David Bowie - the Studio Albums

[dom]

Hunky Dory [December 1971]

Again, an album that I played to death as a teenager. A year after Man Who Sold The World, David has moved on from his progressive heavy rock phase. This album has more of a singer / songwriter vibe. It's a bit eclectic. It is, I suppose, a hybrid pop / rock record in the main but the most striking thing about it is the sheer quality of the songwriting.

There are at least three tunes on this record, which, had he never written another decent tune in his life, Bowie would be remembered for to this day. I suggest that any one of Changes, Oh! You Pretty Things or (especially) Life on Mars? would be career-defining for any other artist. It's only because the Thin White Duke wrote a couple of dozen other masterpieces that they're not remembered as such. If Elton John or Freddie Mercury had somehow written Changes, it would be their signature song. No question.

Elsewhere there's a sort of electric folk ode to Bob Dylan, a darkly satisfying Velvet Underground pastiche, a partly experimental tune about Andy Warhol that segues from atonal synthesiser oddness into a brisk acoustic ditty. And a very endearing and witty upbeat lullaby to David's firstborn.

The only tune on the album I don't really get is Eight Line Poem which is a bit of a piano dirge with a simple vocal and boring low key bluesy guitar on top.

Clearly the standout tune is Life on Mars?, probably my single favourite Bowie tune of all, perhaps with the exception of Aladdin Sane's title track. But perhaps I shall revise that opinion as I trawl through the canon. Originally conceived as a sort of answer to the Sinatra classic My Way with which it shares a similar structure in some respects, but harmonically even more ambitious. An unbelievably clever song but more than that, I find it so powerful and inspiring. Life-affirming, even.

It's the cherry on top of a spectacular album.

Don't know how I missed this thread but i just wanted to expand on the connection to My Way by Sinatra.

Comme D'Habitude is a song by Claude Francois. Its a very poignant song about a relationship about to break up.  Beautifully sung and wonderful lyrics.

David Bowie was tasked with writing English lyrics to the song which had been very successful in France.  He came up with a song called "Even a Fool Learns to Love" - apparently these are the lyrics

There was a time, the laughing time
I took my heart to every party
They'd point my way
"How are you today?"
"Will you make us laugh? Chase our blues away?"
Their funny man won't let them down
No, he'd dance and prance and be their clown
That time, the laughing time
When even a fool learns to love

The clown turned around
And saw her smile, oh how she loved me
She'd clap her hands and beg me stay
To make her laugh, to make her life gay
Who wants the love of all the world
When here was love in the eyes of just one girl
That day, that precious day
When even a fool learns to love

But oh, how I dreamed, a marvelous dream
Where all of the heavens or so it had seemed
With thunderous applause looked down from above
On a clown and an angel so much in love
I'll stay with my dream, it takes such a dream
And even a fool learns to love

That day, that hateful day
The joke turned stale, the game was over
Those spiteful words "Oh, go away. Who wants to play?"
"It's getting late now."
My world, my funny world
Had lost its mask and shown a broken heart
A time, a sour time
When even a fool learns to love

But oh, how I dreamed, a marvelous dream
Where all of the heavens or so it had seemed
With thunderous applause looked down from above
On a clown and an angel so much in love
I'll stay with my dream, it takes such a dream
And even a fool learns to love

Apparently there is a demo around of him singing this with the french song as backing track.

Anyway it was considered a bit maudlin and was ditched and Paul Anka won the job with My Way.

David was apparently pretty angry about this and said that Life on Mars was his revenge. apparently the song is subtitled

As a footnote to this I was on holiday with my parents and dad's family in France.  A band was playing and started "Comme D' Habitude"  Dad said something along the lines of "oh they're singing My Way with French Lyrics"  His sister said no this is a Claude Francois song that Frank Sinatra covered.  Believe it or not a blazing row ensured.  A couple of days later dad had to express a contrite apology

[Slim]

Yes, I remember hearing David's effort some time in the '80s. I can see why Anka's version won out.

[Slim]

Station to Station [January 1976]

I mostly loved this album as a teen. I suppose it could be seen as a development of the black music ethos of Young Americans - it does have elements of funk and soul, although I must admit I never really noticed that when I was fifteen. But it has more intensity, it has some of the drama and art that its predecessor record didn't. And, largely (I think) thanks to guitar player Earl Slick, it rocks a bit.

I've always liked the title track which runs for ten minutes and has a sort of prog epic feel, albeit it morphs into a sort of uptempo funk rock groove. I suppose my other favourite tune is Stay, again a funk rocker and one I've played often over the years. Everyone knows Golden Years I guess - classy, quietly powerful and very accessible - perhaps a forerunner to the likes of Let's Dance and Absolute Beginners.

It's a pretty straightforward album really. I'm not fond of all of the tunes. David's cover of the old Johnny Mathis / Nina Simone tune Wild Is The Wind plods, even if Sinatra claimed to like it. And Word On A Wing has Christian overtones that I find ridiculous. Apparently David had a bit of a crisis while filming The Man Who Fell To Earth. But even without the nonsense lyrics, I think it would be a boring tune.

So not an out and out triumph and actually listening to the whole thing back for the first time for years, I was very slightly underwhelmed. It is though, at its best, a brilliant record.

[The Picnic Wasp]

As soon as I hear Golden Years I'm immediately transported back to the waltzers at the Kelvin Hall carnival, a festive indoor fairground. I think 1976 was the first year I was allowed to go with my friends instead of my parents. I think they must have been relieved.

[Slim]

Low [January 1977]

I first heard this album one evening in January 1977 when, a few days before it was released, John Peel played it in its entirety on his Radio One show.

I was unimpressed by Side One and confounded by Side Two.

As readers will be aware I'm sure, the first side consists of short, punchy, direct, edgy pop songs. I guess you could say "minimalist". I like these songs (or "tunes", two of them are instrumentals), but I don't love them. One thing I could say though is that they're ahead of their time - this is the New Wave a couple of years before the New Wave. The effects on the drums especially give the production a very modern, almost brash sound. Apparently Tony Visconti piped them through an Eventide Harmoniser, a unit more commonly used with guitars I think.

Anyway - I can admire that the Thin White Duke was going for something different, but this - after all - was the artist who created Life on Mars, Starman, We Are the Dead, Aladdin Sane .. compared to which this all sounds pretty disposable.

Side Two is a whole 'nother kettle of spanners. Made in collaboration with Brian Eno this is a set of ambient instrumentals that grew out of the work David was doing for the soundtrack of The Man Who Fell to Earth. Nicolas Roeg went with something else instead. I well remember being gobsmacked on hearing these pieces on my little FM radio in 1977. They defy description really - tone poems? They're synth driven, in parts ghostly, drifting .. a sort of cinematic desolate soundscape. Beautiful. Very enigmatic, especially with the snatches of distant vocal fragments and chanting. I'm not sure what a reference point, a comparison might be, outside Eno's other work. Tangerine Dream maybe?

Listening to this album again today I realised that I haven't spent enough time since 1977 immersed in the Side Two pieces, and I resolved to do that more often. I don't really think that about the first half of the record.

[captainkurtz]

Saw him play low in full at the royal festival hall in full in 2002.  Sublime.
'Always Crashing in the Same Car'and 'A new career in a new town' are 2 of my favourite Bowie songs.  Side 2 is marvellous and just an incredibly audacious and brave move for him at that time.  What a guy.

[Thenop]

I really like how we talk about 'side 1' and 'side 2'. Just showing our age here.

[David L]

I really like how we talk about 'side 1' and 'side 2'. Just showing our age here.

As the artist intended 

[Thenop]

I really like how we talk about 'side 1' and 'side 2'. Just showing our age here.

As the artist intended 

Oh that's completely irrelevant to me. As soon as you let your art out in the world, it is no longer yours. It changes every time someone listen to it.

[Slim]

Heroes [October 1977]

One of the classic Bowie albums and in retrospect, probably the beginning of a sustained period of critical acclaim and influence that persisted until his death. Ironically: this is where I tune out.

I well remember seeing the album, the LP - in the racks in the record basement in Hartlepool's department store, Binns. I remember too the moment when I said to myself - you know what? I don't think I'm going to buy it. I'd heard the single (the titular Heroes), and wasn't impressed. It seemed ordinary. Low hadn't really grabbed me a year earlier. And by this time I was much more interested in Rush, Yes, UFO, Zeppelin.

I didn't actually buy a copy until the 1990s and I've only listened to it maybe four times. I came to it long after its cultural moment.

Interesting record. I want to say that this is where Bowie edges toward the pop/rock mainstream. Really it's a much more nuanced picture than that. But certainly - Heroes is a lot more immediate than Low. Bolder, more coherent. Classier, or at least more traditional in its production as well, albeit that brittle, minimalist sound on the first side of its predecessor was deliberate. More radio-friendly I guess, but not really conventional. Dancy. In parts, anyway.

Sons of the Silent Age, for example. I'm not going to say it's stadium rock, but it would rev up a big crowd in a way that What in the World wouldn't.

Like Low, this record has interesting instrumental "soundscape" tunes conceived in collaboration with Brian Eno, though I wouldn't rate them so highly. Moss Garden reminds me of Radiohead. Perhaps these ambient aural adventures were an influence. Neukoln and Sense of Doubt feel industrial. Really a bit more experimental, less deliberate, less considered than the Low tunes. A bit grey and airless.

Robert Fripp turned up to record some pretty stellar guitar parts, notably and famously on the title track but also to great effect on Joe the Lion where he wigs out delightfully.

It's a stylish, clever record. I did enjoy it, but it didn't really grab me. I didn't come away thinking I'd made a huge mistake walking out of Binns empty-handed. That said, I do feel a need to revisit it, to pick up where I left off in 1977.

[Slim]

I really like how we talk about 'side 1' and 'side 2'. Just showing our age here.

As the artist intended 

They didn't have a choice, but Low, more than most albums, is a game of two halves.

[David L]

I really like how we talk about 'side 1' and 'side 2'. Just showing our age here.

As the artist intended 

They didn't have a choice.......

Can you explain what you mean by that?

[Slim]

I really like how we talk about 'side 1' and 'side 2'. Just showing our age here.

As the artist intended 

They didn't have a choice.......

Can you explain what you mean by that?

Yes - albums were released primarily in two-sided form until the '80s. Admittedly there were "non-sided" media like 8-track cartridges. But certainly I think it's fair to say that (in this case) Bowie had no choice but to release his album in LP format, therefore having "side 2" and "side 2". If he'd insisted on an 8-track only release, it probably would have sunk without trace.

[David L]

I really like how we talk about 'side 1' and 'side 2'. Just showing our age here.

As the artist intended 

They didn't have a choice.......

Can you explain what you mean by that?

Yes - albums were released primarily in two-sided form until the '80s. Admittedly there were "non-sided" media like 8-track cartridges. But certainly I think it's fair to say that (in this case) Bowie had no choice but to release his album in LP format, therefore having "side 2" and "side 2". If he'd insisted on an 8-track only release, it probably would have sunk without trace.

I now understand the point you were making.
I'm unsure that it has too much to do with the nop's comment but I was alluding to the fact that in the LP-age, artists (certainly established ones) would have a large say in  the order in which the songs were intended to be listened to  - ergo, what was to be side 1 and what was to be side 2.
Crossed-wires, perhaps

[Slim]

Lodger [May 1979]

Three things have always defined this album for me: the jokey cover photo and the singles DJ and Boys Keep Swinging. In 1979, they served to reinforce my conviction that Bowie's career, present tense, wasn't really something I was very interested in any more. There was just none of the old grace, the drama, the poise in any of them.

So I listened for the first time today, although I bought it a few years ago for some reason.

Well - it does have its moments. It's quirky, it's fun in parts. We're much closer now I think to the pop/rock mainstream.

It does have two clunkers (Repetition and Red Money, perhaps not coincidentally the last two tracks) but I must admit it's a lot classier, more clever, more imaginative than a lot of what passed for popular music at the time. I think David is dabbling in the New Wave here in parts though at this temporal distance it's difficult to make an assessment like that. Definitely there's an aroma of Talking Heads here and there. Clever, but for me anyway not really affecting.

Adrian Belew contributes some pleasingly anarchic guitar parts.

It feels a bit ordinary. No ambient instrumentals. David changed down a gear for this one. It mostly just washed over me really.

I must give a nod to the first tune though. Smooth, classic Bowie pop: Fantastic Voyage. Actually I've just listened to it again and noticed that it borrows from Word On A Wing (from Station to Station).