FEATURE:
The Prettiest Star
IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie as Aladdin Sane/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Duffy
Looking Ahead to Big Anniversaries for David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, and Let’s Dance
_________
I am looking quite far ahead…
but there are two David Bowie albums that celebrate big anniversaries next month. One is more notable than the other – that is the one I am going to start with. I shall come to Let’s Dance. That was released on 14th April, 1983. Produced by Bowie and Nile Rodgers, Let’s Dance followed 1980’s Scary Monsters… And Super Creeps. The first album I want to come to is Aladdin Sane. One of his greatest works, it followed two of his other great works. Released on 19th April, 1973, Aladdin Sane came out a year after The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. That came a year after Hunky Dory. Within such a short time, Bowie had created this run of very different btu equally magnificent albums. A new persona for each one, Ziggy Stardust was gone. In their place was something darker and a little different. I will start off by taking a look at the masterful and iconic Aladdin Sane. As it is fifty on 19th April, I wanted to take a look at David Bowie’s sixth studio album. In the middle of a phenomenal run of creativity and evolution, this was the first album released by Bowie where he was a bona fide star.. Produced by Bowie and Ken Scott, there are contributions from Bowie’s band, The Spiders from Marks. A lot of the songs were written between U.S. shows. It is a fascinating window into this artist adopting this new persona.
There is a much more America-leaning sound on Aladdin Sane. This would not be the last time American influences came into his music, but it was one directly influenced by touring the country. As such, many of the lyrics dissect the dark sides of touring. Coping with this newfound fame, the resultant music could have been a mess. As it is, Aladdin Sane ranks as one of Bowie’s greatest albums. This is what AllMusic wrote in their review:
“Ziggy Stardust wrote the blueprint for David Bowie's hard-rocking glam, and Aladdin Sane essentially follows the pattern, for both better and worse. A lighter affair than Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane is actually a stranger album than its predecessor, buoyed by bizarre lounge-jazz flourishes from pianist Mick Garson and a handful of winding, vaguely experimental songs. Bowie abandons his futuristic obsessions to concentrate on the detached cool of New York and London hipsters, as on the compressed rockers "Watch That Man," "Cracked Actor," and "The Jean Genie." Bowie follows the hard stuff with the jazzy, dissonant sprawls of "Lady Grinning Soul," "Aladdin Sane," and "Time," all of which manage to be both campy and avant-garde simultaneously, while the sweepingly cinematic "Drive-In Saturday" is a soaring fusion of sci-fi doo wop and melodramatic teenage glam. He lets his paranoia slip through in the clenched rhythms of "Panic in Detroit," as well as on his oddly clueless cover of "Let's Spend the Night Together." For all the pleasures on Aladdin Sane, there's no distinctive sound or theme to make the album cohesive; it's Bowie riding the wake of Ziggy Stardust, which means there's a wealth of classic material here, but not enough focus to make the album itself a classic”.
There are a couple of things I want to mention about Aladdin Sane, before I get to a BBC review of the album. The Southbank Centre are celebrating fifty years of Aladdin Sane. There is an exhibition that centres around the lightning flash portrait of Bowie by Brian Duffy, in addition to live music and talks. It will be a must-see for all Bowie fans. Also, there is a fiftieth anniversary release of Aladdin Sane. This is what the BBC had to say when they approached David Bowie’s 1973 masterpiece:
“From the first crashing chord of ''Watch That Man'' you know that this is a rock'n' roll album. If Ziggy Stardust was his Sgt. Pepper (a loose-fitting concept about an alter-ego rock band, but staggeringly good songs), then Aladdin Sane is Bowie's Exile on Main Street and, as if to prove a point, there's even a cover of a Stones song on here: the staunch rocker ''Let's Spend the Night Together''.
The riffs come thick and fast. Mick Ronson might lack Keith Richards' blues licks - he plays guitar like a Hull mechanic, which was pretty much what he was when he joined the Spiders from Mars - but boy, can he play. Listen to ''Jean Genie'', ''Cracked Actor'' and ''Panic In Detroit''. Ronson's six-string shuffle turns his guitar's sound into something that chases you with teeth.
Bowie described this album as 'Ziggy in America', and the rock'n' roll is certainly more down to earth than its predecessor, with the notable exception of the space-age ''Drive in Saturday'', the other-worldly ''Lady Grinning Soul'' and ''Time'', with its echoes of pre-war Berlin cabaret neatly prefiguring Bowie's own sojourn in that city in the later Seventies. Mott the Hoople turned down ''Drive in Saturday'' as a follow up to ''All the Young Dudes'', which was a shame perhaps, but Bowie's recording is wonderfully atmospheric, and it is difficult to imagine anyone else capturing that languid 'Gee it's hot, let's go to bed' feel in quite the same way. 'Pour me out another phone', he sighs, before name-checking Twiggy and someone called Buddy.
Pianist Mike Garson is consistently great throughout this album, and an important adjunct to the Bowie house-band. His weary, decadent piano - put to particular good use on the title track -''Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?)'' - was one of the album's talking points when it was first released in 1973. It's lost none of its freeform, jazzy sparkle in thirty years and still sounds as Jackson Pollock's blobs might, had they been splattered onto sheet music instead of canvas.
The bonus disc accompanying this 30th anniversary pressing comprises four relatively interesting tracks - Bowie's own 1973 recording of ''All the Young Dudes'', a sax version of his 1972 hit, ''John, Im Only Dancing'', and the single mixes of ''Time'' and ''Jean Genie'' - and various live out-takes from American gigs of the Seventies.
Aladdin Sane is one of the finest forty-five minutes in rock. 'Crack, baby, crack; show me you're real' he demands on ''Cracked Actor'': a chameleon lost, for one glorious moment, in his own camouflage”.
Let’s come to 14th April, as that is when Let’s Dance turns forty. The ‘80s is not Bowie’s most celebrating or interesting decade, but I do think that Let’s Dance is worth celebrating. Even if Bowie reflected on the aftermath of Let’s Dance success and his subsequent next two albums as a low period (he compared his output to that of Phil Collins), Let’s Dance is fascinating throughout. Recorded at the Power Station in New York City, this album marked some shifts. There were new players on board this album. Bowie also did not play any instruments on Let’s Dance. That was the first time that has happened. Incorporating some Post-Disco and New Wave, it is a shame that Bowie did not bring any of this to his next album, 1984’s Tonight. Let’s Dance was a huge commercial success. Topping charts in many countries, his 1983 release is still his most popular. It is a case of critics being divided concerning the material and Bowie’s new direction. The public and record buyers reacted very differently. They wholly embraced Let’s Dance! I want to move on to a 1997 review from Ken Tucker in Rolling Stone:
“AS A POP-CULTURE changeling flitting from pose to pose, David Bowie is overrated. Ultimately, there isn’t that much difference between Ziggy Stardust and the Elephant Man — they’re both ugly misfits who want to control their worlds. However, as a pop musician, endlessly experimenting and exhausting new styles, Bowie is unduly neglected. He has been consistently astute in his choice of collaborators, from Mick Ronson to Brian Eno. And now, the Thin White Duke has teamed up with a master of black rock, Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers, for an album of chilly dance music.
Let’s Dance sounds great; it’s all beat, brains and breathiness. The album’s most intelligent strategy is its utter simplicity: Rodgers serves up guitar lines in thick slabs, and Bowie’s voice cuts across their surface like a knife slicing meat. His mannered whine is alluringly distant — charming but formal, inveigling but austere. This is as true of a song like the loud, slamming “Modern Love” as it is of the quiet, pulsing “Without You.”
Working as coproducers, Bowie and Rodgers have updated each other’s sound. Although Bowie revitalized his career in 1975 by ripping off a James Brown riff for the hit single “Fame,” Chic’s brand of black rock & roll is more suitable for him. The icy sheen of aloofness that glistens on Chic’s greatest hits (“Good Times,” “Le Freak”) is a lacquer that coats Bowie’s whole career, from “Space Oddity” through the fractured, mysterious LP, Lodger. Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards formed Chic at the height of discomania, and while Chic’s work remains interesting and vital, the duo’s career has not: their last two albums have stalled on the charts, and their remake/remodel of Deborah Harry on Koo Koo was a disaster.
For his part, Bowie hasn’t been heard from much since 1980. Scary Monsters was a good album, but it was also a dead end, concluding the themes of dislocation and alienation developed on Low, “Heroes” and Lodger. By superstar standards, it was only a modest commercial success, and its pervasive feelings of dread and sadness were oppressive. If Bowie has become this much of a downer, his audience seemed to say, give us Gary Numan.
But now Bowie and Rodgers are back, and the title song of Let’s Dance is a jittery, bopping single as vital as anything on the radio. It’s also relevant to add that Gary Numan is a has-been: there’s a difference between following trends and running them into the ground, after all.
The trend Bowie and Rodgers are following is Eighties-style dance music. Let’s Dance is synth-pop without the synths — or, at least, without their domination. Although Rob Sabino adds splashes of keyboards, Rodgers’ guitar does the work that synthesizers usually do these days, providing the foot-tapping hooks and an aura of cool.
For all its surface beauty, though, there’s something thin and niggling about Let’s Dance. Perhaps it’s Bowie’s choice of material, some of which is recycled: “China Girl,” cowritten by Iggy Pop, appeared on Pop’s 1977 LP, The Idiot; “Criminal World” was recorded by Metro; and “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” is a rerecording of Bowie and Giorgio Moroder’s theme song for Paul Schrader’s Cat People film. Subtract these three tunes — and they are certainly the most subtractable songs on the album — and you’re left with five songs. Of these, “Ricochet” borrows the tape trickery, anonymous voices and rhythms of Eno and David Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, while “Let’s Dance” refurbishes the hook of Chic’s “Good Times.”
That leaves three pristine lovelies, and I’m tempted to employ a reviewer’s cliché and say they’re worth the price of the album. I’ll resist, however, for it is only in the context of the whole record that “Modern Love,” “Without You” and “Shake It” take on their most dramatic effects. This trio of songs offers some of the most daring songwriting of Bowie’s career. The lyrics are so simple they risk simple-mindedness, yet I’d give a hundred “Space Oddity”s for the elegant cliché twisting at the climax of “Modern Love”: “Modern love gets me to the church on time/Church-on-time terrifies me.” As a rock statement about growing up and facing commitments, that couplet beats the hell out of Jackson Browne.
“Without You” and “Shake It” are two of a kind: the former features the most exquisitely unaffected vocal performance Bowie has yet attempted, while the latter adds wit to candor. Quite aside from a verse about Manhattan that should make cabaret writers Kander and Ebb squirm with jealousy (“I could take you to heaven/I could spin you to hell/But I’ll take you to New York/It’s the place that I ??now well”), “Shake It” is Bowie’s most triumphant stab at deflating the portentous persona of David Bowie Superstar. Having spent a career donning masks, acting existentially neurotic and pushing his latest image, Bowie lets his voice slip demurely behind the lurching beat and a squealing backup chorus, only to suddenly surge forward and deliver the lines that end the album: “When I’m feeling disconnected, well, I sure know what to do/Shake it, baby.”
It’s a great, giddy moment: David Bowie cuts a rug, and cuts the crap. Love is the answer, get down and boogie. Let’s dance, indeed”.
Just before finishing up, back in 2018, Albumism revisited Let’s Dance for its thirty-fifth anniversary. Whilst not in the upper tiers of David Bowie’s incredible and peerless catalogue:
“Several projects on the stage and the silver screen—notably The Elephant Man and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence—kept Bowie busy post-Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). This is to say nothing of his 1981 alliance with Queen on “Under Pressure.” The pace picked up though in 1983. The musical upstart had not only signed a new deal with EMI Records, but sessions for his next project, Let's Dance, had begun to percolate. Having (temporarily) parted ways with his longtime musical partner Tony Visconti, Bowie took up company with Nile Rodgers, the founding member of the seminal disco-soul outfit Chic and an emergent producer and songwriter in his own right.
The Bowie/Rodgers relationship, later reprised on the unsung Black Tie White Noise (1993), has been one of much discussion and study. Some have remarked that their pairing was the shrewdest of partnerships, but the music they made together posited that there was more happening between the two. Both men were pushing the other toward the limits of his imagination during the three week incubation period for the forthcoming album. Let's Dance is the ultimate expression of David Bowie's absolute awareness and application of his abilities in song.
With exceptions issued to “China Girl” and “Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)”—pieces that existed in prior iterations and were re-recorded for Let's Dance—the rest of the material is fresh faced. The selections swagger (“Shake It,” “Let's Dance”), they flirt (“Modern Love”) and they think too (“Ricochet”). As a songwriter and vocalist, Bowie hadn't lost his touch—everything on Let's Dance is biting and bright, anchored in a rhythmic, melodic rock/pop/R&B hybrid ideal for radio play.
Out of the eight entries on the long player, half went out as commercial singles from March to November 1983—“Let's Dance,” “China Girl,” “Modern Love,” and “Without You.” Drawing focus upon the title track, it upstages his previous urban-pop masterpieces “Young Americans” and “Fashion.” Comprised of a heady mix of humid brass, bluesy guitar riffs and peppery percussion, “Let's Dance” is forward thinking, funky and irresistible.
Like no other long player before or after it, Let's Dance managed to smooth out Bowie's mercurial eccentricities without totally expunging them and dropped him dead center into the “I want my MTV!” era. Overnight, Let's Dance collected silver, gold and platinum certifications the world over, secured its status as a definitive record of the 1980s, and sent its creator out on an eight-month concert tour encompassing ninety-six shows that touched sixteen countries.
Bowie had done it. He had finally crossed the commercial threshold. Even better, he had come out of the experience unscathed and artful as he ever was. Or had he? For the rest of the decade, Bowie was dogged by expectations to match and exceed Let's Dance—Tonight (1984) and Never Let Me Down (1987) suffered as a result.
Although Bowie's post-1980s recordings improved dramatically following these few missteps, he never again achieved the equilibrium of art and commerce as he had on Let's Dance. Regardless, this record further extended Bowie's pop music omnipresence, showing that even for the briefest of moments he could gracefully command the often antithetical elements of creativity and commercialism”.
There are a couple of important David Bowie anniversaries happening next month. Let’s Dance comes first. We will wish that album a happy fortieth anniversary on 14th. I think that producer Nile Rodgers will have something to say about his time working on the album. I have not heard of any anniverssary release or events happening. That is not true of Aladdin Sane. It will turn fifty on 19th and, as such, there is a Southbank Centre exhibition and a reissue and anniversary release of the mighty Aladdin Sane. Both albums are different yet incredible. I know that Black Tie White Noise is thirty next month but, as one of Bowie’s lesser-known albums, I did not include it here. I was keen to celebrate two big anniversaries of important and sensational albums from David Bowie. Aladdin Sane and Let’s Dance show that there was and is…
NOBODY like him.