is that it starts with the same chord
sequence as Sinatra’s My Way. And goes on a similar journey.
But beyond this one (and Changes and Oh You Pretty
Things) the tracks you’d only know from the album are all pretty good as well.
From the slow and ethereal Quicksand and Bewlay Brothers, to the quirky and
jaunty Kooks and Fill Your Heart, touching also on pastiches of Bob Dylan (Song
For Bob Dylan) and Velvet Underground (Queen Bitch). There’s also Andy Warhol,
which I always thought of when, for example, talking of the album covers for
Velvet Underground or Sticky Fingers, with Bowie’s in-studio banter of “It’s War
*Hol* actually...”.
The lyrics touch on Aleister Crowley and Nietzsche,
on societal outliers (from the “girl with the mousey hair” in Life On Mars to
himself in Kooks who is “not much cop at punching other people’s dads”), and
there’s an Eight Line Poem about a cactus houseplant.
Something tells me that, now Bowie has made
it onto the 1001 Albums list, he’s going to be around for a while. And with
that, we end 1971. Onwards!
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