Category Archives: Tipping points

❚ THE OFFICIAL DAVID BOWIE WEBSITE has polled his fans to elect their five favourite videos by the musical genius whose career transformed pop music over 50 years. No surprise perhaps that Ashes to Ashes came out top, capturing a crucial turning point in Bowie’s own progress in 1980 and becoming his second No 1 UK single and an international hit. It was an arty track from his 14th studio album, Scary Monsters, with a funky bassline, refined lyrics reaching back to his debut single Space Oddity and its astronaut Major Tom, while its dreamy solarised visual effects also reflected Bowie’s own experiences with drugs. Several critics declare Ashes to be among Bowie’s best songs musically and for inventiveness, and the video itself stands at number 44 in Rolling Stone’s 100 best.

For both its sleeve and video, Bowie commissioned a Pierrot pantomime costume. Significantly, the video starred four overdressed figureheads (including Steve Strange) from London’s nightlife scene, which was exploding into a gloriously colourful new subculture as a reaction to the bleakness of punk. Let’s not forget that Ashes was the most expensive music video made to date, costing £35,000 (about £140,000 in today’s money) and MTV had yet to be launched. [Read the full background story behind recruiting and filming the Blitz Kids for Ashes here at Shapersofthe80s.]

The team at DBHQ doff their hats to video director David Mallet for achieving nine entries in their video top 20, more than a third.

BEST VIDEOS HIS FANS VOTED FOR

#01 – Ashes to Ashes 1980 – David Bowie and David Mallet
#02 – Life on Mars? 1973 – Mick Rock
#03 – Boys Keep Swinging 1979 – David Mallet
#04 – Jump They Say 1993 – Mark Romanek
#05 – I’m Afraid of Americans 1997 – Dom and Nic
#06 – ★ Blackstar – 2016 – Bo Johan Renck
#07 – DJ 1979 – David Mallet
#08 – The Hearts Filthy Lesson 1995 – Samuel Bayer
#09 – Lazarus 2016 – Bo Johan Renck
#10 – The Stars (are out Tonight) 2013 – Floria Sigismondi
#11 – The Next Day 2013 – Floria Sigismondi
#12 – Let’s Dance 1983 – David Mallet
#13 – Look Back in Anger 1979 – David Mallet
#14 – Strangers when We Meet 1995 – Samuel Bayer
#15 – China Girl 1983 – David Mallet
#16 – Loving the Alien 1985 – David Bowie and David Mallet
#17 – Little Wonder 1997 – Floria Sigismondi
#18 – Blue Jean / Jazzin’ for Blue Jean 1984 – Julien Temple
#19 – Fashion 1980 – David Mallet
#20 – Wild is the Wind 1981– David Mallet
#21 – Thursday’s Child 1999 – Walter Stern
#22 – Where are We Now? 2013 – Tony Oursler
#23 – Absolute Beginners 1986 – Julien Temple
#24 – Space Oddity 1972 – Mick Rock
#25 – The Jean Genie 1972 – Mick Rock
#26 – Be my Wife 1977 – Stanley Dorfman

AMONG THE COMMENTS AT FACEBOOK:

Adam Paramore: Great list, interesting that there’s nothing from Ziggy Stardust (IIRC, some concert clips were used as music videos), no Labyrinth tracks, no Modern Love, and no Dancing in the Street with Bowie & Jagger.
Anthony LeBaron: One notably absent video from the list I would add is No Plan. Released a year after his passing, it captures the enormous loss and despair I still felt at losing him.
Rudy Fuentez: Ashes to Ashes is probably his best video, but to me his best song is too hard to decide. Cat People (Putting out the Fire), Always Crashing in the Same Car, Young Americans, Absolute Beginners, This is not America… too many songs. Might as well ask what do you think is the brightest star in the heavens.
Andrew Seear: I agree. Always Crashing in the Same Car I think is an astonishing piece, even by Bowie’s standards. I’ve never heard despair expressed so elegantly.
Stacey Rich: Coolest thing was cycling to Pett Level [where Ashes was filmed] – totally unchanged on the day, a little overcast, the beach empty. Grew up in America & never realised it was an actual place but had shown my partner the video and he recognised the beach immediately. Actually teared up.
Stephen Oldfield: The lyrics and music on this track [Ashes] are stunning. The closing synthesiser must be the greatest on any song ever.

PLUS TWO VERY SPECIAL
PERFORMANCES ON VIDEO

In December 1979 Saturday Night Live aired the most immaculate performance of TMWSTW by Bowie, Klaus Nomi, Joey Arias, Stacey Hayden on guitar and Jimmy Destri on keyboards, which some say was the night “he transformed live television”. This nine-minute clip also includes brilliant versions of TVC 15 with Bowie in skirt and heels, plus a hilarious performance of Boys Keep Swinging where he sports a life-sized nude puppet costume. Click on the picture to view, though don’t be surprised if you cannot reach the video. For rights reasons, this unrivalled video keeps being removed from the web by its broadcaster, so we stay on our toes scouting for alternative postings!

❏ I TOTALLY AGREE with the first three videos topping this DB poll, and draw special attention to Mick Rock’s remarkable promo for Life on Mars. Another that haunts my imagination is 2014’s Where are We Now? Moving on, I’d urge those who haven’t seen two other very special performances by Bowie to seek them out. One is an exquisite interpretation of his enigmatic song The Man who Sold the World which some claim “transformed live television” [pictured above]. Admittedly this is not a promotional video and yet it was uniquely choreographed and costumed for live performance on American TV’s Saturday Night Live in 1979 before its audience of millions. Idiosyncratic backing singers Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias provide immaculate support, while carrying Bowie forward as a kind of giant pierrot, clad in an oversized black plastic dinner jacket over a tapered tubular body – all inspired by artist Sonia Delaunay’s designs for a subversive Dadaist play from 1923. When written in 1970, the lyrics and the singer were evidently sharing an identity crisis and since his death Rolling Stone has regarded this number as “essential”.

❏ HERE’S A SECOND profoundly affecting video that’s often ignored yet it reveals the extraordinary range of Bowie’s singing voice. Possibly the purest experimental jazz number of his career, the nerve-tingling Sue (or in a Season of Crime) was created in 2014 during a session with 17 jazz soloists including saxophonist Donny McCaslin, all improvising under Maria Schneider’s guidance and running beyond seven minutes. The role of jazz in Bowie’s musical temperament seldom gets discussed, though his producer Tony Visconti says the jazz influence had always been there in the music but beneath the surface. The haunting four-minute video was directed in monochrome by Tom Hingston to promote Bowie’s “best-of” collection, Nothing Has Changed.

All taking place as Bowie was being diagnosed (discreetly) with liver cancer, Sue evokes a discomfiting tale of infidelity inspired by the poet Robert Browning, in which the narrator murders his wife and the last verse begins with the phrase “Sue, I never dreamed”, the title of the first song he recorded in 1963. Such a weepie. (An edgier, punchier, superior re-recording of Sue followed on Bowie’s final album Blackstar, released two days before his death.)

➢ Previously at Shapersofthe80s:
12 January 2016, David Bowie is dead

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