![]() Perhaps the most poignant lyric of Bowie’s career, in which he seemed to be readying himself for mortal release after battling cancer for 18 months. Led out by Woody Woodmansey’s ominous beat, this end-of-days address offers a wealth of doomsday imagery: ‘Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing / News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in / News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying.’ Supposedly inspired by Bowie’s late father appearing to him in a dream, warning him that he only had five years left to live. In which Bowie lays out the entire Ziggy prophecy before playing it out himself, from ‘jamming good with Weird and Gilly and The Spiders from Mars’ to superstardom and eventual dissolution: ‘Making love with his ego / Ziggy sucked up into his mind / Like a leper messiah / When the kids had killed the man / I had to break up the band.’ 4) Five Years (The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, 1972) Elsewhere, Bowie laments the demise of the New York Dolls’ original drummer, Billy Murcia: ‘ Time, in Quaaludes and red wine / Demanding Billy Dolls / And other friends of mine.’ 5) Ziggy Stardust (The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, 1972) Time ‘speaks of senseless things / His script is you and me, boys’. The 10 best songs by Iggy Pop from 1977–1982Ī meditation on mortality and the remorseless tempo of life itself, Bowie’s words are given an added shiver of meaning by Mike Garson’s dissonant piano lines.Aside from referencing Aleister Crowley, Heinrich Himmler, Winston Churchill and Greta Garbo, Bowie declares: ‘I’m not a prophet or a stone age man / Just a mortal with potential of a superman.’ ![]() Bowie’s early fascination with Nietzsche, the occult, religion and politics found an outlet in the thick dream reality of one of Hunky Dory’s standout tracks.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |