The safe ” Divine Symmetry » by David Bowie shows how he made « Hunky Dory his profession of faith for the rest of his career.
Five years after the release of Hunky DoryDavid Bowie was building his own myth in an interview with the MelodyMaker. In 1976, he explained that the song ” Song for Bob Dylan ” of Hunky Dory had “ defined what I wanted to do in rock […] That’s when I said, ‘OK, if you don’t want to do it, I will’. I saw the lack of leadership “.
Divine Symmetrya new subtitled box set The Journey to Hunky Dory, suggests that David Bowie’s claim was only partially true. Five years later, he hid the panic he had felt when realizing Hunky Dory. The five discs in the collection contain raw demos, radio sessions, rare live and alternate mixes that show Bowie was desperate to figure out what his next step would be. He was mired in the quicksand of newness, and after the failure of his third album, The Man Who Sold the World (1970), he withdrew. He practically stopped touring and argued with his band. But a trip to the United States invigorates him, allowing him to open up to nuanced pop songs that give him the courage he needs to find a way forward.
After traveling around the United States, he started writing songs for his friends, like Andy Warhol’s Factory, and wanted to tour as a troupe. The song ” Song for Bob Dylan was intended to be sung by his friend George Underwood, while ” Andy Warhol was for Dana Gillespie, who performed it with a Nico-like drawl on the BBC Peel Session included here. ” Oh! You Pretty Things ” has been a success for Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits before Bowie released it. If he couldn’t make it as an artist, he knew he could at least write good songs. He just had to decide who he was.
The demos of Divine Symmetryalmost all of which have never been officially published, show how David Bowie tried to find the right way to fill the ” lack of leadership ” of Bob Dylan. All the demos are a template for the rest of his career, as he tries out different personalities in them. On the raw version of ” Song for Bob Dylan he mimics Dylan’s voice, which he describes as sounding like ” sand and glue », and he plays harmonica throughout the song (he dropped both of these elements during the sessions Hunky Dory). Likewise, on the primordial queen bitch », his biting imitation of the Velvet Underground, which he interprets a little more slowly here, he laughs softly in the verses like Lou Reed. (His acoustic solo cover of “ Waiting for the Man sounds equally deferential). And on ” Port of Amsterdam », an anglicized cover of Jacques Brel (a nod to another hero of Bowie, Scott Walker), he screams desperately while evoking drunken sailors and sullen prostitutes (The piece almost closed Hunky Dory before Bowie wrote the last-minute transcendent ” Bewlay Brothers “).
Songs that have not been studio released on Hunky Dory are even more revealing. Each of them shows that David Bowie was forging new characters. He tries his hand at the song à la Kurt Weill on ” How Lucky You Are (aka Miss Peculiar) “. He tried to convince Tom Jones to record it, but was unsuccessful. ” Looking for a Friend written for his side project Arnold Corns, could be the band’s answer to ” Song for Bob Dylan with its country-funk beat and folk chorus. ” King of the City could be an early Bee-Gees folk song (like ” I Started a Joke “), but the song’s melody echoes his later hit, ” Ashes to Ashes “. And ” Right On, Mother “, which finally was recorded by Peter Noone, here sounds a bit like Frankie Valli singing Billy Joel, right down to its bizarre lyrics about his mother coming to terms with his choice to live in sin with a woman. The morose folksong ” Tired of My Life “will become” It’s No Game » on the album Scary Monsters by Bowie a decade later, and listening to the version here, it’s clear the song was too depressing to suit what would become Hunky Dory.
The rest of the demos show how Bowie developed a sound and stuck to his vision when he entered the studio. The acoustics ” quicksand recorded in a San Francisco hotel room for John Mendelsohn of RollingStonewho wrote the original magazine review, contains some clunky lyrics, but most of the demos reflect the songs as they were recorded. He plays ” Kooks “, his song for his recently born son Zowie, on a 12 string guitar (or 11 string, according to the memoirs of his ex-wife Angie Bowie), and his piano playing on the first version of “ Life on Mars? » seems laborious because he reappropriates the chords of « My Way by Frank Sinatra in an attempt to write a better song than Sinatra’s. (Rick Wakeman of Yes played the rumbling, filigree version on the album). ” Changes is just as rudimentary. As for ” Shadowman it hints at the promise of a song that could have rivaled any Elton John song, but Bowie didn’t record it for years, with a version eventually being released around his album. heathen.
A facsimile of David Bowie’s notebooks from the time, included in the box set, suggests he had dozens of other songs as well, and was rumored to have already written most of Ziggy Stardust at that time. Among the curiosities are deleted lyrics from the song “ Life on Mars? which contain the phrase ” Kiss the face of a race of subhumans », several occurrences of the title « Andy Warhole spelled that way and a reference to a title titled ” Charles Manson », probably abandoned in 1971 when Bowie realized that Manson was not a simple hippie but a dangerous criminal. On one page, Bowie, still in his twenties, scribbles: I believe my mental state is extremely illegal “. On the cover of the notebook, Bowie spelled Hunky Dory in Hunky Dorrey? and Hunky Doreyeven sketching a crate of records on the back, sandwiched by a “ Dorey “. Inside are several sketches of Bowie’s costumes, showing how he found out who he was.
The three live recordings also show a more mature Bowie. On the Peel session, recorded a few days after Zowie’s birth, he plays an early version of ” Kooks ” of Hunky Dory, and on recording Sounds of the 70s: Bob Harris, Bowie seems hesitant as he readjusts to rock stardom after months away from the spotlight. On this last performance, he sings an astonishing “Oh! You Pretty Things alone at the piano. And on ” Andy Warhol “, Mick Ronson and he intertwine their acoustic guitars to give a little more depth.
On the third live in the collection, an almost complete recording of a concert in Aylesbury on September 25, 1971 (a few months before the release of Hunky Dory), we hear Bowie gaining confidence. He begins timidly, asking Ronson to ” get a little closer “before specifying, laughing:” microphone “. He nervously vents Space Oddity » (« It’s one of mine that we will finish as soon as possible he says) and finally seems at ease when his band joins him for ” The Supermen ” and ” Pretty Things “.
Although some of the songs sound messy (he admits he doesn’t know how to play ” Changes “), the public applauds more and more loudly until the covers of ” Round and Round » by Chuck Berry and « Waiting for the Man from the Velvet Underground, closing the set. ” We really don’t have another songhe says to the crowd of about 500 people who demand another. We only rehearsed for today and I killed myself singing. The show’s promoter, who salutes him at the end, calls the performance ” one of the most beautiful evenings of my life “. That’s when David Bowie realized he could actually fill the void…
A disc of alternate versions of songs by Hunky Dory also contains revelations. The complete recording of Life on Mars? isn’t cut at the end, allowing Ronson to be fully heard cursing the ringing phone that ruined the perfect take. And several remixes show different sides of the mainstays of Hunky Dory. The best are the cover of Biff Rose “ Fill Your Heart which was a carbon copy of Rose’s recording on the disc, but now sounds less claustrophobic with just a piano arrangement. He also has a ” Bewlay Brothers less rambunctious and with a wider range of weird voices at the end. (The final disc, a Blu-ray, contains high-definition versions of the box set tracks).
Generally, Divine Symmetry widens the canvas Hunky Dory. David Bowie was willing to try anything to prove he wasn’t just a curiosity that released a hit, and ultimately turned the album into a delicious and welcoming instant classic. In an interview with the NME in 1971, he wondered ” How can you be a serious pop artist at 24? “. At the end of the same year, the release of Hunky Dory answers his own question. A few months later, he was redefining himself again, telling the MelodyMaker that he was gay and dyed his hair red to record the many songs he wrote at the same time as Hunky Dory… as Ziggy Stardust.
Kory Grow
Translated by the editor