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Rating: Inspired by the sensations suggested by the triumphant American tour of '72 ("it's America seen by Ziggy": Bowie dixit) "Aladdin Sane" (a play on words for "a lady insane") was published to consolidate the success achieved by the previous "Ziggy Stardust." It's impossible to add a single drop to the rivers of ink spilled to describe the crucial importance that the album in question had in giving new life to the ephemeral glam rock movement: less compact and more heterogeneous than "Ziggy Stardust," Aladdin gives us implicit ("Watch That Man") and explicit ("Let's Spend the Night Together") references to the Rolling Stones, delightful cabaret aspirations (the ballads "The Prettiest Star" and "Lady Grinning Soul") and nods to the compelling hard blues of the states ("The Jean Genie").
The opening is entrusted to the obsessive rhythm of Mick Ronson's guitar in "Watch That Man," a parodic reflection on the chaotic life of New York City enriched by Garson's keyboard skill. He gives us, in the subsequent title track, three minutes of lysergic-psychedelic keyboard delirium among the most legendary in the entire Bowie repertoire: here, the fingers dance on the keys until they break every rhythmic coherence, only to recover at the end the cadenced pace of the splendid refrain ("ooohhI love Aladdin Sane..."). Brilliant. If "Drive in Saturday" is a reassuring ballad that glides serenely among the soft saxophone accents of which David is a master, "Panic in Detroit" sounds like a prophetic warning about a (at the time) phantom terrorist attack in the heart of the states. Ronson's saturated guitar introduces the next "Cracked Actor," an electrifying high-paced ride that gives Bowie the chance for a bitter reflection on the role of the (rock) star, filled with sexual innuendos ("I just want your sex"): a master of sudden image and style transformations, the young David knows he must satisfy the unstable and fickle tastes of an audience ready to shower him with the spotlight and chart honors and turn their backs on him once a genre or artist able to replace him emerges.
Not surprisingly, having sensed the first creaks of glam rock, Bowie stages on stage the death of his character Ziggy Stardust and with it a musical genre that will not awaken except in pathetic '90s glam regurgitations (Pulp, Suede, etc.). After the pompous "Time" and the soft "Prettiest Star," the nostalgic echoes of the sixties' swinging London resonate (a theme that will find wider expression in the subsequent album "Pin Ups") in a brilliant cover of "Let's Spend the Night Together." Rhythmically much more pressing than the original Stones' version, the song is performed with an ironic tone and a baritone voice that do it far more justice than the sloppy arrangement by Jagger and company. The dreamy ballad "Lady Grinning Soul" closes a parade of masterpieces essential to understanding the evolution of a genre that in the first half of the '70s represented the most intelligent alternative to the sterile experimentalism of progressive and the obtuse heaviness of hard rock.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Aladdin Sane (05:07)
Watching him dash away
Swinging an old bouquet
Dead roses
Sake and strange divine
Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh
You'll make it
Passionate bright young things
Takes him away to war
Don't fake it
Sadden glissando strings
Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh
You'll make it
Who will love Aladdin Sane
Battle cries and champagne just in time for sunrise
Who will love Aladdin Sane
Motor sensational
Paris or maybe hell
I'm waiting
Clutches of sad remains
Waits for Aladdin Sane
You'll make it
Who will love Aladdin Sane
Millions weep a fountain, just in case of sunrise
Who will love Aladdin Sane
We'll love Aladdin Sane
Love Aladdin Sane
Who will love Aladdin Sane
Millions weep a fountain, just in case of sunrise
Who will love Aladdin Sane
We'll love Aladdin Sane
We'll love Aladdin Sane
04 Panic in Detroit (04:25)
He looked a lot like Che Guevara, drove a diesel van
Kept his gun in quiet seclusion, such a humble man
The only survivor of the National People's Gang
Panic in Detroit, I asked for an autograph
He wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phone
Panic in Detroit
He laughed at accidental sirens that broke the evening gloom
The police had warned of repercussions
They followed none too soon
A trickle of strangers were all that were left alive
Panic in Detroit, I asked for an autograph
He wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phone
Panic in Detroit
Putting on some clothes I made my way to school
And I found my teacher crouching in his overalls
I screamed and ran to smash my favourite slot machine
And jumped the silent cars that slept at traffic lights
Having scored a trillion dollars, made a run back home
Found him slumped across the table. A gun and me alone
I ran to the window. Looked for a plane or two
Panic in Detroit. He'd left me an autograph
"Let me collect dust." I wish someone would phone
Panic in Detroit
05 Cracked Actor (03:01)
I've come on a few years from my Hollywood Highs
The best of the last, the cleanest star they ever had
I'm stiff on my legend, the films that I made
Forget that I'm fifty cause you just got paid
Crack, baby, crack, show me you're real
Smack, baby, smack, is that all that you feel
Suck, baby, suck, give me your head
Before you start professing that you're knocking me dead
You caught yourself a trick down on Sunset and Vine
But since he pinned you baby you're a porcupine
You sold me illusions for a sack full of cheques
You've made a bad connection 'cause I just want your sex
Crack, baby, crack, show me you're real
Smack, baby, smack, is that all that you feel
Suck, baby, suck, give me your head
Before you start professing that you're knocking me dead
06 Time (05:15)
Time - He's waiting in the wings
He speaks of senseless things
His script is you and me boys
Time - He flexes like a whore
Falls wanking to the floor
His trick is you and me, boy
Time - In Quaaludes and red wine
Demanding Billy Dolls
And other friends of mine
Take your time
The sniper in the brain, regurgitating drain
Incestuous and vain, and many other last names
I look at my watch it say 9:25 and I think Oh God I'm still alive
We should be on by now
We should be on by now
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la (repeat)
You - are not a victim
You - just scream with boredom
You - are not evicting time
Chimes - Goddamn, you're looking old
You'll freeze and catch a cold
'Cause you've left your coat behind
Take your time
Breaking up is hard, but keeping dark is hateful
I had so many dreams, I had so many breakthroughs
But you, my love, were kind, but love has left you dreamless
The door to dreams was closed. Your park was real dreamless
Perhaps you're smiling now, smiling through this darkness
But all I had to give was the guilt for dreaming
We should be on by now (x5)
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la (repeat)
Yeah, time!
09 The Jean Genie (04:07)
A small Jean Genie snuck off to the city
Strung out on lasers and slash back blazers
Ate all your razors while pulling the waiters
Talking bout Monroe and walking on Snow White
New York's a go-go and everything tastes nice
Poor little Greenie
CHORUS
Jean Genie lives on his back
The Jean Genie loves chimney stacks
He's outrageous, he screams and he bawls
Jean Genie, let yourself go!
Sits like a man but he smiles like a reptile
She loves him, she loves him but just for a short while
She'll scratch in the sand, won't let go his hand
He says he's a beautician and sells you nutrition
And keeps all your dead hair for making up underwear
Poor little Greenie
CHORUS
He's so simple minded he can't drive his module
He bites on the neon and sleeps in the capsule
Loves to be loved, loves to be loved
CHORUS (repeat)
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Other reviews
By francis
Aladdin Sane is Bowie looking at himself in the mirror with a glass of Moët & Chandon in hand, laughing at himself, at the people around him, at time passing relentlessly.
"It's not the album that consecrates glam, it is the album that kills it. Definitively."
By Dune Buggy
"From the first track, 'Watch That Man,' the clean alien aesthetics have given way to a dirty, scratched, rough, distorted sound."
"The album is a milestone in the 'pop-rock' panorama and remains fundamental and still very relevant for anyone who wants to know not only Bowie but the path taken by music from the 70s onwards."
