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Rating: We are in 1971. In the same year as The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory is also released. And the cover is clear: it is no longer possible to tell if Bowie, in the fiction of the pop-art image, but especially in reality, is a man or a woman. The artist clearly embraces the nascent glam rock (especially thanks to the work of Marc Bolan's T. Rex), but his contribution will be crucial in renewing the genre.
Uninhibited pop, distortion of American country, an aesthetic based on ambiguity and transformation. Hence the famous Changes, a striking beginning of an album destined to leave a mark in the entire history of rock. Simply Changes, simply changes. Simply evaluations on transformations, modifications, masks to wear in life. And it is precisely a mask that Oh You Pretty Things, the second song and classic of the album, wears. The ballad dresses up in musical disengagement characterized by simple evanescence, but what is substantive is the distorted voice, the unabashed and mocking tone: Bowie assumes the androgynous guise of Bowie, and what remains will be an indelible trace in glam rock. Then follows the ballad Eight Line Poem with the syncopated rhythm of a delicate piano and brief guitar lines. In three pieces Bowie demonstrates singing in three totally different vocal registers. But the best is yet to come.
Life On Mars?. It's hard not to appreciate this track. Both from the perspective of an expert music critic and from the viewpoint of a rock layman accustomed to pop songs by Robbie Williams. The majestic orchestrations, one of the most beautiful and convincing choruses in history, perfect arrangements in their expressive effectiveness. All permeated by a visionary text characterized by characters like John Lennon and Mickey Mouse. Naturally, there's more: the song ranges from parody to genre hybridism, the plunge into consumerism is declared the moment a film's fiction becomes more reassuring than reality itself.
So. In conclusion. Life On Mars? is the most beautiful song ever written by Bowie. Maybe it's true. But maybe instead it's just a stage of his fickle journey with its many faces (or masks). Let's not forget that the following year David Bowie would release another masterpiece. The extraordinary rock opera on the subsequent transformation of the artist into Ziggy Stardust of which Life On Mars? is clearly the anticipation.
Kooks is dedicated to his son Zowie, and it's a tune with simple listening characterized by clear and genuine trumpet appearances by Trevor Bolder. The subsequent Quicksand is also an acoustic ballad, but the atmosphere is darker, and the lyrics are marked by obscure references. Once again, Mick Ronson's orchestrations are extraordinary, as is Rick Wakeman's piano work, future keyboardist of Yes. Wakeman accompanies Bowie's ungraceful voice in Fill Your Heart (a cover of a song composed by Biff Rose). A track with an alternating rhythm just like the melodic segments traced by the wind instruments and arrangements.
It follows with the trilogy dedicated to characters whose influence was decisive in this initial phase of Bowie's career. It begins with Andy Warhol, and the start is delirious. On the last notes of the previous song, the singer begins to utter in a quasi-maniacal state the name of the pop-art creator. Then starts this ironic and profaning song in an amateur style, although the intent is manifestly affectionate. Song For Bob Dylan is even more intimate. Bowie assimilates Dylan's folk-rock and turns it upside down to argue the idea that Dylan is losing the guiding role that characterized him in the previous decade. Queen Bitch is dedicated to Lou Reed, but it's more than a simple tribute. Bowie sings like Reed. He reinterprets the lesson of the ex-Velvet Underground, but with a difference: his style is already glam. It is significant in this respect the imminent role reversal, when even Lou Reed will embrace the glam genre, and he will feel indebted to David Bowie. The album closes with The Bewlay Brothers, a pseudo-psychedelic track that is sometimes folk and has a claustrophobic atmosphere. One can't help but think of Syd Barrett, another great inspirer of the album, also in virtue of the fact that the lyrics are centered on the singer's half-brother, Terry, who is undergoing psychiatric care.
Of course, when talking about a David Bowie album, merely describing the tracks can indeed be limiting. The artist's influence spilled over into the underground scenes of Swinging London, only to be revealed in the grand albums pronouncedly Glam by Roxy Music or Lou Reed. But this album, it must be reiterated once again, is just one of the stages of the erratic evolution of an artist who always wanted to surprise with his transformations. Let us remember, not even a year will have passed, and David Bowie would don the mask of the alien fallen on Earth. A planet so filled with images and sounds. So chaotic in its meanings.
And with such extreme and excessive consequences: from Syd Barrett's schizophrenic alienation to Walt Disney's conformist consumerism.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Changes (03:37)
I still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets and
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're going through
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don't tell them to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-Changes
Where's your shame
You've left us up to our necks in it
Time may change me
But you can't trace time
Strange fascination, fascinate me
Changes are taking the pace I'm going through
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-Changes
Oh, look out you rock 'n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-Changes
Pretty soon now you're gonna get older
Time may change me
But I can't trace time
I said that time may change me
But I can't trace time
02 Oh! You Pretty Things (03:12)
Wake up you sleepy head
Put on some clothes, shake up your bed
Put another log on the fire for me
I've made some breakfast and coffee
I look out my window what do I see
A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me
All the nightmares came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay
What are we coming to
No room for me, no fun for you
I think about a world to come
Where the books were found by the Golden ones
Written in pain, written in awe
By a puzzled man who questioned
What we work here for
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh You Pretty Things (Oh You Pretty Things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and Papas insane
Oh You Pretty Things (Oh You Pretty Things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and Papas insane
Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the Homo Superior
Look out at your children
See their faces in golden rays
Don't kid yourself they belong to you
They're the start of a coming race
The earth is a bitch
We've finished our news
Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh You Pretty Things (Oh You Pretty Things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and Papas insane
Oh You Pretty Things (Oh You Pretty Things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and Papas insane
Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the Homo Superior
03 Eight Line Poem (02:56)
The tactful cactus by your window
Surveys the prairie of your room
The mobile spins to its collision
Clara puts her head between her paws
They've opened shops down West side
Will all the cacti find a home
But the key to the city
Is in the sun that pins the branches to the sky
05 Kooks (02:54)
CHORUS (x2)
Will you stay in our lovers' story
If you stay you won't be sorry
'Cause we believe in you
Soon you'll grow so take a chance
With a couple of kooks
Hung up on romancing
We bought a lot of things to keep you warm and dry
And a funny old crib on which the paint won't dry
I bought you a pair of shoes
A trumpet you can blow
And a book of rules
On what to say to people when they pick on you
'Cause if you stay with us you're gonna be pretty kooky too
CHORUS
And if you ever have to go to school
Remember how they messed up this old fool
Don't pick fights with the bullies or the cads
'Cause I'm not much cop at punching
Other people's dads
And if the homework brings you down
Then we'll throw it on the fire
And take the car downtown
CHORUS (repeat and fade)
06 Quicksand (05:09)
I'm closer to the Golden Dawn
Immersed in Crowley's uniform
Of imagery
I'm living in a silent film
Portraying Himmler's sacred realm
Of dream reality
I'm frightened by the total goal
Drawing to the ragged hole
And I ain't got the power anymore
No I ain't got the power anymore
I'm the twisted name on Garbo's eyes
Living proof of Churchill's lies
I'm destiny
I'm torn between the light and dark
Where others see their targets
Divine symmetry
Should I kiss the viper's fang
Or herald loud the death of Man
I'm sinking in the quicksand of my thought
And I ain't got the power anymore
Don't believe in yourself
Don't deceive with belief
Knowledge comes with death's release
I'm not a prophet or a stone age man
Just a mortal with the potential of a superman
I'm living on
I'm tethered to the logic of Homo Sapien
Can't take my eyes from the great salvation
Of bullshit faith
If I don't explain what you ought to know
You can tell me all about it
On the next Bardo
I'm sinking in the quicksand of my thought
And I ain't got the power anymore
Don't believe in yourself
Don't deceive with belief
Knowledge comes with death's release
08 Andy Warhol (03:57)
Like to take a cement fix
Be a standing cinema
Dress my friends up just for show
See them as they really are
Put a peephole in my brain
Two new Pence to have a go
Like to be a gallery
Put you all inside my show
Andy Warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, Silver Screen
Can't tell them apart at all
Andy walking, Andy tired
Andy take a little snooze
Tie him up when he's fast asleep
Send him on a pleasant cruise
When he wakes up on the sea
Sure to think of me and you
He'll think about paint and he'll think about glue
What a jolly boring thing to do
Andy Warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, Silver Screen
Can't tell them apart at all
10 Queen Bitch (03:19)
I'm up on the eleventh floor
And I'm watching the cruisers below
He's down on the street
And he's trying hard to pull sister Flo
Oh, my heart's in the basement
My weekend's at an all time low
'Cause she's hoping to score
So I can't see her letting him go
Walk out of her heart
Walk out of her mind
She's so swishy in her satin and tat
In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat
Oh God, I could do better than that
She's an old-time ambassador
Of sweet talking, night walking games
And she's known in the darkest clubs
For pushing ahead of the dames
If she says she can do it
Then she can do it, she don't make false claims
But she's a Queen, and such are queens
That your laughter is sucked in their brains
Now she's leading him on
And she'll lay him right down
Yes she's leading him on
And she'll lay him right down
But it could have been me
Yes, it could have been me
Why didn't I say, why didn't I say, no, no, no
She's so swishy in her satin and tat
In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat
Oh God, I could do better than that
So I lay down a while
And I gaze at my hotel wall
Oh the cot is so cold
It don't feel like no bed at all
Yeah I lay down a while
And I look at my hotel wall
But he's down on the street
So I throw both his bags down the hall
And I'm phoning a cab
'Cause my stomach feels small
There's a taste in my mouth
And it's no taste at all
It could have been me
Oh yeah, it could have been me
Why didn't I say, Why didn't I say, no, no, no
She's so swishy in her satin and tat
In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat
Oh God, I could do better than that
11 The Bewlay Brothers (05:27)
And so the story goes they wore the clothes
They said the things to make it seem improbable
The whale of a lie like they hope it was
And the Goodmen Tomorrow
Had their feet in the wallow
And their heads of Brawn were nicer shorn
And how they bought their positions with saccharin and trust
And the world was asleep to our latent fuss
Sighing, the swirl through the streets
Like the crust of the sun
The Bewlay Brothers
In our Wings that Bark
Flashing teeth of Brass
Standing tall in the dark
Oh, And we were Gone
Hanging out with your Dwarf Men
We were so turned on
By your lack of conclusions
I was Stone and he was Wax
So he could scream, and still relax, unbelievable
And we frightened the small children away
And our talk was old and dust would flow
Thru our veins and Lo! it was midnight
Back at the kitchen door
Like the grim face on the Cathedral floor
And the solid book we wrote
Cannot be found today
And it was Stalking time for the Moonboys
The Bewlay Brothers
With our backs on the arch
In the Devil-may-be-here
But He can't sing about that
Oh, And we were Gone
Real Cool Traders
We were so Turned On
You thought we were Fakers
Now the dress is hung, the ticket pawned
The Factor Max that proved the fact
Is melted down
And woven on the edging of my pillow
Now my Brother lays upon the Rocks
He could be dead, He could be not
He could be You
He's Chameleon, Comedian, Corinthian and Caricature
Shooting-up Pie-in-the-Sky
The Bewlay Brothers
In the feeble and the Bad
Bewlay Brothers
In the Blessed and Cold
In the Crutch-hungry Dark
Was where we flayed our Mark
Oh, and we were Gone
Kings of Oblivion
We were so Turned On
In the Mind-Warp Pavilion
Lay me place and bake me Pie
I'm starving for me Gravy
Leave my shoes, and door unlocked
I might just slip away, hey
Just for the Day, Hey!
Hey, Please come Away, Hey!
Just for the Day, Hey!
Please come Away, Hey!
Please come Away, Hey!
Just for the Day
Please come Away
Please come Away
Please come Away
Please come Away
Away
(Away)
Away
Hey
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