Epigraphs Weiner: from an interview with Alan Sepinwall, March 2015; Bowie: from Esquire, March 2004. In mid-2016, I decided to title this chapter after a line from someone whom I thought would be president of the United States when this book published—it’s got a rather different connotation now.
526 Never Get Old “Rebel Never Gets Old,” a mash-up of “Rebel Rebel” and “Never Get Old” (among the most “early 2000s” things DB ever approved) was assembled by Mark Vidler ca. March 2004 and issued as a single in the EU later that year (ISO-Columbia COL 674971); thrusty…no through line: pretty much said in every 2003 interview, trust me; I can put out stuff: Virgin Radio interview with Dominic Mohan, 15 June 2003; going back on my word: Reality electronic press kit interview.
527 back at home: to Howard Cohen, Miami Herald, 8 September 2003; Studio B: To correct a perceived weak drum sound from this studio, Bowie and Visconti returned to Allaire to play Sterling Campbell’s drum tracks over Allaire’s massive ATC SCM150 monitors, recording the result and mixing into Logic Audio; hardly redo anything: to Richard Buskin, Sound on Sound, October 2003, a source of many Reality recording details. The bulk of Reality was recorded into Logic Audio, with the Looking Glass Studio B board used for monitoring tracks; MCI board…all the synths and modules: Mix, 1 October 2002.
528 rather silly song: to Kurt Orzeck, interview transcript, 9 July 2003; petulant 56-year-old: to Dominic Mohan, The Sun, 12 September 2003; generation of angry old men: to Michael Streck, Der Stern, 21 September 2003.
529 chords: moves include a rise from C major (“forever”) to C# (“this feeling that we’re going to be”), then back to C (“living until the”) and down to B-flat (“end of time”). Then there’s a jarring run from Bb to Ab (“head hangs low”) to Eb (“all over”) to E major to clear the path for the refrain; I desperately want to live forever…I don’t want to let her go: to Billy Sloan, Scottish Sunday Mail, 23 November 2003.
530 Reality in the last American boats: Paris Review, Winter 1995 (a source of Steiner biographical detail here); Western high culture was broken: Steiner used as an example John Milton’s “Lycidas,” a poem difficult for today’s readers to untangle without footnotes. In its first lines alone, “ivy,” “myrtles,” and “laurels” have specific thematic meanings for which most 17th-19th Century readers would’ve needed no explication. See Prof. Cosma Shalizi, writing on Bluebeard’s Castle: “Laboriously, with guides like Steiner, I can follow [“Lycidas”] intellectually, but clearly it was meant to be immediate, visceral, second nature: and for a reader from a classical culture, that classical culture, it would be. I am not such a reader; and for most of my students, beyond the level of a “vague musicality,” Milton’s references might as well be to Mars”; cannot choose the dreams of unknowing: In Bluebeard’s Castle; don’t think there’s one truth: to Ingrid Sischy, Interview, October 2003; whole George Steiner-ism of life…world caught up really quickly: to Ken Scrudato, Soma, July 2003; I don’t think we want new things…we’ve got enough new: to Mikel Jollett, Filter, July/August 2003.
531 rather bad science fiction stories: Filter, July/August 2003; medium for a conglomerate of statements: People, 6 September 1976; who’s stolen this world: to Anthony DeCurtis, Beliefnet, July 2003; we live in absolute chaos…they are all crumbling: Soma, July 2003.
532 Pablo Picasso Roadrunner: Joshua Clover’s “Ring Road” (part of his “Terrorflu,” and collected in Best Music Writing 2009) has a great encapsulation of this song; Pablo Picasso: “I read about him when I was 18. I moved to New York and was intimidated by these girls who I thought were attractive. I was afraid to approach them. I didn’t have too high a self-image. I was self-conscious and I thought ‘well Pablo Picasso, he’s only 5 foot 3 but he didn’t let things like that bother him.’ So I made up this song right after I saw those girls. You can picture it; I had this sad little look on my face and I was thinking ‘Why am I so scared to approach these girls?’ That was a song of courage for me,” Jonathan Richman to Boston Groupie News, 1980; more whimsy…little dirgelike…more contemporary: Interview, October 2003.
533 Fall Dog Bombs the Moon the blade stands ready: as per my journal, 19 March 2003. North said this during the morning show on Fox (whatever the ur-“Fox and Friends” was then); fabulous storehouse: Soma, July 2003; Truthout.org: founded in 2001, it’s still kicking. Its top story during the presidential funeral in December 2018 was “George H.W. Bush Empowered Atrocity Abroad and Fascists at Home”; Kellogg, Brown & Root: Having broken off from Halliburton in 2007, in the following year it was accused of tax dodging. KBR has pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing Nigerian officials; its then-CEO was sentenced to 30 months in prison. It’s also been sued for human trafficking, for exposing US soldiers to harmful substances via “burn pits” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and likely has been sued for something else since I wrote this.
534 issue or policy manifests itself…ugly song for an ugly man: Interview, October 2003; thump about at loud volume: Bowie web journal, 7 March 2003; run by brutes for the common and stupid: Entertainment Weekly, 31 May 2002.
535 Love Missile on the “New Killer Star” CD single and only compiled on a bonus disc for the limited edition European release; anarchic dub sound: the Sputnik Story (http://www.sputnikworld.com/The_Sputnik_Story_7_3.html); £4 million: a complete fabrication, as James later said: “Journalist Chris Salewitz had randomly plucked that figure out of the air for a piece he was writing about us in the Sunday Times and four million pounds translated into six million dollars, so we became the “six million dollar band” which appealed to me because I loved the “Six Million Dollar Man”; performative violence: from an NME review of a Sputnik gig in Reading, 1986: “It was a fairly normal pop concert. Apart, that is, from the purple-faced Nazi on my left who screamed obscenities at a girl he barged past on his way to the front, or the rotund drunk who clutched his real ale and hollered “Bastards! Wankers! Violence!” while flailing towards the stage, and the Fleet Street photographers who eagerly raced around the building after a young man with a bloody head”; I want to be successful…cheated a lot of people: to Paul Morley, NME, 8 March 1986; Whitmore: Pegg, 174.
536 New Killer Star the album’s lead-off single, issued on 29 September (the single edit, which trims the intro and outro, is on Nothing Has Changed) but as it was released as a DVD single, “New Killer Star” didn’t qualify for the singles charts; not a political commenter: Reality press release interview by David Wild; it’s not over yet…everyone’s mind: Virgin Radio, 15 June 2003; A minor to E-flat refrain: a transition readied by Bowie swapping out his former root chord (Am) for an A major in the pre-chorus; on holiday…feel like a stranger here: to Du Noyer, The Word, November 2003.
537 others are watching us now: Beliefnet, July 2003; ghost of the tragedy: to Bill Demain, Performing Songwriter, September 2003. Looking For Water virtually looped…melodic content on top: Sound on Sound, September 2003. The chorus hook nicks some of Bobby Womack’s “Lookin’ For a Love” (1974); D major/F minor: You could make the case for either being the key: the tonic D major moving to the mediant (iii) chord, F#m, or an F#m tonic chord set against its submediant (VI), D major; guitar-fattened: replicated on stage in the Reality tour by Slick, Leonard, Cat Russell and Bowie all playing the intro riff. Later performances in 2004 have the descending bass riff played more dominantly and choppier on guitar.
538 Queen of All the Tarts on the blog, I dared Momus to write an elaborate comment for this, the most inconsequential of Reality tracks. His response (20 December 2014) was a near-dissertation on Bowie’s use of diminished passing chords. “They seem to represent transition: the passing of time, the relationship of retrospect to prospect, past to future, nostalgia to uncertainty…As this song is an “overture” to we-know-not-what, the diminished passing chord is totally appropriate here. Since these cascading triads bear no diatonic relationship to the current key, they point the listener forward to some sort of promised resolution, making us long for something which hasn’t yet arrived, isn’t yet clear. A nostalgia for the future, perhaps?…Bowie songs which use diminished passing chords include Space Oddity, Changes, Quicksand, Golden Years, Absolute Beginners, Zeroes, and Buddha of Suburbia. They deal wistfully with time, nostalgia, transience. In Zeroes, for instance, we get one just after “a toothless past is asking you how it feels”….In Golden Years, there’s a stabbed diminished chord after “years”. In Absolute Beginners the chord arrives on “nothing much to take” and “nothing we can’t shake.” In Quicksand it’s on “deceive”…Bowie often resolves it in unexpected directions, making it a leap into the dark. In Zeroes it seems to resolve “wrong,” although nostalgic sitars soften the blow. The diminished passing chord…often comes like an antithesis to the triumphalism of a sequence of major chords — here, for instance, we get a confident stomp (V2 Schneider-ish) from A# to F# to D# which suddenly spirals into something much more romantic and wistful; the passing chord leads into the minors Dm and A#m. There’s a similar chord in Ashes to Ashes, on the last syllable of “pisTOL”. As in Absolute Beginners, it heralds a negative lyric: there’s NO smoking pistol, just as there’s NOTHING much to take…If a major chord is a shout of confidence and aggression, a passing chord is passive, a wise sigh, a note of Buddhist resignation…If we were being Bowie, blocking out the instrumental with words, what would we sing? The stomping I-VI-IV section would possibly feature a description of our tarty queen — a withered rocker in leather, possibly Tiresias in drag — arriving at a nightclub. She’s painted on a poor face today. She’s a butcher passing for a little girl. By the time the diminished chord arrives the triumphalism is spent. We’re now learning something sad about this character: she’s out of time, lost her mind, an Alice lost in Wonderland.”
539 She’ll Drive the Big Car favorite suicide song…all her plans: BowieNet chat, 7 September 2003; stuck with this middle-class family: Interview, October 2003; Riverside Drive: for those unfamiliar with Manhattan geography, it’s the furthest-west avenue on the west side of the island, paralleling the Hudson River—Riverside takes you from the Upper West Side up to the George Washington Bridge and west to New Jersey. That said, if the character’s planning to drive into the river while going “south along the Hudson,” she’s probably on the Henry Hudson Parkway.
540 comes up with the goods: Melody Maker, 14 February 1976.
541 Loneliest Guy despairing piece of work…city taken over by weeds: Interview, October 2003; that sense of loneliness: Beliefnet, June 2003; miles of jerry-built: Hughes, The Shock of the New, 211; being taken back over again by the jungle: Interview, October 2003.
542 Brasilia population: As per the 2010 IBGE census, over 2.4 million people live there, making it the fourth-largest city in Brazil. Waterloo Sunset first released as a “cyber-single” download (BowieNet members got it earlier, on a promo CD). It’s also included on the “tour” edition of Reality, which included a DVD with the entire album sequence played live at Riverside Studios in September 2003; started writing a song about Liverpool: Davies, X-Ray, 338.
543 plangent harmonies: with the Kinks’ secret weapon, Ray’s wife Rasa Davies, taking the high harmonies, as she often did.
544 Days descending bassline: guided downward by the baritone sax: “(Bb) my crazy brain (Bb/A) entangles (Gm) pleading for your (Bb/F)gentle voice.” An example of what Julian Cope once called “the glam descend.” Try Some Buy Some unchaste monk: Roth, The Ghost Writer, 5.
545 some kind of system: The Word, November 2003; unending series of harmonic steps: Leng, Music of George Harrison, 99. Ian MacDonald described Harrison’s writing in the Beatles years as using “chord changes as expressive, rather than functional, devices”; chromatic bassline: A-Ab-G-F#-E; Spector found uncomfortable: she’d come around on the song by 1999, when she described it as being “done to make me happy, and it did. It might not have been made for the right reasons, but it’s a good record”; ga-ga over Ronnie Spector: to Jonathan Ross, 2 August 2003.
546 for me it was a Ronnie Spector song: Virgin Radio, 15 June 2003; my connection to the song: Word, November 2003.
547 Bring Me the Disco King a note, if you needed one: all the sections in italics are fictions. At least in this world.
548 crawled along through the years: Orzeck transcript, 9 July 2003; written with a sense of irony: to Ong Soh Chin, Straits Times, 9 April 1993, who described hearing the song on a “demo tape.” I imagine it was likely more a rough mix of some kind—I kept their phrase, though; trying to summarize my feelings…too cynical when doing it before: to George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 21 September 2003; sounded cheesy and kitschy: quoted in Pegg, 51.
550 Earthling sessions: as per Mark Plati’s production worksheet for Earthling, this “Disco King” had recorded contributions from all band members and was mixed; sort of muscular way: Orzeck transcript, 9 July 2003; more Kurt Weill…more anguish…strange gloss of the 70s: Matt Diehl, Rolling Stone, 12 December 1996.
552 never got in the room…sounds good: Electronic Musician, 1 November 2003.
553 120 beats a minute: Orzeck transcript, 7 September 2003; voicings improvised…never play it the same way twice…chordal solos can be interesting: Keyboard, January 2004.
555 Song 2 An arbitrary song choice to title an entry far more about the last Bowie tour. I could have (should have? would have?) listed other tour “medley” songs as well: “It Can’t Happen Here,” “Puppet on a String,” “My Funny Valentine, “Here Comes the Sun,” etc.; live: following a rehearsal gig in August and a “satellite link-up” spectacle filmed at Riverside Studios in September, the tour ran from 7 October 2003 (Copenhagen) to 25 June 2004 (Hurricane Festival). The 22-23 November 2003 shows at The Point in Dublin were filmed, with an edited selection of performances released as the A Reality Tour DVD on 19 October 2004 (a slightly-expanded version appeared on CD in 2010); not something I looked forward to…didn’t feel competent: to David Wildman, Weekly Dig, 3 December 2003.
556 any hope for the industry…source of irrelevance: Chicago Sun Times, 9 January 2004; grossing $46 million: Billboard, 25 December 2004; David’s voice sits on top: to Breeann Lingle, Mix, 1 March 2004; pushed his band to learn 60 songs: Though he sound-checked and rehearsed “Win,” Bowie never played it, only humming it once at his penultimate US show on 4 June 2004; fumbled through a tough football match: Dorsey tour journal, 21 October 2003; karaoke machine: Paul Sexton, The Times, 14 November 2003; I think I’ve done the right thing…pieces everybody knows: to Sean Sennett, Time Off, February 2004; tattered jacket: In Adelaide on 23 February 2004, Bowie appeared wearing a grey zoot suit, sporting a trilby, braces and two fob chains, claiming he’d “found this pair of gardening trousers.” He was back to his usual “casual” costume by the following show, later saying he’d switched into gouster duds out of boredom; constantly grinning: Billboard, 15 December 2003; the Artful Dodger…Americans imitating the British: Mercury News, 19 April 2004.
557 sense of seriousness: to Kathy McCabe, Daily Telegraph, 19 February 2004; lose his shit for a moment: “Yeah, let’s do that again all fucking night! Where are you, creep? Yeah, I guess it’s easier to get lost in the crowd, you bastard. D’you remember, I’ve only got one [eye] anyway! Fortunately that’s the one that works.” Allegedly the culprit was a fan who claimed the lollipop got knocked out of her hand and became a missile: that’s not supposed to happen: Vulture, 22 January 2016; might have been a few boos: MH to CO, March 2015.
559 She Can (Do That) do you want to do this?: Young, Facebook post, August 2016; Oh they don’t expect anything: to Courtney Pine, Jazz Crusade (BBC 2), 5 September 2005. Bowie’s last radio interview.
560 The Cynic Fortunately I’m not working: “Bowie: The Fashion Rocks Q&A,” Lucky, October 2005; seeing Bowie alone: Paris Review, 11 January 2016; Secret Machines: Bowie interviewed them for a BowieNet podcast in April 2006; very good from where I was sitting: Shears, Boys Keep Swinging, 276.
561 Kurt Cobain song…fresh as a daisy: Visconti on BowieNet, 1 September 2005; just roll the tape: Poison Ivy, 29 March 2010; role in the video: an animation derived from previous photos of Bowie—he didn’t do any filming. Province Bowie’s doorman: Spin, August 2006;
562 be the boss of things: to David Harris, Tiny Mix Tapes, 22 September 2008.
563 Wake Up Arcade Fire has a strong theatrical flair: Lucky, October 2005; steal it from you!: NME, 18 September 2013.
564 he sang quite a bit: Sound on Sound, March 2014.
565 Pug Nosed Face filmed: Thanks to the BBC partnering with HBO for Extras, there was a substantial production budget that enabled, for Bowie’s one scene, the entire crew to relocate to Hertfordshire for a location shoot. The nightclub, Elberts in Peg Lane, was in Hertford but the base for filming was established at a location a couple of miles away at the small town of Ware in Hertfordshire. Most information on recording/filming is from Clifford Slapper to CO, 2015—more details are in Slapper’s Garson biography.
566 Falling Down sounded awful…I’ll drive you: Interview, 30 November 2008; cough medicine vibe: Rolling Stone, 13 February 2008. The quote has it as “tinker-bell,” so I kept it as is, but it was almost certainly meant to be “Tinkerbell.”
Pushing Ahead of the Dame 