David Bowie – "Five Years" (1972)

We’ve got five years

That’s all we've got

In The King and I, Anna – a widowed British schoolteacher who has agreed to move halfway around the world to tutor the children of the King of Siam – advises her anxious young son to “whistle a happy tune” whenever he is afraid.

Acting nonchalant when you’re in a scary situation does two things, she explains.  First, your false bravado fools other people.  More importantly, you can fool yourself:

The result of this deception

Is very strange to tell

For when I fool the people I fear

I fool myself as well

*     *     *     *     *

I used to be a pretty good whistler.  But I seem to have lost that ability.

If I had been whistling a couple of days ago, it would have been to conceal the anxiety I was feeling about my upcoming colonoscopy.  But now that the procedure is over and done with, any whistling that I’m able to do is in celebration of the fact that it’s FIVE YEARS until I have to undergo the procedure again.

*     *     *     *     *

I’m sure that those of you who have had a colonoscopy will agree that the procedure (done under sedation) is a piece of cake compared to the preparation for the procedure.

My particular colonoscopy “prep” was called GoLYTELY.  Whoever came up with that name is a very sick person who should be never allowed to marry and have children.  (The “Go” part of the name may have been accurate, but the “LYTELY” part was certainly not.)

The unpleasantness of going without food for a day and a half pales in comparison to the misery of having to drink eight glasses of GoLYTELY the evening before the colonoscopy, and eight more glasses the morning of the procedure.

GoLYTELY’s primary active ingredient is polyethylene glycol 3350, an osmotic laxative that induces watery diarrhea.  The idea is to empty the colon so completely that your doctor has a perfectly clear view of the colon walls.  

The product also contains essential electrolytes to prevent the dangerous dehydration that might otherwise occur from such rapid fluid loss. 

I can report that guzzling 16 glasses of GoLYTELY worked like a charm for me – after the procedure was over, my doctor gave my colon two thumbs up for emptiness.  (“You were clean as a whistle,” she said.) 

*     *     *     *     *

Looking back on the experience, I have to wonder if it was really necessary to consumer 16 doses of laxative in a 16-hour period to achieve the desired effect – perhaps that was a bit of overkill.  

But better safe than sorry – right?  After all, I wouldn’t have wanted to be the woman in the waiting area next to mine.  I overheard her doctor tell her that she would have to redo the procedure in three months because her prep wasn’t as successful as mine was.  “I couldn’t get very far,” he explained to her.

*     *     *     *     *

“Five Years” – the opening track of David Bowie’s legendary 1972 album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars – warns the listener that the end of the world is coming soon: “Five years, that’s all we’ve got.”

Five years may not be a long time to stave off an apocalypse.  But I’m not complaining that I only have five years before I have to undergo another colonoscopy – after all, there’s a good chance that I’ll have the last laugh and be dead by then!

Click here to listen to “Five Years.”

Click here to buy “Five Years” from Amazon. 

David Bowie – "Rebel Rebel" (1974)

Got your mother in a whirl

She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl

[NOTE: I originally posted about the last of this year's group of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES "GOLDEN DECADE" ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME on November 25, 2011.]

To call David Bowie a musical chameleon is an understatement.  A chameleon may be able to change its colors, but it remains a chameleon.  It can't turn itself into a fish or a bird or a monkey.

(Love the eyepatch!)

It seemed that Bowie changed musical identities almost as often as I change my underwear.  (Once a week, whether I need to or not.)  When I was in college, he was a glam-rocker from outer space (Ziggy Stardust).  During my law-school years, he was a funk/soul/disco dude (the "Thin White Duke").  Later he transformed into the cooly post-modern minimalist of the "Berlin Trilogy" albums.  So confusing!

His 1974 album, Diamond Dogs, was his last glam-rock album and his first "plastic soul" album.  (One + one = one in this case.)

"Rebel Rebel" – his last glam-rock single – was originally written for a planned Ziggy Stardust musical that never got off the ground.  It's a gender-bender like the Kinks' "Lola," but sounds more like an old Rolling Stones song.  

Dozens of other artists have covered it – everyone from the Bay City Rollers to Def Leppard to Duran Duran to Joan Jett to Iggy Pop to the Smashing Pumpkins.

*     *     *     *     *

Manchester United soccer fans sang this tribute to Gary and Phil Neville – two brothers who once played on the team – to the tune of "Rebel Rebel":

Neville Neville, they're in defence

Neville Neville, their future's immense

Neville Neville, they ain't half bad

Neville Neville, the name of their dad

And yes, Neville Neville is the actual name of Gary's and Phil's dad, a former cricketer.

Netballer Tracey Neville

By the way, Neville Neville's other child, daughter Tracey – Phil's fraternal twin – is a professional netball player (whatever netball is).

*     *     *     *     *

Click here to watch a fabulous old video of Bowie lip-synching "Rebel Rebel."

Click here to order the record from Amazon.

David Bowie – "Suffragette City" (1972)

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Wham bam, thank you Ma’am!

David Bowie – whose real name was David Jones – got off to a very slow start as a musician.  

He founded the Konrads when he was 15, then moved on to the King Bees, the Mannish Boys, the Lower Third, the Buzz, and Riot Squad – none of whom achieved any success.

To avoid being confused with Davy Jones of the Monks, he changed his name to David Bowie in 1967.  (His decision to rename himself after the 19th-century American frontier hero, James Bowie – who popularized the Bowie knife and died at the Alamo – seems odd.  Of course, pretty much everything about David Bowie seems odd.)

A very young David Bowie

His eponymous debut album, which was released that year, sank without a trace.  I’ve never heard it, but I’m told that it sounds nothing like his later music.

“Space Oddity,” which was released in the UK in 1969, was a top-five hit single there.  But Bowie’s second album – which had the same David Bowie title as his first album – was not a success in either the UK or the U.S.  (The album did better when it was re-released as Space Oddity in 1972, after the release of Ziggy Stardust.)

The next two albums – The Man Who Sold the World (1970) and Hunky Dory (1971) – did better, but it was Bowie’s next album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, that propelled him to superstardom.

*     *     *     *     *

Ziggy Stardust – who was supposedly an androgynous rock star from Mars – may have been conceived as a combination of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.  Or the character may have been inspired by Vince Taylor (an early-day British rock ’n’ roll singer who thought he was a cross between a god and an alien), the Legendary Stardust Cowboy (an outsider performer from Texas who got started playing psychobilly music in the sixties and still performs today), and/or Kansai Yamamoto (the Japanese designer who created Bowie’s stage costumes).  

In any event, Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars were like nothing the world had seen prior to 1972.  The album was released when I was a junior in college, and my friends and I played it to death.  

It has several notable tracks – “Moonage Daydream” is a personal favorite – but “Suffragette City” is the ne plus ultra of Ziggy Stardust songs.  I don’t know what the hell the point of the song is, but I love it to death.  

If you ask me – and I’m the only one with a vote on the question – it clearly deserves to be in the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.

*     *     *     *     *

Did you know that Bowie originally offered “Suffragette City” to Mott the Hoople?

Bowie was a big fan of that band, which was close to breaking up in 1971.  He persuaded them to stay together, and said they could record “Suffragette City” if they wanted to.  (Ziggy Stardust had not yet been released.)

Mott turned down “Suffragette City,” but recorded another Bowie song – “All the Young Dudes” – which became their biggest hit.

“All the Young Dudes” is a great song, but it’s no “Suffragette City.”

Click here to listen to “Suffragette City.”

Click the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

David Bowie – "Lazarus" (2016)

Look up here, I'm in heaven

I've got scars that can't be seen

David Bowie died yesterday, two days after his 69th birthday and two days after the release of his 26th studio album, Blackstar (which will likely become the first Bowie album to reach the #1 spot on the Billboard album chart).  

Bowie had been diagnosed with liver cancer eighteen months before his death, but kept his illness a secret.

Bowie as Ziggy Stardust

Sooner or later, everyone who writes about David Bowie (including yours truly) describes him as a chameleon.  That includes Chris Richards, the pop music critic of the Washington Post:

Mourning David Bowie requires tremendous energy because there are so many David Bowies to mourn.  The lost astronaut.  The alien balladeer.  The pansexual glamourpuss.  The rake.  The maestro.  The fashionista.  The freak.  He was humanity’s ultimate and most giving rock star.  A chameleon bearing gifts.

I think Richards got to the heart of Bowie’s essence a little later in that piece:

[P]erpetual rejuvenation was the beating heart of Bowie’s project . . . . Bowie’s trajectory demanded that all pop stars evolve, transform, tweak their personas or invent new ones.  He made reinvention one of pop music’s most essential, appealing and enduring requirements.  

Today I asked a very talented musician I know to rank Bowie on a one to ten scale.  She would give only the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and a few others a “ten” rating, but she would give Bowie a “nine.”  I think that’s just about right.

Aladdin Sane

Bowie was born in 1947 as David Robert Jones.  He changed his stage name from Davy Jones to David Bowie to avoid being confused with Davy Jones of the Monkees.  

Bowie was a fan of American culture and reportedly wanted a name as “cutting” as Mick Jagger.  So he chose to name himself after Alamo hero Jim Bowie and his eponymous knife.  He later described his new name as “the medium for a conglomerate of statements and illusions” — whatever that means.

2 or 3 lines has previously featured five David Bowie songs, so you can tell I’m a big fan.  I played Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Sane, and Diamond Dogs to death when I was in college.  His next album, Young Americans, was awful, but thankfully his “plastic soul” phase didn’t last long.  

I didn’t go to many concerts when I was younger, but I did see Bowie when he brought his “Serious Moonlight Tour” to the old Capital Centre in suburban Washington in August 1983.  That tour kicked off in Brussels and ended in Hong Kong; altogether it visited 61 cities in 15 countries.  The setlist included “Space Oddity,” “Star,” “The Jean Genie,” “Rebel Rebel,” “Young Americans,” “Fame,” “Golden Years,” “Heroes,” “Ashes to Ashes,” “Modern Love,” “Let’s Dance,” and “Cat People (Putting Out Fire).”  

The Thin White Duke

Lazarus, an off-Broadway musical that features new and old songs by David Bowie, is a sort of sequel to Bowie’s 1976 movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth.  

Here's the trailer for that movie:

One reviewer said Lazarus was “unapologetically weird,” which is a pretty good description of Bowie himself.

The only track from Blackstar that is performed in Lazarus is today’s featured song – which is also titled “Lazarus.”

Bowie in 2015 (age 68)

The biblical Lazarus was restored to life by Jesus four days after his death.  Other than Jesus himself, Lazarus is the only biblical figure who was resurrected from the dead.  His resurrection is the last and most remarkable of the seven miracles performed by Jesus in the gospel according to John. 

According to Tony Visconti, the longtime Bowie collaborator who produced Blackstar, “Lazarus” and its accompanying music video were intended as a parting gift to Bowie’s fans.

The "Blackstar" cover

Visconti sent out this tweet after Bowie died:

He always did what he wanted to do.  And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way.  His death was no different from his life – a work of Art.  He made “Blackstar” for us, his parting gift.  I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I  wasn't, however, prepared for it.  He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life.  He will always be with us.  For now, it is appropriate to cry.

Here’s “Lazarus”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

David Bowie -- "Five Years" (1972)

Five years, what a surprise

Five years

"Five Years" is the opening track on David Bowie's legendary 1972 album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.  I was in college when that album was released, and I just about wore my copy of the LP out before I graduated.

The song describes an Earth reeling in shock after it is announced that the world will end in five years:

News had just come over

We had five years left to cry in

News guy wept and told us

Earth was really dying

Cried so much his face was wet

Then I knew he was not lying . . .

We've got five years

My brain hurts a lot

Five years

That's all we've got

According to David Buckley's book about Bowie's music, Bowie picked five years because he had a dream in which his dead father told him he would die in five years.  (Supposedly Bowie's dead father also told his son never to fly in an airplane again.  But if you've only got five years tops to live anyway, why not take a chance?)

Speaking of five years . . .

It's been exactly five years since 2 or 3 lines got started with a post featuring the Last's "She Don't Know Why I'm Here."  

I don't think anyone expected my wildly successful little blog to be wildly successful enough to last five years.  But 2 or 3 lines is not only still around – it's better than ever.

This is the 771st post to date on 2 or 3 lines.  Take that, bitches!  

Here's "Five Years":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

David Bowie -- "Boys Keep Swinging" (1979)

Heaven loves you

The clouds part for you

Nothing stands in your way

When you're a boy

I wasn't familiar with "Boys Keep Swinging" -- which was released in 1979 on David Bowie's Lodger album -- until I heard it and a couple of other songs with "boys" in the title on Sirius XM's "Underground Garage" channel recently.  

As rock journalist Lisa Robinson said in her new book, There Goes Gravity,

Male musicians in bands are always called "the boys."  Men who are well into their sixties -- some in their seventies -- when they are on tour, are referred to as "the boys."  Sometimes there's an attempt -- especially with the British and the Irish -- to be a bit more graceful.  So they say "the lads."  Or "the guys."  But it is never, ever "the men."

David Bowie is one of the "boys" that Lisa writes about in her book, although he was much more of a chameleon than the other rockers she hung out with:

David used to tell me that he wasn't really a rock star, he was an actor playing a rock star.  I always thought he was a rock star playing an playing an actor playing a rock star.

Lisa Robinson with David Bowie

[Note: As I explained in the previous 2 or 3 lines, I chatted with Lisa Robinson after her recent appearance at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, DC, and we hit it off so well that I feel perfectly comfortable calling her by her first name.  (Lisa, please feel free to call me by my first name, too!)]

In 1972, Bowie would release his megahit album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars album, which would eventually sell 7.5 million copies.  

But when Lisa met him for the first time at the offices of RCA Records in New York City in the fall of 1971, Bowie was relatively unknown in the U.S.

Bowie as Ziggy Stardust

Two of Bowie's musical heroes at that time were Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.  Lisa arranged a dinner where Bowie met Reed.  Later that evening, she took Bowie to Max's Kansas City club, where he met Iggy Pop.

Lisa Robinson pooh-poohs the importance of her introducing Bowie to Reed and Iggy Pop, writing in There Goes Gravity that the meeting "has been made to sound as if it were akin to the coming together of FDR, Stalin, and Churchill at Yalta."

But the meeting of these three musical icons at that time had real significance for each of them.  

Bowie with Lou Reed

Bowie would produce Reed's second solo album, Transformer, which was released in 1972 and included Reed's huge hit single, "Walk on the Wild Side."  

(Lisa's husband, Richard, had produced Reed's first solo album and was expecting to produce Transformer.  Reed's change of heart caused a serious but only temporary rift between the Robinsons and Bowie and Reed.)

Later that year, Bowie produced the Raw Power album for Iggy Pop's band, the Stooges.  The Stooges then broke up due to Iggy's heroin addiction.  Bowie also fell prey to drugs -- in his case, cocaine.

Iggy Pop with Bowie

Lisa interviewed Bowie many times over the years, and he was usually a good interview -- except when he was too drug-addled to be able to give her anything except "mumbled gibberish."

[O]nce, when we were in San Diego or Phoenix . . . our scheduled interview never got done because [Bowie] literally was making no sense.  Then, from an adjoining room, out came a surprise: Iggy, who was also speaking in tongues.  This was around the time they both decided to clean up, detox, and together, they departed for Berlin -- the heroin capital of the world.

One might question the wisdom of the strategy of moving to Berlin to kick drugs, but one can't question the brilliance of the music that the two men made while they were there.

Iggy recorded his The Idiot and Lust for Life solo albums during his Berlin years.  (Both albums were produced by Bowie, who also wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on them.)  And Bowie recorded his so-called "Berlin Trilogy" -- Low, Heroes, and Lodger.

That was a long, long time ago.  Lisa Robinson writes that "the world has completely changed" since David Bowie and Iggy Pop decamped for Berlin almost 40 years ago, and she's right.  

David Bowie today

But both of them are still alive and kicking (unlike Lou Reed and Joey Ramone and so many other of the greats of that generation).

There Goes Gravity brings us up to date on both men:

After the heart attack he had while on tour in Germany in 2004, [David Bowie's] public appearances have been scarce.  He has released only one new album and so far, has not performed in concert.  We've seen each other socially only rarely.  But we e-mail each other about various bands and new music.  He seems to be on the Internet all the time, and doesn't miss a trick.  He's one of the few who has managed, so far, to gracefully get off the stage.

* * * * *

Two years ago, Iggy appeared on American Idol, performing "Real Wild Child" shirtless.  He had that body of an eighteen-year-old and the face of someone closer to seventy.  [Note:  Iggy Pop is 67.]  Was it good that "America" got to see Iggy?  I'm not sure. . . . [T]hey couldn't have possibly understood who the hell he was or what Iggy had meant to us.  These days, Iggy's great song "The Passenger" is the soundtrack for a rum ad on TV.

Iggy Pop on "American Idol"

Here's "Boys Keep Swinging":

Click below to purchase the song from Amazon:

And click here to buy There Goes Gravity from Amazon:

Peter Schilling -- "Major Tom" (1983)

Earth below us

Drifting falling

Floating weightless

Calling, calling home

Major Tom is a fictional astronaut who was the hero of David Bowie's breakthrough 1969 single, "Space Oddity":

Ground control to Major Tom

Commencing countdown, engines on

Major Tom subsequently appeared not only in a couple of other David Bowie songs, but in songs by several other recording artists.

Other than "Space Oddity," the best-known Major Tom song is Peter Schilling's 1983 "Major Tom (Coming Home)," which was a #1 or #2 hit in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland.  "Major Tom" made it to #14 on the U.S. Billboard "Hot 100" chart.

Schilling, who is from Stuttgart, originally recorded the song in German, and then recorded it in English.  Schilling released remixed versions of the song in 1994, 2000, and 2003.

Over a dozen others recorded covers of "Major Tom," including our old friend Plastic Bertrand and the Shiny Toy Guns, whose version was featured in a Lincoln MKZ commercial:  

There's a contemporaneous Lincoln commercial featuring Cat Power's cover of "Space Oddity":

William Shatner recorded both "Space Oddity" and "Major Tom" on his 2011 album, Seeking Major Tom, which featured Sheryl Crow, Peter Frampton, Johnny Winter, Brad Paisley, and Bootsy Collins (among others):

The version of "Major Tom (Coming Home)" that inspired this 2 or 3 lines was a pseudo-karaoke version performed by a character on the Breaking Bad television series.  

I've been watching Breaking Bad on DVD (shoutout to my local public library!) and saw the episode with "Major Tom" -- season four, episode four -- while I was visiting my parents in Joplin, Missouri recently.

The character who sings the karaoke "Major Tom" is Gale Boetticher (portrayed by David Costabile), a quirky chemist who assists the show's protagonist manufacture crystal meth before being murdered.

Gale is a sweet, lonely guy who reads science fiction and books about Eastern philosophy, sings along (in Italian) with opera recordings, and uses his chemist's skills to make perfect coffee:

Gale Boetticher making coffee

After he is murdered, the police discover a DVD of him singing "Major Tom" that was apparently recorded at a karaoke bar in Thailand.  (The DVD has Thai subtitles.) 

Here's Gale's version of "Major Tom":

You aficionados of old movies will have already guessed that Gale Boetticher was named after cult director Budd Boetticher, who is remembered mostly for the series of low-budget Westerns starring Randolph Scott that he directed in the late 1950s.

Here's a trailer for The Tall T, one of those Boetticher-Scott westerns:

Here's the English version of Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)":

Click below to buy a karaoke version of the song from Amazon:

David Bowie -- "1984" (1974)

You've read it in the tea leaves

And the tracks are on TV 

Beware the savage jaw 

Of nineteen-eighty-four

I'd like to help you out, but I have no idea what "Beware the savage jaw/Of nineteen-eighty-four" means.  Sorry 'bout that.

I went to a Bowie fan site that features a long list of misheard Bowie lyrics to make sure I had these lyrics right.  It turns out that a lot of people are confused by these lines.  Here are a few other examples of what people have mistakenly believed Bowie is saying here:

Beware the saboteur/Of nineteen-eighty-four

Beware the savage roar/Of nineteen-eighty-four

Beware the savage law/Of nineteen-eighty-four

Beware the savage whore/Of nineteen-eighty-four

I can't say that the correct lyrics make any more sense than the incorrect ones.

David Bowie's 1974 album, Diamond Dogs, is a bit schizophrenic -- half glam rock, half funk/soul/disco.  "1984" is from the funk/soul/disco part of the album.

The song was obviously inspired by the George Orwell book of the same name.  Bowie wanted to do a theatrical production based on the book, but Orwell's estate wouldn't give him the rights to the name.  So Bowie took this song and some others he had written for the planned 1984 production (one was called "Big Brother") and dumped them on Diamond Dogs.

The wah-wah guitar on "1984" is a dead ringer for the guitar in "Theme from Shaft."  Bowie played guitar on most of the album's track, but the guitar part for "1984" was played by a veteran British session guitarist, Alan Parker.

The Diamond Dogs cover depicted Bowie as half-man, half-dog.  The original art had to be modified a little.  Here's the original cover, followed by the airbrushed version:

About a year later, Bowie released the Young Americans album, which featured his biggest American hit, "Fame," which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  John Lennon was given a co-writer credit and it is Lennon's electronically distorted voice that is heard singing "fame, fame, fame" over and over again near the end of the song.  

I was not amused by the shift from Bowie's Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane/Diamond Dogs style to the "plastic soul" of Young Americans.  I have to go back to the classic Motown days to find much mainstream soul/R&B music that I like.  A lot of commercial R&B of that era is the African-American equivalent of commercial country-western music from that era -- it all sounded like it was written by a committee whose job was to create crappier and crappier music until they reached the absolute lowest common denominator.

Here's "1984":

And here's Bowie performing the song live on The Dick Cavett Show in 1974.  (Check out those clothes -- and check out David Bowie, who was seriously weird in those days.)

Here's a link you can use to order it from Amazon: