For the damaged coda compilation full#
For the damaged coda compilation series#

Today, its clunky edits and saturated solarisation betrays its age.

The promo video, still a novelty in summer 1980, sold the song and gave it an epic narrative. A funeral pyre of past archetypes, Ashes To Ashes rebirthed Bowie – singer, writer, actor, mime, film-maker – as rock’s foremost living work of art. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake entering a new decade. (from Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), 1980)īowie badly misjudged the start of the ’70s: The Prettiest Star, The Hype and The Man Who Sold The World had all failed as he sought to build on the success of Space Oddity. “Bowie knew that his time could be limited but it didn’t stop his sense of humour” Tony Visconti interviewed. Its ruminative name-checking of once familiar city landmarks – the Dschungel night club, The KaDeWe department store, the Bösebrücke cold war border crossing – presented lyrics as emotional Polaroids, all sung with a touchingly candid poignancy that made David Bowie’s improbable revival seem all the more remarkable and all the more moving. A deluxe art-rock ballad, built around stately piano chords, robust drums and warm synths, Where Are We Now? seemed immediately, ineffably, Bowie-esque. The previous day the world had been a different place, still convinced that David Bowie was a semi-reclusive superstar, whose final album was 2003’s Reality, and whose last live appearance was in 2006, a man too ill or too disinterested to make music again. Where Are We Now? arrived seemingly from nowhere, on the morning of Tuesday Janu– David Bowie’s 66th birthday.

For the damaged coda compilation full#

Knowing what the next drug-curdled decade would hold its wariness about getting what you wish for seems prescient, full of resonance. Producer Ken Scott remembered a plan to re-record it for Pin-Ups, and it was finally revisited on 2000’s unreleased Toy.

of a teenager who heads to the capital in search of excitement and companionship, loses his head to pills, and winds up alone in a grim rented room, his “flashy clothes” no comfort. While Pye had earlier rejected the song and Decca, bothered by the pills, swapped it for There Is A Happy Land on Rubber Band’s US release, Bowie himself appears fond of The London Boys. The A-side is a slice of tea-and-cake English psychedelia where a man recalls his days in the “14-18 war” the B-side, meanwhile, cuts through the moustache wax and whimsy with a cautionary tale. Knowing the creature David Bowie would later become, 1966 single Rubber Band is, on the surface, a curiously reactionary package. See him Elvis’ing the song up on the Love You Till Tuesday film.

One selection was this 1967 recording: apparently written to be a hit, Bowie’s first collaboration with Tony Visconti presented a strings-augmented folk rock companion to the Stones’ equally blunt Let’s Spend The Night Together, with the singer on world-weary yet determined form. But in 1970 Bowie’s turn came, when his ex-label cashed in on the success of Space Oddity.

For the damaged coda compilation series#

Eight years on from Bowie's passing, MOJO has delved into it to bring you what we believe are his 100 greatest songs.ĭecca’s The World Of… budget compilation series usually concerned itself with harmless MOR sorts like Mantovani, Max Bygraves or Frank Ifield. Bowie's is the richest, the most forward-thinking and diverse back catalogue of arguably any recording artist. For five decades, he had been a true visionary, whether wowing audiences in the early '70s with his otherworldly Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane personas, retreating to bleak, pre-unification Berlin to record innovatory electronic music with Brian Eno, remodelling himself as a blond-haired pop idol for the 80s or making the extraordinary avant-garde jazz-rock that graced his final albums. David Bowie's untimely death on Janubrought into focus his immeasurable contribution to music and culture.