Make Way For the Homo Superior
davidbowie
Outsider

By Dr. Behrend Van Muller

His images left permanent imprints on the popular psyche, but over the years his impressive body of experimental and avant-garde rock have been obscured by his greatest hits and the embarrassing soft-rock dance records he did in the 80's. His latest effort to regain cred, the album Outside (a return to his gothic period in the late 70's/ early 80's) is an industrial Nine Inch Nails-esque nonlinear hyper-cycle of tuneless pretensions. Performed live it left stadium rock fans bored and bewildered.

Goblin would like to see the greater efforts of this revolutionary icon not be ignored, from 1969 to 1974 Bowie produced a substantive body of work: Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Alladin Sane, Pin-ups, and Diamond Dogs.

His debut album and first hit, "Space Oddity" uses Pink Floyd style synthesizing to describe space. His lyrics are heavily influenced by Bob Dylan in writing and deliverance (complete with a borrowing from William Burroughs and most importantly Syd Barrett, the flipped out genius of Pink Floyd). Bowie was successful at combining styles that were popular at the time; this blending of techniques resulted in lyrics that were ambitious without being pretentious, as in Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed:

"I got eyes in my backsides /That see electric tomatoes / On credit Card Rye bread /There are children in the washrooms / Holding hands with the queen /And my head's full of murders/ Where only killers scream."

Space Oddity is a lyrical and melodious folk-rock record (almost hyper-lyrical). The immaculately produced arrangements have delicate and pastel colors, full of diamond like flashes of brass, flutes, harpsichord, and cello. Bowie's pacing is excellent and his music is never monotonous, varying from slightly rocking to purely acoustical sounds.

The incense of Woodstock hangs in the air of this album, both in his folk-rock sound and political concerns. The songs are a mixture of social commentary, alienation, and somewhat tortured love songs. His attitudes are anti-authoritarian, in favor of the underdog and oppressed, as in "God Knows I'm Good," about an old-lady prosecuted for shoplifting a can of stew. Since the album dates back to the early days of sexual liberation his songs are still about women (though the lyrics are vague). Bowie only hints at his bisexuality with lines like, "I'm a phallus with pigtails."

The album comes to a cyclical end in "Memory of a Free Festival," that tells the story of another astronaut: "And Peter tried to climb aboard but the Captain shook his head." The song concludes, "The sun machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party." This line transfers to how all outsiders (hippies) are going to be free and have fun despite the forces of darkness closing in. In Bowie's world somehow enlightenment comes to everybody. With the help of LSD Bowie saw himself as an outsider soaring out into uncharted territory.

"The Man Who Sold The World," Bowie's second and best album is a major departure from his debut folksy record. He takes hard acid rock to its outer boundaries in his tasteful and refined British way. "The Man" really rocks in a vital punkish way; its rock without the macho, it just rocks because it has to. His sidemen are unusually brilliant, going in directions no one at the time was going, in instrumental virtuosity and just plain feeling for groove. Bowie seamlessly manages the dynamics, changing from beautiful, pissed-off, to relaxed: building up a song like no one else knows how. He'd taken his lyricism from folk into rock effortlessly and was setting standards for transparency of layering, brilliance of lyrics, and lushness of sound.

His lyrics are more arresting than his poetic predecessor Bob Dylan, and are still relevant to anyone today Ñ not just the hippies of the time. They express a clarity of confusion only heard from Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett before; as in "All The Madman:"

"Don't set me free/ I'm as helpless as can be/ My Libido split on me/ Gimme some good 'ole lobotomy/ 'cause I'd rather stay here/ With all the madmen/ Than perish with the sadmen roaming free."

Bowie uses his voice for maximum variety, he's not afraid to whisper. Even though he's a rock star his voice sounds more like a friend telling you how things are. "After All" sounds like a lush, after-hours cabaret; he's not a stadium rocker shouting at you, heÕs singing straight to your table.

Bowie's music is prophetic of so many areas of rock that came after him; his raw and intimate lyrics ("I slash them cold, I kill them dead/ I broke the gooks, I cracked their heads/ I'll bomb them out from under their beds/ But now I've got the running gun blues") about violence and political situations were not to be seen for another ten years in the punk rock world.

Yet not all songs are so heavy, as in "The Supermen," a pounding musical interpretation of Supermen flying into the cosmos. Bowie's music always has a sense of freedom and fun, he's never gothic or heavy; his approach is about finding new sounds, and new ways of expressing things; no self pity, only exuberance, and a fresh way to express his opinion.

Rock never went further than this in ideas, textures, meaning, and passionate commitment.

On his third album "Hunky Dory," Bowie confronts the changes he's going through and boldly proclaims his bisexuality:

"Oh you pretty things / Don't you know you're driving your/ Mama's and Papa's insane/ Let me make it plain / You gotta make way for the Homo Superior / Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use."

At this point in his career, Bowie's wife Angela steered him into the New York Andy Warhol culture, a place where the attitude was "invent yourself" and everybody gets 15 minutes of fame. This is where Bowie came up with the idea of creating a character and being it.

The subjects in his songs display an ironic juxtaposition between his often hippyish tunes and the Andy Warhol idea of manipulation of people: ("Andy Warhol looks a scream/Hang him on my wall/ Andy Warhol's silver screen/ Can't tell them apart at all.") placing them out to be displayed as art.

Hunky Dory significantly has no love songs toward women as his vision of them is no longer sweet, he sees them as scratchers and destroyers. He's now moved on to the male alternative, which sometimes can be worse, as he explains in the forgotten rock anthem classic Queen Bitch: "She's so swishy in her stain and hat / In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat / Oh God, I could do better than that."

In his fourth and most famous album, "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars," Bowie was again focused in the direction of coolness: stadium hard rock. Yet Bowie's songs are more complicated than most people's idea of conventional rock, and his clear diction and sharp production are like a cool glass of water after listening to today's grunge.

Songs like "Ziggy Stardust" and "Suffragette City" are pinnacles of intelligent glitter rock: "Don't lean on me man 'cause you can't afford the ticket back from Suffragette city/ Wham bam thank you ma'am!" Exclaims Bowie in his ultimate classic.

With "Ziggy" the stage show became more important, it was a multimedia event, not just a performance from a rock group. His outrageous space alien costume and lavish props were the beginning of MTV style visuals: a dawning of a new era where as much attention was paid to the look and attitude of the artist as his sound. His songs have a grandiose sound tailor-made for 60,000 people to rock out to at once.

Now that Bowie had risen to the top he was still an outsider but his sympathy had shifted from the underdog to the overlord. This can be seen in the album's cyclical movement from the opening track Five Years, about small people dreaming of escape, to his sympathy for the self-destructive rock star in the closing "Rock N' Roll suicide." (It's strange Kurt Cobain didn't cover this song rather than The Man Who Sold the World).

"The clock waits impatiently on your song/ Walk past the cafe where you don't eat when you've lived too long/ You're a Rock N' Roll suicide/Take my hand/ I'll help you with the pain/ You're not alone."

Yet Bowie doesn't burden the listener with heavy suicide drama throughout the album, as lesser artists are prone to do. "There's a starman waiting in the sky/ He'd love to come a meet us/ but he's afraid he'd blow our minds/ He says let the children lose it/ Let the children use it/ He told us not to blow it because he knows its all worthwhile." He sings in Starman, the most charming and fulfilling song on the album.

In "Alladin Sane" Bowie injected modern jazz be-bop into his music almost twenty years before it became fashionable, and he still occasionally goes back to his folk rock roots; but now its only to apply color to his great plan of rock.

Alladin Sane is now a big rock n' roll star and has left his previous self as a wide-eyed boy from the mountains behind. Instead of being a crazed outsider he is a very catty insider dealing with his reversal of fortune. The songs on Alladin Sane deal with Bowie's new stresses and challenges to his credibility. His messages are ambiguous, like "Panic In Detroit," which is about as actual race riot in Detroit, is also about his being a producer of units of product like a car factory. This parable combines Bowie's social consciousness with his narcissism.

In "Cracked Actor," "Smack, baby, smack/ Crack baby crack/ smack, baby smack/ suck baby Suck," Bowie is selling his cocaine addiction to the audience who is addicted to him. Bowie has been put into the position of acting out his life in public, and his themes have shifted to time and changes. He is very aware that rock is about youth and his aging rock-star-entity is eventually doomed. As he sings in "Time:"

"I'm not evicting time/ breaking up is hard/ but keeping dark is hateful/ I had so many breakthroughs/ But you my love were mine / Love has left you dreamless/ the guilt I had was guilt for dreaming / you should be on by now/ lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie ..."

Time is the key song in the end of this rock star's career, Bowie majestically expresses his pressure to produce product and satisfy his audience and his lover's every need.

But Bowie's next, "Pin-ups," is a collection of covers that made up a retrospective of his favorite English rock-club groups in the '64 to '67 period, including covers of songs by Pretty Things, Them, The Birds, Syd's Pink Floyd, Mojos, Who, Easybeats, Merseys, Kinks, and Love-on-ya!

Bowie's sidemen who are all pros from the period have been doing that style of rock so long they have it perfectly down; the improvised arrangements are full of vivid textures and interesting details, and drummer Aynsley Dunbar's classic and perfectly tasteful hard-rock drumming pushes the album forward and makes it rock.

He's studied the essence of the music and removed the cheesier bubblegum element of the original with his good taste, intricate layering, and precision; making the music state of the art. Pin-ups is a supremely refined album but it still kicks ass.

Bowie's last great album, "Diamond Dogs," is another science fiction concept album. In the opening he describes a grim futuristic world of social decay. "Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats and ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers."

"We Are Dead" ... a spook, a haunt, a rumbling piano ... tells every outsiders story: "People will hold us to blame/ It hit me today/ We're fighting with the eyes of the blind/ Be allusive but don't walk far/ We're breaking in the new boys/ Deceive your next of kin/ For you're dancing where the dogs decay/ Defecating ecstasy/ Because of all we said we're almost dead/ Pressing on through night/ knowing its right."

The album has a pessimistic, foreboding point of view about the repression people already face and how much more they will in the future. Yet, true to his style, Bowie mixes up his serious message with funky, catchy tunes, as in "Beware the savage yore, of 1984," a strangely upbeat number about fascist governments, to the psychedelic anthem folk rock of "Big Brother:"

"Don't talk of dust and roses/ Give me steel/ We'll build a glass asylum/ With just a hint of mayhem / Yup, yup, shake it up brother!"

There are only so many ways you can reinvent yourself to express outsider-ness and by the time he got to his white urban soul album Young American Bowie had expressed them all, unfortunately Bowie kept on pumping out cynical and jaded album after another, and ruined his reputation as a rebel and an innovator; just another example that rock is primarily a vehicle for youthful energy and ideals. But Goblin suggests you go back to his earlier works (preferably on vinyl, and forget about hearing it on big bucks classic rock stations) and you'll be astonished how modern and alive he really was. In fact he was so ahead of his time he wrote the motto for the gay 90's in the 70's: "Gotta make way for the Homo Superior."