![]() ![]() Even the metallic chimes of the Stylophone recall the pulsating intro of the Beatles’ I Am The Walrus. There are lyrical and tonal references to the Bee Gees’ New York Mining Disaster 1941 while an acoustic passage signposts Old Friends by Simon & Garfunkel. Through resonance, tone and unexpected harmonic shifts Bowie and Dudgeon achieved a meta-pop song full of cultural and musical references. The song’s adventurous orchestration and unsettling harmonics owe much to Dudgeon’s ambition. Visconti’s unease led him to recommend Gus Dudgeon (who would later work with Elton John) as producer. However, his long-time producing partner Tony Visconti refused to work on the song, citing it as a distasteful departure from the singer’s hippie folk leanings. It also sealed a new recording deal with Mercury Records. ![]() ![]() The definitive version, recorded in late June 1969 at Trident Studios, was pressed and released as a single within three weeks – on July 11 – to leverage the hype of the impending Apollo moon landing. The song – one of his earliest and perhaps most outrageous musical assemblages – is also indicative of the artist he would become, a restless creative magpie perched by the wireless, plucking phrases and vocal stylings from the inbound radio waves. “I think I wanted to write a new kind of musical,” he reflected in 2002, “and that’s how I saw my future at the time.” Eschewing the typical pop song template, Bowie designed the piece as if it was a dramatic play. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |