David Bowie
Station To Station

THE REVIEW

The Sound of the Occult

There's a man on stage. He has a hallucinatory gaze, bleached hair slicked back, dressed like a cabaret character from the Weimar Republic. A white light etches his severe figure against the black background, where an image of an eye being slashed by a razor (Buñuel-Dalí, "Un Chien Andalou", 1928) is projected. Obsessive and pounding music moves behind him, and the singer announces to the world "the return of the Thin White Duke." The Thin White Duke is him, David Bowie, and at the beginning of 1976 the rumors that circulated were many, legendary, incredible, distorted.

The artist is in the midst of the so-called "drug tunnel," and as if that weren't enough, he has an unhealthy passion for the occult and the ideal image of the Nazi dictator. It's said that, right after playing the detached alien in the film "The Man Who Fell to Earth," he plunged into mysticism, Jewish Kabbalah, Egyptology, and militarism. The character he has created is truly surrounded by an occult aura, and stories like the pool exorcism, semen stored in the freezer and urine in a bottle, secret messages in the Rolling Stones covers, black candles and haunted photos, and other demonic oddities only add to the mad legend of David Bowie, or rather the Thin White Duke.
Imagine what kind of album could come out of such a haunting atmosphere: regarding the sessions for "Station To Station", there are very interesting tales from his closest collaborators, also because Bowie still says he doesn't remember making this album; he knows he recorded it in Los Angeles because he read about it... I was completely out of it he tells us, and again I listen to 'Station To Station' as if it's the work of a completely different person.
Bowie emerges from the soul period completely disillusioned with show business, describing rock music as a dull dead end, an old toothless hag and begins to work on the album with an entirely new approach: that of absolute artistic freedom on the part of the musicians and exaggerated perfectionism on his part. They worked and sniffed for days on end without pause in an atmosphere more than gloomy, unreal, completely unreal, recalls the Duke in '83, with the curtains always drawn so the light wouldn't ruin the eternal present vibe.

Now it's time to move on to the music. What to say? The songs are "only" six but the world they create is heterogeneous and contrasting: the sounds are new and ancient, pre-electronic and classical. The opening is one of the best for a Bowie record: the title track ranges from the mechanical rhythms of the new Central European sound to the intense solos of Slick and Alomar, while thematically introducing the character of the Thin White Duke, undefined and legendary like the past ones, perhaps a kind of noble searching for new spirituality moving along the Stations of the Cross, or making a symbolic journey through the Tree of Life of the cabalistic tradition ("From Kether to Malkuth"). Expressive and poetic abilities in the "European canon" are almost at a historical peak and the atmosphere of paranoia, obsession, and coldness that they manage to make us perceive is unique (fortunately it isn't the side effects of the cocaine, I think it's all about love!) "Golden Years" instead presents this work as a transitional one: the sounds are more danceable and the singer's falsetto is up to the previous "Young Americans". His vocal study is perfected and gives the best evidence with the subsequent "Word On A Wing", a poignant and desperate prayer for salvation in which the Duke asks to forcefully enter into God's scheme.
But it is not yet time to receive this "blessing," and with "TVC15" it returns to hysterical, delirious, sick, and ultimately monotonous tones. "Stay", which alternates a well-paced and fast verse with a more crooner-like chorus, has become a classic of Bowie's production, especially for the effective guitar riffs. The last "Wild Is The Wind" is a cover of the great soundtrack composer Dimitri Tiomkin and closes the album in a worthy manner, transporting us to the smoky and romantic atmospheres of a refined 1950s Hollywood film, made of whispered "love me"s and piano sighs.

I too would like to say that with Bowie's music you touch me, I hear the sound of mandolins, you kiss me, with your kiss my life begins, but these sounds lead directly to the deepest darkness of our souls, and we don't see the light again until after the slow Berlin detox...

from "Station To Station"

"The return of the Thin White Duke
throwing darts
in lovers' eyes
Here are we one magical moment
Such is the stuff from
where dreams are woven
Bending sound
Dredging the ocean lost in my circle
Here am I
Flashing no colour tall in this room
overlooking the ocean

Here are we
One magical movement
from Kether to Malkuth 1
There are you
You drive like a demon
from station to station"

Quotes and information from "The Complete David Bowie" by Pegg, lyrics from VelvetGoldmine.it