#49:
DAPHNE GUINNESS
“Revelations”
from
the album Revelations
Released:
August 2020
The
Revelation of Jesus Bowie
The Revelation of Jesus Bowie is
communicated to David LaChapelle through prophetic visions. (1:1–9)
David is instructed by the "one
like a son of no man" to articulate all that he hears and sees, from the
prophetic visions, to the Seven Churches of Punctum. (1:10–13)
The Blessed Lady Daphne is depicted as the
victorious Woman of the Apocalypse in a stained-glass window around the corner
from a liquor store, beneath a hoarding depicting the sorrowfully merciful gaze
of the crucified Christ and captioned: “YOU HAD ME AT HALAPENOS.” The Postmodern
Church Observers widely believed the Woman to represent both Daphne and the
Church. Catholics and Orthodox Christians venerate the Grieving Lady as the
"Queen of Heaven" and "Mother of the Church".
The appearance of the "one like a son
of no man" is given, and she reveals what the seven stars and seven
lampstands represent. (1:14–20)
Messages
for the Seven Churches of Punctum
Ephesus: From this church, they "who
overcome is granted to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of an abandoned
shopping mall." (2:1–7)
Praised for not bearing those who are
evil, testing those who say they are apostles and are not, and finding them to
be liars; hating the deeds of the Nicolaitans; having persevered and possessing
patience and a striking string section.
Admonished to "do the first
works" and to repent for having left their "first love” – the man grieving
over and clutching the body.
Smyrna:
From this church, those who are
faithful until death, will be given "the crown of life." He who
overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death. There's a third time
for everything, as the woman emerging from the car will tell you
(2:8–11)
Praised for being "rich"
while impoverished and in tribulation.
Admonished not to fear the
"synagogue of Satan", nor fear a ten-day tribulation of being thrown
into prison – three times the car wrecks the avenue and finally itself; dazed,
the rich, impoverished Lady of Tribulation is drawn towards a white light which
replays her life back at her. She only needs to overcome the fear of further tribulation
before she goes in or is sucked in. As the tragic Saint Alexander reminds us:
Mayfair might be the richest yet most sheerly impoverished parish of any city.
Pergamum: From this church, they who
overcome will be given the hidden manna to eat and a white stone with a secret
name on it." (2:12–17) - Blow, McQueen, Bowie, we revel in their reproachful haunting.
Praised for holding "fast to My
name", not denying "My faith" even in the days of Antipas,
"My faithful martyr.” The bespectacled lady lighting up, who later appears in the front row of worshippers.
Admonished to repent for having held
the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the
children of Israel; eating things sacrificed to idols, committing sexual
immorality, and holding the "doctrine of the Nicolaitans" nightly at the Deviant Disco.
Thyatira: From this church, they who
overcome until the end, will be given power over the nations in order to dash
them to pieces with a rod of iron; they will also be given the "morning
star." (2:18–29)
Praised for their works, love, service,
faith, and patience.
Admonished to repent for allowing a
"prophetess" to promote sexual immorality and to eat things
sacrificed to idols. But what if it is all for the greater good?
Sardis: From this church, they who overcome
will be clothed in white garments, and their name will not be blotted out from
the Book of Life; their name will also be confessed before the Mother and Her
angels on live cable TV news, in readiness for the nightly nature hike. (3:1–6)
Admonished to be watchful and to
strengthen since their works have not been perfect before God (he stands
solemnly throwing pages onto the ground).
Philadelphia: From this Church, they who
overcome will be made a pillar in the temple of God having the name of God, the
name of the city of God, "New Jerusalem", and the Child of God's new
name (Los Angeles?). (3:7–13)
Praised for having some strength,
keeping "My word", and having not denied "My name." The
Lady at the white door: do not deny the apocalypse either.
Reminded to hold fast what they have,
that no one may take their crown. Their tears.
Laodicea:
From this church, they who
overcome, or are confirmed not to be evacuated showroom dummies, will be
granted the opportunity to sit with the Child of God on their
throne. (3:14–22)
Admonished to be zealous and repent
from being "lukewarm"; they are instructed to buy the "gold
refined in the fire" (of the cars – three takes and She’ll get it wrongly
right), that they may be rich; to buy "white garments" (from Hi-Fashion
Looks? But how?) that they may be clothed, so that the shame of their
nakedness would not be revealed; to anoint their eyes with eye salve, that they
may see.
Before
the Throne of God
The Throne of God appears, surrounded by
twenty-four thrones with twenty-four elders seated in them. Do not suggest smugness. (4:1–5)
The four living creatures are introduced. Representing the North?
(4:6–11)
A scroll, with seven seals, is presented
and it is declared that the Lion of the tribe of Judah, from the "Root of
David", is the only one worthy to open this scroll. The Root is only waiting for the gifts of sound and vision. (5:1–5)
When the "Lamb having seven horns and
seven eyes" took the scroll, the creatures of heaven fell down before the
Lamb to give them praise, joined by myriads of angels and the creatures of the
earth. (5:6–14). And television reporters as well.
Seven
Seals are opened
First Seal: A white horse appears, whose
crowned rider has a bow with which to conquer. You can't overlook her (6:1–2)
Second Seal: A red horse appears, whose
rider is granted a "great sword" to take peace from the earth. She didn't knock over that garbage can for nothing
(6:3–4)
Third Seal: A black horse appears, whose
rider has "a pair of balances in his hand", where a voice then says,
"A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny;
and [see] thou hurt not the oil and the wine." The confused delivery guy wandering around the gutted mall (6:5–6)
Fourth Seal: A pale horse appears, whose
rider is Death, and Hades follows him. Death is granted a fourth part of the
earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and with the beasts of the
earth. (6:7–8)
Fifth Seal: "Under the altar",
appeared the souls of martyrs for the "word of God", who cry out for
vengeance. The reddening sky in the distance. They are given white robes and told to rest until the martyrdom of
their siblings is completed. (6:9–11)
Sixth Seal: (6:12–17)
There occurs a great earthquake where
"the sun becomes black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon like blood."
The "men" tumbling through the amusement arcade glass (6:12).
The stars of heaven fall to the earth
and the sky recedes like a scroll being rolled up. That white door's going to roll her up every time (6:13–14).
Every mountain and island is moved out
of place. Which one will be the first to blink? (6:14).
The people of earth retreat to caves in
the mountains, prior to outside broadcasting vans (6:15).
The survivors call upon the mountains
and the rocks to fall on them, so as to hide them from the "wrath of the
Lamb." The engine flagrantly failing (6:16).
DELETED SCENES
Interlude: The 144,000 Hebrews are sealed.
144,000 from the Twelve Tribes of
Israel are sealed as servants of God on their foreheads. The spirit of Blake nods in approval (7:1–8)
A great multitude stand before the
Throne of God, who come out of the Great Tribulation, clothed with robes made
"white in the blood of the Lamb" and having palm branches in their
hands to ward off the approaching inferno (7:9–17)
Seventh Seal: Introduces the seven trumpets
(8:1–5)
"Silence in heaven for about half
an hour"- a suitable watching interval for the three linked short films (8:1).
Seven angels are each given trumpets. Rather Miles than Wynton
(8:2).
An eighth angel takes a "golden
censer", filled with fire from the heavenly altar, and throws it to the
earth (8:3–5). What follows are "peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of
lightning, and an earthquake." Marching song (8:5).
After the eighth angel has devastated
the earth, the seven angels introduced in verse 2 prepare to sound their
trumpets. Not one chorus of "On Green Dolphin Street" is attempted (8:6).
WHAT SHE AND ONLY SHE RECOILS FROM SEEING THROUGH THAT WHITE DOOR Seven
trumpets are sounded, shining as golden and as bright as day; cf. Let My Children Hear Music (Seen in Chapters 8, 9, and 12).
First Trumpet: Hail and fire, mingled with
blood, are thrown to the earth burning up a third of the trees and green grass.
They made the iron horse (8:6–7)
Second
Trumpet: Something that resembles a
great mountain, burning with fire, falls from the sky and lands in the
ocean.
It kills a third of the sea creatures and destroys a third of the ships
at sea. Be careful not to incinerate bystanders or messengers
(8:8–9)
Third Trumpet: A great star, named
Wormwood, falls from heaven and poisons a third of the rivers and springs of
water. Deconstructed Nature scrubbed (8:10–11)
Fourth Trumpet: A third of the sun, the
moon, and the stars are darkened creating complete darkness for a third of the
day and the night. The debris blocks out the rays of the sun, leading to a long-term winter, long-term meaning decades (8:12–13)
Fifth Trumpet: The First Woe (9:1–12)
A "star" falls from the sky
(9:1).
This "star" is given
"the key to the bottomless pit" (9:1).
The "star" then opens the
bottomless pit. When this happens, "smoke [rises] from [the Abyss] like
smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky [are] darkened by the smoke from
the Abyss" (9:2).
From out of the smoke, locusts who are
"given power like that of scorpions of the earth" (9:3), who are
commanded not to harm anyone or anything except for people who were not given
the "seal of God" on their foreheads (from chapter 7) (9:4).
The "locusts" are described
as having a human appearance (faces and hair) but with lion's teeth, and
wearing "breastplates of iron"; the sound of their wings resembles
"the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle"
(9:7–9).
The ones who imagine or, worse, believe that they have answers to anything - that's whom to target.
Sixth Trumpet: The Second Woe (9:13–21)
The four angels bound to the great
river Euphrates are released to prepare two hundred million horseriders.
These armies kill a third of humanity by
plagues of fire, smoke, and brimstone. But the horses survive. How could they not?
Interlude: The little scroll. (10:1–11)
An angel appears, with one foot on the
sea and one foot on the land, having an opened little book in her hand.
Upon the cry of the angel, seven
thunders utter mysteries and secrets that are not to be written down by David.
David is instructed to eat the little
scroll that happens to be sweet in his mouth, but bitter in his stomach, and to
prophesy.
David is given a measuring rod to
measure the temple of God, the altar, and those who worship there.
Outside the temple, at the court of the Holy City, it is trod by the nations for forty-two levelled months (3 1⁄2 years).
Two
witnesses prophesy for 1,260 days,
clothed in sackcloth. The pathetically misled and soft in the head are
not condemned, but mourned, perhaps reproachfully (11:1–14)
Seventh Trumpet: The Third Woe that leads
into the seven bowls (11:15–19)
The temple of God opens in heaven,
where the ark of His covenant can be seen. There are lightnings, noises,
thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.
That is, unless He has covertly made a covenant with another...
HAPPENING AT THE SAME TIME AND WITH SOME OF THE SAME PEOPLE
(Written on 16 January 2016)
In the
end, it turned out to be a story that began with Frank Sinatra and ended with
David Bowie. The two are said to have met, at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles
during the autumn of 1975; Bowie was recording Station To Station, while Sinatra was working on music of his own –
the Sinatra discography suggests that this was an era of single-only releases.
It is claimed that the two got on well, so well that Sinatra listened to some
of Bowie’s playbacks, in particular his version of “Wild Is The Wind” – always
more Nina Simone than Johnny Mathis – to which the Chairman gave the
thumbs-up.
Even if
the story isn’t verified, I’d like it to be true, to have happened, as it would
represent a midpoint between this tale’s two extremes, a tale that lasted
nearly sixty years, that began with the colourful optimism of Songs For Swingin’ Lovers, one of the earliest
examples of the long-playing record, then an exciting novelty, as a conceptual
thing in itself, and ended with Blackstar, a conceptual record about things
drawing to a close in an age when the long-playing record is essentially facing
extinction.
It therefore
makes sense to bring this story to a close with Bowie’s last words. But you
might be wondering: where have I been?
*
With four
months away, you could assume that I had something to do, and while that’s
true, I’ve also been reading, specifically Jon Savage’s book 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded. On
its surface the book does what it promises, namely document what happened in
that most curious of years as filtered through the year’s pop singles (and to a
lesser extent its albums) and the main socio-political events in Britain and
the USA.
Wisely,
Savage does not attempt to document every last scrap of what happened and what
was done in 1966; in his Introduction he freely admits that if you want to read
about developments in free jazz or Jamaican music, or New York minimalism or
Strasbourg Situationism – to which this reader would add events in South Africa
and Red China – then these form the basis of other books yet to be written.
Likewise, Dylan is a benign spectre throughout the book, as his 1966 doings are
exhaustively documented elsewhere (though it is good to see AMM getting due respect in relation to their influence on the early work of Pink Floyd).
The
Beatles, Stones and Beach Boys are sketched in lightly, as Savage prefers to
focus on the less feted music of that year. The book takes the form of twelve
essays – one for each month – all of which take their lead from a specific
single before broadening out. The first eight essays are devoted to thorough
exploration of specific fields – Vietnam, nuclear war, the rise of feminism and
gay rights, the rise of soul and R&B, etc. – while the last four see all
the disparate elements collide together, not always comfortably (the key word
in the book seems to be “compression” as though pop and youth are fighting for
their lives, trying not to be crushed by the weight of the old). That having
been said, the book’s most compelling chapter might be that on the Velvets and
the Exploding Plastic Inevitable – a tale told countless times, but rarely from
the perspective of the then forty-year-old Andy Warhol (whom Bowie later
portrayed in the movie Basquiat).
Savage considers, at length, what, if anything, this all meant to Warhol.
And yet
the story of 1966 is a rather
melancholy one. 1965 plays a considerable part in the book’s build-up but 1967
is hardly mentioned. Reading Savage’s various accounts – and his account of
1966’s Civil Rights struggles is written well enough to work as a school
textbook. But we are not allowed to forget that 1966 was a year that began with
the Great Society and ended with Governor Reagan shutting California down, that
started with “Day Tripper” but culminated in “Green, Green Grass Of Home” – I
had never before considered how much
that latter record’s success owed to its status as an unofficial charity
record to commemorate the Aberfan disaster. Pop appeared to be closing down, or
closing ranks, too.
Taken in
conjunction with something like 4-2,
David Thomson’s meticulous ball-by-ball analysis of the 1966 World Cup final,
Savage’s book acts as a useful corrective to the misty-eyed Revolution In The Head stories of 1966
representing a sunny, optimistic time for everyone. In fact, in most places
outside London, Los Angeles, San Francisco and King’s College, Cambridge, it
might as well still have been 1936. It was a miserable and rotten time for most
people and, in the end, perhaps also for pop.
For the
Beatles, Stones etc. appeared to be moving away from their audiences. The daft
optimism of the initial Beat Boom had proved to be unsustainable – and, if you
chance upon a 1964 or 1965 edition of Pick
Of The Pops, it is now mostly unlistenable - as its leading lights drifted
into rest, contemplation, experimentation. Common people did not feel that the
Beatles were speaking to them any more, and yet, paradoxically, in the December
1966 easy listening desert, everybody was waiting for the Beatles to provide an
answer, or signal a way forward.
They did
not – they were busy working on “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane,”
neither of which was earmarked for single release at that time – and so the
great promise which “Reach Out, I’ll Be There “ and “Good Vibrations” had
proposed fizzled into nothing. The turning point was probably the Yardbirds’
“Happening Ten Years Time Ago”- and in particular its midpoint, when Jeff Beck
starts his police siren impersonations, which marks the second when British pop
turned into British rock – Jimmy Page’s guitar swoops down like an irritated
pigeon to meet Beck, and you can smell
Led Zeppelin coming in the middle distance (a notion aided by the fact that
Yardbirds bassist Chris Dreja remembers nothing about making the record, and
suggests that John Paul Jones might have played bass).
The single
was a flop, barely scraping into the Top 50. Commentators like Penny Valentine
thought the Yardbirds were jiving, showing contempt for their slow-witted
audience who couldn’t keep up with their daring artistic experiments (whereas
American acts, from the Beach Boys to the Supremes, managed to be more
genuinely experimental and not make a cackling fuss about it). The Stones’
“Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing In The Shadow” was a mess and
suggested a group that was hopelessly lost, and America, and specifically
California, was picking up the baton again.
By 1967
most of the British musicians who mattered had more or less turned their back
on the single and moved towards albums. Coupled with the ending of pirate
radio, the charts duly and inevitably collapsed into a morass of MoR and
novelty sludge. The year’s biggest new star, Engelbert Humperdinck – to all
intents and purposes a throwback to the pre-rock era – captivated the cloakroom
girls and typing pools who had become confused by the Beatles, had grown up a
little and wanted a less complicated life, while their kid sisters had the
Monkees to scream at and laugh with.
That is a
spurious and superficial overview of a complex and creative year, if you only
base such an analysis on the year’s Top 40 lists. But it may be, as Savage
suggests, that something crucial was lost when the “serious” musicians more or
less abandoned the Top 40; immediacy and concision were sacrificed, as was a
certain degree of excitement and commitment. Although “Readh Out” and “Good
Vibrations” were rightly praised as landmark singles at the time, their
ramifications weren’t or couldn’t be followed through – 1967 was the year of Smiley Smile and The Four Tops On Broadway.
Towards
the end of Savage’s book, and therefore towards the end of 1966, David Bowie
turns up in earnest, having already made a couple of cameo appearances. “The
London Boys” was only a B-side, but unlike much of the year’s pop, it was slow,
contemplative and ambiguous, pointing a softly accusatory finger at the façade
of Swinging London and pill culture. “The first time that you tried a pill,” he
sings, “You felt a little queasy, decidedly ill.”
It sounded
as though the seventies had already begun.
“It’s all gone wrong, but on and
on/The bitter nerve ends never end/I’m falling down.”
* *
In 1966, Savage makes the very subtle point
that, to put it in such words, nothing has changed. Without needing to
underline it, he demonstrates how horribly close the general oppression of 1966
is to now.
And so
David Bowie, coming into and going out of a world that has stayed the same.
* * *
Unlike
everybody else on the planet with foresight, I didn’t buy Blackstar last Friday or indeed over the
weekend; I had other things to do. The first I heard of what had happened was
when I looked at Twitter on Monday morning. Death is what goes on while
you are doing other things, as somebody
else didn’t sing.
It was a
shock, for me perhaps the biggest shock since that misty Oxford Tuesday morning
in December 1980 when I blearily switched on the radio and everything was
Lennon. This is not to say other deaths weren’t shocks; it’s just that with
Elvis, Kurt, Michael, Amy and Whitney you could see it coming. Ornette? He was
my favourite musician of the last hundred years but he was eighty-five; he’d
lived a life.
The only
thing most people knew about Bowie was that he had heart problems and was
living the quiet life. The fact that he died such a mundane death – cancer, at
sixty-nine; what, Bowie? – would not
have been especially shocking to me (though might have been to those devoted
adherents who felt that Bowie was “above” such things); the fact that we didn’t even know is what was shocking.
It was like we hadn’t given him permission to die. It was a Gesamtkunstwerk fait accompli and maybe
simultaneously the noblest and crassest exit in pop history.
As though
Bowie would have been bothered by history, or his story.
Me? I felt
like I had been punched in the stomach.
* * * *
A
Sainsbury’s superstore, my local, on a chilly, damp and dark Monday early
evening. The white light and white heat of the supermarket momentarily dazzle.
I go to the CD section. There is one copy of Blackstar. I pick it up.
“Do right
by him,” warns the voice which has suddenly popped up next to me. “A good time
to announce you’re stopping writing about music, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps I was writing about music in the wrong way,” I ventured.
“You still
are. Endless, ponderous preambles to pretentious writing which does nothing but
state the obvious. No wonder you can’t get any writing work. No wonder no agent
will touch you with a hundred-foot bargepole.”
“I’ve
always said I’m happy to work with a good editor,” I replied. “But nobody’s
interested in publishing literature any more. As for the type of writing I do,
I am fully aware that right now there’s no market for it at all.
‘Furthermore,
I take into account what Mark Sinker said in his Wire review of 1966,
about ‘the boomer’s generation’s seemingly endless ability to reinvest in its
own youth, at the expense of anyone else’s.’ It’s what bothers me about the
Bowie tributes. They’re all, or mostly, about the seventies and eighties Bowie.
Really, if he’d done anything since Let’s
Dance you’d hardly know it. Perhaps they’re just lamenting the loss of
their own youth.”
“And you don’t?”
“It’s why
I wanted to stop writing. It is not befitting of me to complain about baby
boomer music writers running things when I’m days away from turning fifty-two.”
You see, we were evicted from our
flat. No fault of our own, but somebody else bought the building and wanted it
empty to start from scratch. Letters from lawyers using terms like
“trespassing” as though we had committed a crime, other than the fatal early 21st
century crime of being too poor to live in London – when we’re both working
professionals.
We spent two months trying to find
somewhere else and most of the people and places we saw were absolute shits.
The only estate agent we dealt with told us that if we didn’t earn at least
£30K a year we were untermensch. Just what you want to hear when you have
heart problems and need to lead a stress-free life.
Happily – and as usual in such cases,
almost at the last minute – a good, decent and helpful landlord came through
and we found a new flat. But it would be wrong to say that this experience
hasn’t left scars in me, scars which are unlikely to heal. And it has affected
my whole attitude to writing about music.
We are still unpacking boxes. The
other night, most of the old Then
Play Long LPs came to light, and as we
glumly unpacked them I actually wondered: why do we still have all this stuff,
and what did it ever mean outside of writing about them for this blog? To see
them again brought us no joy. Most of them are rubbish. To be truthful, we will
probably end up putting them in the recycling bin; they’re not even worthy of
the local charity shop.
And yet people bought these records in
sufficient quantities to make number one, and so I wonder – have I wasted the
last eight years of my life writing about drivel, and how much more drivel can
I tolerate just to get to the good stuff?
Then I remembered what Jon Savage says
in 1966 about albums being more expensive than singles
and therefore primarily being bought by adults, who have more money and are
therefore more conservative about what they spend their money on. Thus the
album chart has remained an innately conservative affair with only the
occasional irruption of the unexpected.
It is these records – OK Computer, Wu-Tang Forever, To Pimp
A Butterfly, to name but three off the
top of my head – which demand attention. To paraphrase Mr Bangs, I’m not sure
whether I want to see my way towards retirement writing about pap and mud.
If that weren’t bad enough, I fear
that at nearly 52 I may have developed incipient reactionary old git syndrome.
Perhaps that makes for an easier life than actually engaging with what’s
happening now. Or it is simply the case that, as suggested in the current Wire, politics has overtaken music. The world is crumbling to argumentative
pieces and I don’t know that doing an end-of-year list or walking around the
privileged orchard saying “2015’s been a good year” is the way to deal with
that.
Furthermore, after the fifty-three
year irruption that constituted “rock ‘n’ roll,” it seems clear that everything
has simply returned to pre-rock ways, with singers and composers again devolving
into two separate entities. Carly Rae Jepsen’s E-Mo-Tion
may be much talked about somewhere – presumably on music messageboards
that I no longer read – but commercially its launch was botched, and
while it
is a richly entertaining pop record, the presence of the usual suspects
in the
songwriting and production departments suggest it might be the last gasp
for
this type of thing (even though, happily, Ms Jepsen does appear to have
had some input into all of the record's songs). There are minor tugboats
of resistance, like Sophie (like
or dislike PC Music, Sophie crossed into the mainstream via Rebel Heart, a much better album than you think) but
they do their thing and nobody really notices.
Nothing is CHANGED.
* * * *
In the
past week a lot of people have referred to Bowie as a “genius.” As Ian S Munro
made his Glasgow artist say, “It’s not in my working vocabulary and I’ve no
notion how its colours mix.” But you know a genius when you see one. What is a
genius? Let me offer a peremptory and inadequate list: Orson Welles, Virginia
Woolf, Pablo Picasso, Brian Wilson, James Joyce, Sylvie Guillem, Ornette
Coleman, Fred Astaire, Oscar Wilde, Sonny Rollins, Derek Bailey, Roger Federer,
Aretha Franklin, David Lynch, Bill Shankly, Alasdair Gray and Billy Mackenzie.
Yes, I
know, what a pitiful (and overwhelmingly male and white) list. No doubt you can
think of a better one. But that’s the standard of being a genius; you do things
that nobody else would even think of doing, and more often than not you create
art before you think. Throughout his long career, David Bowie never did
anything without thinking about it, without planning it all out (whereas a
Bowie idoliser like Mackenzie at his best sounded and looked like he sang
without doing any thinking), and so
by that yardstick I regret to say that Bowie was not a genius. But he was a
great synthesiser of trends, one of the 20th century’s great art
conduits. Like Diaghilev, Miles and Eno, he was able to link great strands of
development to each other, and responded best when he had a Visconti or Ronson
or Eno to argue back at him.
That was
what I thought until last week, anyway.
Then I
listened to Blackstar and wondered whether he was a genius
after all.
* * * * *
The title
song wanders into earshot, or maybe you wandered into the ballroom halfway
through it. A Spanish mode – it’s in the same key as Coltrane’s “Olé” – Bowie’s
voice sounds rather strangulated, as though struggling to remain above water,
as he sings about the world crumbling to pieces, about death, transfiguration
and rebirth. It is the saddest and lushest sound you could ever hope to hear –
drums stuttering around semi-randomly as though struggling to remember drum n’
bass, Donny McCaslin’s saxophone already causing trouble.
The song
steadily builds up until impact point is reached, whereupon it implodes,
floating freely through space for a short while before the song’s second main
melody steals in – and suddenly we have the old Bowie back; or are these still
ghosts conducting a bitonal argument? They keep trying to break through what is
otherwise the return of the anthemic Hunky
Dory Bowie, but neither side wins and eventually the Spanish mode subtly
returns to the foreground before the whole gently atomises.
If 2013’s The Next Day was a cheerful nostalgic
romp, then “’Tis Pity She Was A Whore” is neither. It is violent – Mark
Guiljana’s drums are mixed firmly upfront – but again, particularly in the
glorious key shift from verse to chorus, which instantly recalls “Absolute
Beginners,” the song gets detoured by McCaslin’s intentionally argumentative
saxophone and flute, as well as some strange keyboard Morse coding at the end.
“Lazarus” sees Bowie regarding “heaven” as a prison – his own Fender guitar
slams in with regular triplets like slamming metal doors – and again drums and
saxophone are prominent; although they begin in a decidedly 1985 mood of
opulent regret (it could almost be Dire Straits or Bryan Ferry), they soon
become more threatening and dissonant. But Bowie’s dissonance or use of free
jazz/contemporary classical tropes – and please
don’t call this a “jazz” record; it isn’t – has never seemed pasted on, like an
exotic chilli. Meanwhile, down at the song’s root, Bowie remarks, “Ain’t that
just like me” like it was still 1964 and John Lee Hooker was playing in
Tooting.
Like his
idol Scott Walker, Bowie’s songs arise out of the voice and lyrical concept,
and then the music has to fit around that or exceed it. It is perhaps not
surprising that Bowie’s vocals on Blackstar are very similar to Walker’s. Clearly
something like Bish Bosch is tougher
going, but Bowie utilises his baritone in very similar ways, making it more
high than low, as though compressing a life’s experience into however long a
song has to be to accommodate it. “Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)” is a drastic
remake of what appeared on 2014’s Nothing
Has Changed career retrospective. There, Bowie held back against Maria
Schneider’s immense, floating cliffs of brass, allowing McCaslin’s tenor and
Ryan Keberle’s trombone to have their say. The verses are spaced out at long
intervals; there is a particularly fine moment towards the end when Schneider’s
band goes into a ruminative free interlude, with snarling bass trombones acting
as pedal points. The music eventually dissipates, as Schneider’s great hero Gil
Evans was apt to do with his later big bands.
Here,
however, the song gets a violent makeover, the drum n’ bass elements now to the
fore, with guitars clashing and screeching. The song’s length is also
compressed by half and so Bowie’s anger at betrayal is more palpable, less
patient. Who else used a word like “writ” in pop – apart from when Bowie used
it in “Life On Mars?” In addition, his outraged, “You went with that CLOWN!”
recalls the ending of Jazzin’ For Blue
Jean. The song plunges into chaos before being abruptly cut off, like “I
Want You (She’s So Heavy).” After that, “Girl Loves Me” marches aridly on the
spot, and if Bowie knew what he was on about here, at least someone did (I’ve
tried not to analyse the lyrics too much as everybody else is doing that).
* * * * *
I admire
the complete absence of self-pity on this record, unlike entry #1067, which was
nothing but.
Everybody
but EVERYBODY has talked about this record being about his dying, and maybe it
is and maybe it isn’t. But, strangely or normally, it’s not my concern. Both
Tony Visconti and Donny McCaslin have testified that the sessions were bright,
upbeat and to the point.
This
record would have gone to number one anyway,
just like Innuendo did another time.
We mustn’t talk of it as though it were some last will and testament kind of
thing. Nobody speaks of Warren Zevon’s My
Ride’s Here in the same way (but then I suppose Zevon wasn’t Bowie, who was
supposed, in some people’s eyes, to be immortal).
We don’t
celebrate any more. We just sit around and mourn, or wait to mourn.
There is
always the possibility that Bowie was having a laugh, and not just the last
one.
* * * * *
*
I mean,
look at that last photo session; there he is, in the suit, fedora and wiseguy
smile, dancing around why he could almost be FRANK SINATRA
That last
photo session, four months ago.
* * * * *
*
But then
you get something like “Dollar Days,” the one where he treats the English
evergreens like Clive James does the tree in his garden or Dennis Potter did
with his “loveliest, whitest blossoms” and you are drawn back to that heartbreaking
descending chord run as if he were still looking over his shoulder at Colin
Blunstone and Nick Drake*
(*sometimes
I think the deepest Nick Drake songs are the ones he doesn’t sing on, e.g. “Friday,”
whose flautist, Ray Warleigh, died late last year**)
(**that “young”
generation of British or British-based improvisers who came through in the
sixties***)
(***and
the irony of AMM being in part a splinter group from Mike Westbrook’s band,
whose regular players were often to be found in their day jobs in the bands of
Alexis Korner or Georgie Fame**)
(**they’re
all getting old now and dying off, one by one, and it’s happening with the
rockers too, all those people now in their seventies or even eighties, and one
day they’ll be gone and can you baby boomers deal with that?****)
(****and
how do you think that the ORIGINAL rockers, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats
Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis, who invented the game in the first place and have
now outlived most of their disciples, feel?)
but then
there’s something that goes awry with the song, harmonies and improvisations
grow out of step, and he’s telling you something, that he’s trying and dying to
forget you...
...however,
as I said, no self-pity.
* * * * *
“I Can’t
Give Everything Away” and there he is, telling you, against a backdrop as
luscious and subversive as Black Messiah,
and that drum n’ bass he can’t ever forget – well, we know he couldn’t help
thinking about him but now he has a proper saxophonist instead of trying to do
it all himself (“Liza-Jane,” well everyone has to start somewhere; “Subterraneans,”
nobody else could have imagined or played that – McCaslin frequently sounds
like a more perturbed Andy Mackay on this record, whose seven songs all appear
to centre around the same key, like it was one song extending over forty-one
minutes and seventeen seconds).
Another
name for that last song might be “That Would Be Telling.” Guitarist Ben Monder
solos like he’s Mike Oldfield, before the song gracefully glides to a halt,
beside the sea which he was meant to see, but never actually managed to see.
* * * *
Yes, the
blackstar, the meaning of which is known to all good breast surgeons and clinical oncologists.
Yes, the
songs all APPARENTLY/AFTER THE FACT about death.
But I feel
that Blackstar is an
almighty SHOUT IN FAVOUR OF LIFE – he wasn’t intending to die just yet, he had another album on the go, which we may
or may not hear in years to come. I mean, you might as well say that “Oh Mr
Gravedigger” was forecasting what was going to happen etc. etc.
* * *
The
harmonica (though no harmonica player is credited) on “I Can’t Give Everything
Away” straight out of “A New Career In A New Town” and the recorders at the end
of the same song, rescued from “Life On Mars?” Taking stock with a wink, and
telling us: here it is, it’s up to you to work it out.
* *
On Top Of The Pops in 1996, excitedly being introduced
by Nicky Campbell, “Hello Spaceboy,” which Bowie performs with the Pet Shop
Boys. He holds his microphone stand at 45°, bobbing and swaying like Starbuck
on the Pequot. The Pet Shop Boys get all the screams and cheers from the
audience, who are presumably wondering who that silly old geezer at the front is.
People
these days. Talking about Bowie? You might as well be talking about Al bloody
Jolson. “Oh, my mum likes him.” “Who?” “Do you mean David ZOWIE, you know, ‘House
Every Weekend’?” Meanwhile, of the generations who knew who Bowie was, their
Bowie was invariably the greatest one.
Or maybe
he learned 1966’s most valuable music lesson – ask John Cale, Bob
Dylan or Neil Young – in that you never stop going forward because nobody told you to stop. Whereas now musicians are told to
stop before they even start.
*
“Space
Oddity” is a song which is almost certainly about Syd Barrett, although the
character “Major Tom” is likely to have been inspired by Brixton music-hall
entertainer Tom Major, whose son John became a Lambeth councillor and later
Prime Minister.
The only
Bowie album without Bowie on the cover, although if you look carefully at the
images at the bottom and see what they spell out, there’s a clue to something
or other.
“Our works in stone, in paint, in
print, are spared, some of them for a few decades or a millennium or two, but
everything must finally fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal
ash. The triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life;
we’re going to die. ‘Be of good heart’ cry the dead artists out of the living
past. Our songs will be silenced – but what of it? Go on singing.”
(Welles)
He was
only seventeen years older than me. You think about these things more the
nearer you get.
And in
between were over six hundred other albums. Or you might prefer to live a life.
And if you do, how long will you play?
The
Seven Spiritual Figures. (Events leading into the Third Woe)
A
Woman "clothed with a white robe,
with the sun at her back, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a
crown
of twelve stars" is in pregnancy with a male child. That child may
scarcely grow up to be understood if we can't unmake the same mistakes
(12:1–2)
A great Dragon (with seven heads, ten
horns, and seven crowns on his heads) drags a third of the stars of Heaven with
his tail, and throws them to the Earth. (12:3–4). The Dragon waits for the
birth of the child so he can devour it. However, sometime after the child is
born, he is caught up to God's throne while the Woman flees into the wilderness
into her place prepared of God that they should feed her there for 1,260 days
(3+1⁄2 years). (12:5–6). War breaks out in heaven between Michael and the
Dragon, identified as that old Serpent, the Devil, or Satan (12:9). After a
great fight, the Dragon and his angels are cast out of Heaven for good,
followed by praises of victory for God's kingdom. (12:7–12). The Dragon engages
to persecute the Woman, but she is given aid to evade him. Her evasiveness
enrages the Dragon, prompting him to wage war against the rest of her
offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus
Christ. (12:13–17)
A Beast (with seven heads, ten horns, and
ten crowns on his horns and on his heads names of blasphemy) emerges from the
Sea, having one mortally wounded head that is then healed. The people of the
world wonder and follow the Beast. The Dragon grants him power and authority
for forty-two months. (13:1–5)
The Beast of the Sea blasphemes God's name
(along with God's tabernacle and his kingdom and all who dwell in Heaven),
wages war against the Saints, and overcomes them. (13:6–10)
Then, a Beast emerges from the Earth having
two horns like a lamb, speaking like a dragon. He directs people to make an
image of the Beast of the Sea who was wounded yet lives, breathing life into
it, and forcing all people to bear "the mark of the Beast",
"666". Events leading into the Third Woe:
The Lamb stands on Mount Zion with the
144,000 "first fruits" who are redeemed from Earth and victorious
over the Beast and his mark and image. (14:1–5)
The proclamations of three angels.
(14:6–13)
One like the Son of Man reaps the
earth. (14:14–16)
A second angel reaps "the vine of
the Earth" and throws it into "the great winepress of the wrath of
God... and blood came out of the winepress... up to one thousand six hundred
stadia." (14:17–20)
The temple of the tabernacle, in
Heaven, is opened (15:1–5), beginning the "Seven Bowls" revelation.
Seven angels are given a golden bowl,
from the Four Living Creatures, that contains the seven last plagues bearing
the wrath of God. (15:6–8)
We failed to unmake our previous mistakes.
The
hospital nightmares - you weren't even told half of those. Will they
ever be told or forever dwell corrosively in my psyche?
Seven
bowls are poured onto Earth:
First Bowl: A "foul and malignant
sore" afflicts the followers of the Beast. (16:1–2)
Second Bowl: The Sea turns to blood and
everything within it dies. (16:3)
Third Bowl: All fresh water turns to blood.
(16:4–7)
Fourth Bowl: The Sun scorches the Earth
with intense heat and even burns some people with fire. (16:8–9)
Fifth Bowl: There is total darkness and
great pain in the Beast's kingdom. (16:10–11)
Sixth Bowl: The Great River Euphrates is
dried up and preparations are made for the kings of the East and the final
battle at Armageddon between the forces of good and evil. (16:12–16)
Seventh Bowl: A great earthquake and heavy hailstorm: "every island
fled away and the mountains were not found." (16:17–21)
Aftermath:
Vision of John given by "an angel who had the seven bowls"
The great Harlot who sits on a scarlet
Beast (with seven heads and ten horns and names of blasphemy all over its body)
and by many waters: Babylon the Great. The angel showing John the vision of the
Harlot and the scarlet Beast reveals their identities and fates (17:1–18)
New Babylon is destroyed. (18:1–8)
The people of the Earth (the queens,
merchants, sailors, etc.) mourn New Babylon's destruction. (18:9–19)
The permanence of New Babylon's
destruction. (18:20–24)
HOSPITAL NIGHTMARES I SAW IT ALL
The
Marriage Supper of the Lamb
A great multitude praises God. (19:1–6)
The marriage Supper of the Lamb. (19:7–10)
The
Judgment of the two Beasts, the Dragon, and the Dead (19:11–20:15)
The Beast and the False Prophet are cast
into the Lake of Fire. (19:11–21)
The Dragon is imprisoned in the Bottomless
Pit for a thousand years. (20:1–3)
The resurrected martyrs live and reign with
Christ for a thousand years. (20:4–6)
After the Thousand Years
The Dragon is released and goes out to
deceive the nations in the four corners of the Earth—Gog and Magog—and gathers
them for battle at the holy city. The Dragon makes war against the people of
God, but is defeated. (20:7–9)
The Dragon is cast into the Lake of
Fire with the Beast and the False Prophet. (20:10)
The Last Judgment: the wicked, along
with Death and Hades, are cast into the Lake of Fire, which is the second
death. (20:11–15)
The New
Heaven and Earth, and New Jerusalem
A "new heaven" and "new
earth" replace the old heaven and old earth. There is no more suffering or
death. (21:1–8)
God comes to dwell with humanity in the New
Jerusalem. (21:2–8)
Description of the New Jerusalem. (21:9–27)
The River of Life and the Tree of Life
appear for the healing of the nations and peoples. The curse of sin is ended.
(22:1–5)
Conclusion
The Lady’s reassurance that their coming is
imminent. Bowie and Visconti heard the word. It was just down to her to
administer the final admonitions. (22:6–21)
(Adapted
from the Wikipedia entry on Book of Revelation. The writing on Bowie's ★ was originally published in Then Play Long on 16 January 2016)
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