David Bowie - Station toStation

Tue 24th May, 2005 in Music Reviews

David Bowie was in a strange place in 1976. He had just completed a massive US tour in support of Diamond Dogs and had developed an obsession with soul music. Transforming mid tour; glam rock became plastic soul and Bowie recorded Young Americans with the likes of John Lennon, Carlos Alomar and Luther Vandross. Incredibly prolific and turning into a huge success in the States, the single Fame was his first American number one. The decadent Seventies, however, took their toll on the singer though and its quite astonishing he was still producing astonishing music in his drug-ravaged state.

Station to Station was a paranoid, schizophrenic farewell to a country that had almost destroyed him. It was after he promoted the album on the Thin White Duke tour that he realised he could end up dead unless he sorted out his life. On stage he was a pale, detached figure who barely acknowledged his audience. His slicked back orange hair and sombre clothes a million miles away from the glam dandy of yore; anyone expecting the theatrical show and costume changes of the Ziggy days would have been shocked. Soon after he headed to Berlin to detox and record Low with Brian Eno at The Hansa on the Wall studio.  Not surprising really; an insight into where Bowie’s head was could be seen when he gave waiting fans at London’s Victoria Station, on his first return home for years a nazi salute, much to the shock and consternation of the UK press.

After the pop soul of Young Americans, the one thing that still amazes with Station to Station is that it rocks. The awesome opening title track, an immense diatribe against drugs, was beyond anything that Bowie had previously recorded. The guitar work by Earl Slick is fantastic. The scorching solo’s after the songs brooding opening continues to astound. He went on to play with Bowie again on Serious Moonlight tour and he is now playing in his present touring band including his recent tour of Australia.

The albums first single Golden Years was another chart success. He became the first white act to appear on US television show Soul Train performing the track in 1975. It’s a funky slab at disco and the only obvious choice for a hit single.

Word on a Wing is a spiritual sermon that Bowie claims was his hymn. A desperate plea as his life was collapsing around him. Just check out the lyrics.

Lord I kneel and offer you, my word on a wing
And I’m trying hard to fit among your scheme of things
It’s safer than a strange land, but I still care for myself
And I don’t stand in my own light… Lord, Lord, my prayer flies like a word on a wing

It’s a beautifully overwrought effort and a highlight of an album full of them.

TVC15 may well be a song about a girlfriend who was eaten by a television set but as always with his obtuse lyrics you can never be sure. At this time he was using the William Burroughs technique of cutting up sentences and forming strange new phrases to inspire lyrics.

The rock funk of Stay again finds Bowie at his crooning best, Slick’s guitar riff combined with Dennis Davies’s drumming almost brings the album to an immense conclusion but then he brings us down to earth with the soul searching of Wild is the Wind. Written by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington the song is a deliciously sombre love song that builds to an astounding conclusion as his vocal histrionics go wildly over the top. It’s a fitting end to an album made in cocaine-fueled chaos. The iconic cover image was taken from Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. The film was his first foray into acting and is probably still his finest performance. An amazingly productive era for him, he claims he has little or no recollection of the mid Seventies or the recording of Station to Station; in fact he can’t remember anything from the year 1975. Luckily we have Station to Station to remind us what an important and adventurous artist he truly was at the time, even if he can’t.