Drink, drink, drain your glass, raise your glass high…
Thirty years ago on this day Bowie fans in Japan were treated to an exclusive release with the 7″ 45 single, Crystal Japan / Alabama Song, above.
Crystal Japan was a haunting and quite beautiful synthesiser based instrumental track that David provided for the Japanese sake Crystal Jun Rock advertising campaign, though it wasn’t recorded specifically for the campaign.
He also appeared in two very different and enigmatic TV adverts from where stills were taken for the single sleeve and promotional inserts, see above.
While in Japan David spoke briefly about his reasons for agreeing to do the commercials, both of which can be found on YouTube in varying degrees of quality…
———————————————————————————————————————–
Q. Why did you agree to do the commercial?
DB: There are three reasons. The first one being that no one has ever asked me to do it before. And the money is a very useful thing [spoken in Japanese]. And the third, I think it’s very effective that my music is on television twenty times a day. I think my music isn’t for radio.
Q. So did you write the music for the commercial?
DB: Yes, this is the important point and the reason I agreed to do the commercial. It’s a very slow one. I didn’t use bass or drums so it’s very different from anything I have done before. It will be included in my next album. I don’t drink while I work so I didn’t drink while I wrote this one, of course.
———————————————————————————————————————–
Crystal Japan never made it to the next album, Scary Monsters… And Super Creeps. However, it was included on the 1992 Rykodisc/EMI reissue of the album
The single was available around the globe as an import, though those who couldn’t afford it were gifted the track as a B-side to Up the Hill Backwards the following year.
Various collectibles were created during the campaign, aside from the promotional single there were various posters and adverts all of which are now much sought after.
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails liked the track so much that he released a thinly-veiled cover of it, A Warm Place, on his The Downward Spiral album. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with him regarding Bowie’s influence on The Downward Spiral.
———————————————————————————————————————–
“I was really into electronic music at the time. “David Bowie’s ‘Low’ was probably the single greatest influence on ‘The Downward Spiral’ for me. I got into Bowie in the ‘Scary Monsters’ era, then I picked up ‘Low’ and instantly fell for it. I related to it on a song-writing level, a mood level, and on a song-structure level…I like working within the framework of accessibility, and songs of course, but I also like things that are more experimental and instrumental, maybe.”
———————————————————————————————————————–
Crystal Japan is available on David Bowie’s 2001 All Saints (Collected Instrumentals 1977-1999) CD.
Thanx to my old mate Lanky Pearson for the single sleeve scans.