Epigraphs Chapter title’s from Jana Prikryl’s poem “Argus, or Fear of Flying,” collected in The After Party; claws are showing through: to Vin Scelsa, “Idiot’s Delight,” 13 June 1993; I wouldn’t think about the future: Dylan interviewed in Sing Out!, October/November 1968.
492 I’ve Been Waiting For You released as a Canadian CD single (Columbia 38K 003369), while an edit that’s roughly 15 seconds longer is on Heathen‘s SACD edition. Grohl: cut his solo presumably at his Alexandria, Virginia-based home studio, ca. October 2001; engineered: Visconti’s 2nd engineers at Allaire were Brandon Mason and Todd Vos; at Looking Glass, Christian Rutledge and Hector Castillo; Live By Request: not aired during broadcast—it’s on YouTube at present; live: there’s one bootleg (“Pas Alcohol!”) of a 21 October 2003 Paris show with “I’ve Been Waiting for You” in the setlist, but apparently the song wasn’t performed any other time that year. It went back into rotation in 2004; serious songs: to Jim Farber, NY Daily News, 9 June 2002; cut and tailored before I went in: transcript of DB interview by Robert Cherry for Alternative Press, 23 October 2001; little creative tags…alive and sober: Visconti, Brooklyn Boy, 349; crock of songs: to Jeff Gordiner, Entertainment Weekly, 31 May 2002; magnum opus…layers and layers of overdubs: to Richard Buskin, Sound on Sound, October 2003.
493 harmonic structure had improved: Sound on Sound, October 2003; cut up beats and pasted them: Brooklyn Boy, 350; trebling up on loops: Cherry transcript, 23 October 2001; Catskills: the Hudson River valley and the Catskills have long been something of a rock ‘n’ roll theme park; it’s surprising there aren’t Van Morrison and Dylan re-enactors. The Band’s “Big Pink” house is in West Saugerties, Steely Dan’s Annandale-on-Hudson and Barrytown are across the river, Opus 40 is off the NY Thruway, and the former Bearsville Studios (once Todd Rundgren’s playhouse, now a private home) is near Woodstock, where Dylan crashed his motorcycle on Striebel Road. Further west is Bethel, where the Woodstock Festival took place. Its 1994 sequel was in Saugerties, its ghastly 1999 edition upstate in Rome; very American but aristocratic…Spartan quality about it…accumulated in my mind: to Ingrid Sischy, Interview, June 2002; bought a mountain: During an early 2010s visit to New Paltz, NY, a local told me “oh, that’s Bowie’s mountain,” pointing from a downtown street (btw, if ever in New Paltz, visit Jack’s Rhythms). Bowie bought Little Tonche Mountain for $1.16 million in 2003 (he shot the video for “Bring Me the Disco King” there) with the apparent intention of building a home on the mountainside. This never happened, but he did later buy a house in the Woodstock area (fans of real estate can read Blair Golson, NY Observer, 21 July 2003, and Judy Dutton, Realtor, 17 January 2016); wasn’t a rock ‘n’ roll life: Brooklyn Boy, 353.
494 bookends firmly in place: to Gil Kaufman, VH1.com interview, 23 June 2002; Neil Young and Bob Dylan…ideas that work for me, not my audience: to Timothy Finn, Kansas City Star, 9 May 2004; Young: He rarely mentioned Bowie, except for one notable time in 1973, speaking to B. Mitchell Reid. “The Sixties are definitely not with us anymore…the change into the music of the Seventies is starting to come with people like David Bowie and Lou Reed…they don’t expect to live more than thirty years and they don’t care. And they don’t care. They’re in the Seventies. What I’m tryin’ to say is these people like Lou Reed and David Booie or Bowie, however you pronounce it, those folks—I think they got somethin’ there, heh heh. Take a walk on the wild side!” (quoted in James McDonough, Shakey, 410); A minor: intro/later refrains open with a D suspended 2nd chord that aches to resolve to D major, but the sequence instead cools into A minor.
495 Sunday An alternate Visconti mix is on the European “Everyone Says ‘Hi’” single and the Canadian “I’ve Been Waiting For You” single, while a Moby mix is on the 2-CD edition of Heathen. The former gave “Sunday” an undercarriage of a jogging loop of “ah ah ah ah” voices a la “O Superman”; Richard Strauss: Born in 1864, Strauss lived through Bavaria’s absorption into Prussia to form Germany, the whirling spree of Kaiser Wilhelm’s empire, a catastrophic war, fascism, another catastrophic war that ended with Germany carved into capitalist and Communist halves. “I have outlived even myself,” Strauss said in 1949, and then died at last; Four Last Songs; As with Blackstar, Strauss didn’t intend his Four Last Songs as a last statement—the title wasn’t his, for one thing. In 1948 he scored three Hermann Hesse poems and one by Joseph von Eichendorff. Only after his death, when the four songs were grouped as a single work and re-sequenced by Ernst Roth, did they become his Four Last. (Bowie’s preferred recording was Gundula Janowitz’s performance with Herbert von Karajan from 1973, which he described as “ach[ing] with love for a life that is quietly fading”); certain sense of universality…as a template: Interview, June 2002.
496 got to let it go: Interview, June 2002; British amateur-ness…cathedral out of matchsticks: Bowie web journal, 3 May 2002; Kafka meets Ed Wood: Bowie web journal, 12 November 2001.
497 under the bracken: possibly a reference to D.H. Lawrence’s “A Fragment of Stained Glass,” a short story in which a medieval serf sets his master’s house ablaze and flees (“For hours I was all fire. Then I went to sleep under the bracken”); no past no future: to Bob Guccione Jr., Gear, July/August 2002; Khalil Gibran: Jonathan Hart first noted this, and I thank him for it. Bowie also referenced Gibran in “Width of a Circle”; All My Trials: though sometimes said to have been derived from a 19th Century slave spiritual, it was in truth cobbled together ca. 1955, with a melody nicked from a Barbadian lullaby.
498 I Would Be Your Slave entreaty to the highest being: Bowie web journal, 17 May 2002.
499 necessary break: Bowie web journal, 17 May 2002. 5:15 The Angels Have Gone The Heathen SACD had a slightly longer edit; man who could once see his angels: Billboard, 1 June 2002; we create so many circles: Bowie web journal, 24 May 2002.
500 Heathen (the Rays) young, fancy free…long road: to Ellen DeGeneres, 23 April 2004, in what would be his last-ever American TV interview; he is what he reads: to Buckley, 255.
501 felt like a vehicle for something else: to Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 27 January 1973; lukewarm relationship: Crawdaddy, February 1978; what a shitty game: my translation of “was für ein Scheißspiel.” From DB’s interview with Thomas Hüetlin in the 11 June 2002 Der Spiegel. “I used to be insecure and afraid of relationships. I never listened to anyone. But now…I’m starting to like it down here. What a cool place. [In a robot voice] “I’m fine in this world now. I can now make connections to you other living beings.” That’s why I’m annoyed by the finiteness of life. Now that I understand myself and others, I’m supposed to die—what a shitty game. Isn’t there anyone with whom you could revise the rules of the game? I would like to be 200 or 300 years old”; Hauerwas: “Preaching As Though We Have Enemies,” First Things, May 1995; Philistine too on the money: to Alan di Perna, Pulse, July 2002; heathenism is a state of mind: Bowie web journal, 29 May 2002; heathen: etymology from Webster’s New Twentieth Century Unabridged, 2nd. ed., and Joshua Rood, “Heathen: Linguistic Origins and Early Context” (2012).
502 barbarian: Bowie’s look for the album cover shoot was possibly inspired by photographs of the naturalist/entomologist Jean Henri Fabre; the defaced art of Heathen: six “defaced” paintings appear in various editions of the album. 1) Duccio di Buoninsegna (b. ca. 1255, d. ca. 1318, Siena), Madonna and Child With Six Angels, ca. 1300-05, Tempera on wood, 97 x 63 cm; Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia. In the Heathen defacing (only on the Heathen LP sleeve—it’s not in the CD booklet), the painting is severely cropped to eliminate angels (it must be 5:15) and the Christ child, while Mary’s mysterious, slightly reproachful gaze is obliterated by splashes of white paint; 2) Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) (b. 1483, Urbino, d. 1520, Rome), Saint Sebastian, 1501-1502, oil on wood, 43 x 34 cm; Accademia Carrara, Bergamo. St. Sebastian is often depicted being tied to a tree and shot full of arrows, his legendary torture during the Emperor Diocletian’s persecutions (Sebastian allegedly survived the arrows only to be bludgeoned to death later, his corpse thrown into a latrine: he rather earned his sainthood). As with Duccio’s Madonna, the Heathen defacing is centered on the subject’s eyes, here Sebastian’s face “slashed” into rhomboids as if by a razor (possibly referencing the attack by Gerard Jan van Balderen on Barnett Newman’s painting Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III—van Balderen used a box-cutter on Newman’s painting when it hung in the Stedelijk Museum); 3) Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) (and Frans Synders?) Christ and John the Baptist as Children and Two Angels, ca. 1615-1620. Oil on panel, 76.5 × 122.3 cm; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Variously identified as The Little Jesus, St. John and Two Angels, The Infant Jesus Playing With St. John or, as its resident museum has it, Christ and John the Baptist as Children and Two Angels, it depicts Jesus and John (his elder) meeting as cute babies, attended by two cherubs, one of whom has a top-knot. Heathen, which uses an engraved variant of the painting (unclear from where), again slashes the picture. Where St. Sebastian was maimed, it’s now four vertical tears that nearly quadrisect the engraving; 4) Guido Reni (1575, Calvenzano-1642, Bologna), Massacre of the Innocents, 1611. Oil on canvas, 268 x 170 cm. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna. Created by Reni for the Basilica of San Domenico, Massacre of the Innocents is a horrific baroque depiction of Matthew 2:16, Herod’s slaughter of all children in Bethlehem under two. Picasso’s Guernica, among others, lives in its shadow. The Heathen defacing again (see 1) crops the massacre’s angelic audience and the corpses underfoot. It’s as if the defacer hurled a paint pot repeatedly against the canvas, as the splotches here seem random—all doomed children and all but one weeping mother remain visible; 5) Carlo Dolci (1616-1686, Florence), Maria Maddalena (Mary Magdalene), ca. 1670. oil on canvas, 73.5 x 56.5 cm. Galleria Palatina, Florence. Another razor attack on the painting subject’s eyes; 6) Raphael, Angel (fragment of the Baronci altarpiece), 1500-1501, oil on wood, 31 cm × 27 cm, Pinacoteca Civica Tosio Martinengo, Brescia. And another paint-splotch blinding (in the sleeve found under the CD back tray); blessed fulfillers of our wishes: Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, 113; all these things…create the bomb…can we do that?: TV interview with Guillaume Durand, June 2002; so still and primal: Interview, June 2002.
503 how beautiful and wonderful life is: Gear, July/August 2002.
504 Cactus EMS Synthi AKS: apparently the same model that Eno had used on Low. “It was up for auction, and I got it for my fiftieth birthday,” Bowie wrote in a 22 May 2002 web journal entry. “Everything on the EMS is miniaturized beyond belief; nothing like it existed at the time. Taking it through customs has always been a stomach-turning affair as it looks like a briefcase bomb in the X-ray. Eno got pulled out of the line on several occasions. I wouldn’t even dream of taking it through these days”; massive ballroom: Mojo, May 2014. Other details from Josh Frank and Caryn Ganz’s Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies; broke up virtually penniless: Time Out, 5-12 June 2002; power chords: with a rising sequence of A minor (“take off your”), C (“dress”), D (“send it to”) to E5 (“meeeee”). Bowie made this sequence Dm9-F-G-A (he also had a main verse sequence of CACA).
505 chanted: “B! L! A! C! K!” in Bowie and Moby’s 2002 performance on the Tonight Show; my little humoresque: to Paul Du Noyer, Mojo, July 2002; over my own loop: Bowie web journal, 15 May 2002. I Took a Trip The “Deepsky’s Space Cowboy” remix is on the promo US 12″ single for “Everyone Says ‘Hi’”; without being a madman: to Spitz, 171; it would be nice if David Bowie: scan of handwritten letter on the Cowboy’s website, ca. 2001; People magazine: a “Picks and Pans” review of the latest Cowboy album (a pick!). Why on earth People reviewed that album in summer 1984 is another question.
506 got guilty: Bowie web journal, 17 May 2002; quiet reverie or two: Mojo, July 2002; Novicki: to Irwin Chusid, Songs in the Key of Z; Cowboy: sources for Odam’s life include Chusid’s Key of Z and Richard Skanse’s profile in Texas Music Magazine, Winter 2003 (source of the “too slow for me” quote). Bowie had gotten the Ledge’s three Mercury singles from Mercury’s promo man Ron Oberman, his contact during his first US promo tour in early 1971. “Back home, I choked on ‘Paralyzed,’ gasped in awe at “Down in the Wrecking Yard” and fell all about the floor at ‘I Took a Trip On a Gemini Spaceship,’” Bowie wrote in Mojo. “It was the laugh of love. I could not believe that such a talent was unrecognized…I became a lifelong fan, and Ziggy got a surname.” He’d call “Paralyzed” “unbelievably atrocious” in a Jools Holland interview in 2002.
507 two stop signs: Brad Kava, San Jose Mercury News, 12 June 2002; somebody isolated in space: VH1.com, 23 June 2002; this guy is writing seriously: Mojo, July 2002; more intimidated by the Ledge: Skanse, Texas Music Magazine, Winter 2003.
508 sweetest smack in the world: Skanse, Texas Music Magazine, Winter 2003. Wood Jackson was actually never released in America: it was a bonus track on the Japanese Heathen and on the EC “Slow Burn” and UK ‘Everyone Says ‘Hi'” singles. Seems to be entirely out of print (not downloadable, not streaming), at least in the US at the moment. Given this slightly odd situation, I’m breaking my usual rule of using the UK or US release date to instead use 3 June 2002, the release date of the European single. Pegg had the inspired suggestion that Bowie possibly found the name from a mid-20th Century SF pulp writer, M. Scott Michel—it was Michel’s private detective character (“Wood Jaxon”); trouble with thinking…funny little cassettes: Mojo, July 2002; Johnston: some details of his life from O’Hagan, “At War With His Demons…and Metallica,” The Observer, 1 April 2006; when a child hits a piano: to Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 15 September 2004.
509 When the Boys Come Marching Home as with “Wood Jackson,” this was a geographically limited release, found only on the EU’s “Slow Burn” CD single and the UK’s “Everyone Says ‘Hi’.” And again, out of print/not streaming in the US at least; stumbled upon a truth: DB to Thomas Vinterberg, 4 July 2002.
510 fallen for a religious war: to Richard Wallace, Daily Mirror, 29 June 2002. A Better Future Air’s remix is on the album’s two-disc version; the SACD cut lopped off 15 seconds; rosy expectations: to Tim Cooper, The Observer, 8 June 2002.
511 not having to dodge bullets: to Sean Sennett, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 2002; three-chord progression: the Ab-Bbm-Eb progression is I-ii-V, a not-unusual jazz or pop construction where the ii chord appears in place of an expected IV chord (see Lennon’s “Don’t Let Me Down”). Everyone Says ‘Hi’ released as a single (Columbia/ISO 673134 3, UK #20) in September 2002. The “METRO” remix appeared on a US 12″ promo in January 2003; SubUrban Studios: a converted outbuilding at Miller’s house, with (in 2002) an Apple G4 Mac as primary recording/editing desk.
512 just worked from the vocals: Sound on Sound, August 2002; raincoat and cap on: quoted in Thompson, Hallo Spaceboy, 196 (from a ca. 2000 interview about Mr. Rice’s Secret); feel very alone: to Durand, June 2002 TV interview; made me cry: to Brian Ives, 20 February 2017.
513 America another country: to Vinterberg, 4 July 2002; 9/11: recollections are from my journal entries of 12-13 September 2001. I was 29 at the time, living in Sunnyside, Queens.
515 fit woman: Daily Mirror, 29 June 2002.
516 Don DeLillo resonances: to Jon Pareles, NY Times, 9 June 2002; felt duty-bound to do something: Cherry transcript, 23 October 2001; bewilderment and uncertainty…Simon’s song: web-chat on BowieNet, 15 November 2001.
518 Slow Burn the SACD edit is a touch longer (5:04 to 4:43). There was a promo film made of it, by Gary Koepke, which wasn’t seen in full until it appeared on YouTube after Bowie’s death. The shoot was done for a 30-second and 60-second TV ad for Heathen. As per Adam Owett, Sony’s executive creative director, “good critical press and a couple of print ads ain’t going to cut it for an older artist and no one’s waiting for the 49th Dylan album” (to Sandy Hunter, Boards, 5 June 2002; more in Ann Mack’s piece for Ad Age, 16 September 2002); not my style of playing: KY comment on the blog’s “Slow Burn” entry, 30 May 2016; Townshend: he soloed either on a Five Torino Red, Shoreline Gold or Olympic White Fender Eric Clapton Signature Stratocaster, and/or a Shoreline Gold Fender Stratocaster with a white pickguard. “All modified with the Fishman VMV Powerbridge piezo transducer saddle-pickup system (controlled by knob located just above cord jack on guitar body) for mock acoustic sound” (http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/history.html); contained anger in it: Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 2002 (Bowie added: “At least on Scary Monsters, he was actually in the bloody studio…This time around, it was crazy here [in New York] at that particular time. The New York concert was happening. We were trying to rehearse and record. We all had our own separate lives outside of that concert, we just didn’t have the time to work together. I sent the track Slow Burn over to him. He sent me a selection of takes, but I took his first take.”)
519 Hop Frog good way to go out…downloading their music: Uncut, March 2003.
520 Saviour as a writer of some proliferation: Billboard, 17 December 2001; Young: some biographical details from a 13 June 2011 interview on Keanan Duffty’s “Rebel Rebel AntiStyle” blog; part rock, part Bartok: Visconti, Brooklyn Boy, 386.
521 cousins to each other: quoted in Thompson, Spaceboy, 262; touring the only unique situation left: NY Times, 9 June 2002; he’d broken enough rules: Dylan on Theme Time Radio Hour, Ep. 62, 2008.
522 Earl Slick country….horizon that went on forever: Bowie’s foreword to David Bowie: Live in New York.
Pushing Ahead of the Dame 