Month: October 2014

 

“It’s a Drive-In Saturday”

 

For those of you in Chicago to see the David Bowie Is exhibition, you may want to tie in a trip to the Ed Pashcke Art Center where the current exhibition is Steve Schapiro: Warhol, Reed, & Bowie.

The photographer spoke to Chicagoist about the exhibition recently. Here’s an edited extract from the article regarding Bowie.

 

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CHICAGOIST: You’re a great observer of humanity, even with iconic, larger-then-life figures like Bowie. I am thinking specifically of the Bowie photograph from The Man Who Fell to Earth, one of the highlights of the show. This was printed at the last minute for this exhibit, correct? There is a sombreness and vulnerability in this work while it is magical.

 

STEVE SCHAPIRO: It’s an image that was never printed till about two weeks before the show. I looked at that transparency and realized it is a really good picture, and it was only when I thought we needed another Bowie picture to round out the exhibit that I went back and looked at the transparencies and I found this image. It had never been edited or printed. It is entirely untouched.

 

CHICAGOIST: Do you find when you are photographing a performer like Bowie, a quintessential performer and artist, I am thinking, like you were saying, he was very aware he was being photographed, but he also seemed to put his guard down for you. Can you talk about that?

 

STEVE SCHAPIRO: I think Bowie is very smart and I think he has a great sense of images and in coming up with new kinds of images. The first session I did with him started at four in the afternoon and ended at four the next morning when I did that picture of him on the motorcycle, and we used the headlights of a car to light it. He would constantly come up with new costumes and I would pick up my camera to photograph him and it would be an incredible outfit, but he would stop me and say, “Wait a minute, I need to fix something,” and he would go to the dressing room and come back 20 minutes later in something totally different. Fortunately, there would be a lot of things he would try on, so we would get a lot of pictures. The picture of him smoking a cigarette was a cover of Rolling Stone and it has been used a lot, but it was originally the cover for Rolling Stone.

 

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You can read the full thing on the Chicagoist site, where there are also links to the Steve Schapiro: Warhol, Reed, & Bowie Exhibition.

Speaking of The Man Who Fell to Earth, if you’re in Chicago over the weekend to see David Bowie Is, you may also want to attend the Bowie Film Festival while you’re at the MCA. 

You are also encouraged to attend the film festival as a character played by Bowie in one of the films. TJ Newton the thirsty alien disguised as a human, Jareth the child-snatching Goblin King, friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, or the star of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars himself.

We’ll leave you with the full schedule, which kicks off with Basquiat on Saturday at 1:00pm.

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Join the MCA for a weekend that celebrates some of David Bowie’s greatest moments on the silver screen: from cult classics like Labyrinth (1986) and The Hunger (1983) to Bowie’s notable performances in films such as The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and his portrayal of Andy Warhol in Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat (1996). All screenings take place in the Edlis Neeson Theater.

Come as the Goblin King, Warhol, or the vampire John Blaylock: visitors are invited to dress up in Bowie-inspired attire for this event. Tag #DavidBowieIs on your photos.

 

Schedule

Saturday

 

1 pm: Basquiat

Directed by Julian Schnabel, 1996, USA

108 minutes

Basquiat tells the story of the meteoric rise and fall of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat starts out as SAMO—a graffiti artist living in a cardboard box in Thompkins Square Park—before he is “discovered” by Andy Warhol, and the New York art world quickly makes him a star. Success, however, has a high price, and Basquiat pays with friendship, love, and eventually, his life.

 

3 pm: David Bowie 5 Years

Directed by Francis Whately, 2013, UK

59 minutes

Featuring a wealth of unseen footage and thoughtful interviews, this documentary highlights five key years in David Bowie’s music career and charts his continual evolution through the various roles that make him an icon of our times.

 

4:15 pm: The Man Who Fell To Earth

Directed by Nicolas Roeg, 1976, the Netherlands

139 minutes

Seeking help for his drought-stricken planet, a space alien crash-lands on Earth and becomes a fabulously wealthy industrialist. In his quest to build a return spacecraft, however, money and its attendant decadence ultimately exert a stronger gravitational pull.

 

6:30–7:30 pm GO GLAM!

Get your very own lightning bolt with our Bowie make-up artists!

 

7:30 pm: Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Directed by D. A. Pennebaker, 1973, UK

90 minutes

The July 3, 1973 historic concert of the “leper Messiah” was to be David Bowie’s last concert with his Ziggy persona and the Spiders from Mars. A great medley of “Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud”/“All The Young Dudes”/“Oh! You Pretty Things” and covers of The Velvet Underground and The Rolling Stones are but some of the highlights.

 

9 pm: The Hunger

Directed by Tony Scott, 1983, USA

97 minutes

Miriam, a centuries-old vampire, preys on urban clubgoers with her vampire lover John. When John suddenly begins to age rapidly and waste away, Miriam casts a spell upon Sarah Roberts, a doctor who researches premature aging.

 

Sunday

 

Noon: Labyrinth

Directed by Jim Henson, 1986, USA

101 minutes

Fifteen-year-old Sarah accidentally wishes her baby stepbrother, Toby, away to the Goblin King. Jareth, King of the Goblins, threatens to keep Toby and turn him into a goblin if Sarah cannot complete his ever-changing Labyrinth in thirteen hours.

 

2:30 pm: Absolute Beginners

Directed by Julien Temple, 1986, USA

108 minutes

In this musical adaptation of Colin MacInnes’s novel about life in late-1950s London, nineteen-year-old Colin is hopelessly in love with Crepe Suzette, a model whose relationships are strictly connected to her progress in the fashion world. In order to earn her love, Colin gets involved with a pop promoter and tries to crack the big time, but he finds his new life moves further away from his ideals and Suzette.

 

“Somebody special, Looking at me” *

 

As you are well aware, Jonathan Barnbrook is the designer behind The Next Day campaign, not to mention his work on Heathen and Reality, and the associated single releases from each of the three albums.

In NME’s three-page piece about Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) and the upcoming Nothing Has Changed compilation they published last week, there was a page given over to Barnbrook’s discussion regarding the design of Nothing Has Changed, or, to employ the correct style; Nothing has changed.

Well, they only used a small part of Barnbrook’s contribution, so he has kindly given us permission to use the full, unedited piece here. It’s a great read and he sheds light on those mysterious stickers which we first revealed here.

Over to you Mr Barnbrook.

 

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There is no longer such a thing as ‘the record cover’, quite early on in the process of designing ‘The Next Day’ I realised that the release of an album is an event, not something physical, I don’t mean that it is just digital now, more, it is distributed, talked about publicised in every format. It now appears on websites, twitter etc. The physical package in the shop is but a small part of what could actually be described best as an event.

To deal with this very modern issue for the design it needs to be an underlying concept that works for everything. For ‘The Next Day’ it was the white square, which took on a life of its own and announced Bowie was back, it played with his identity after an absence of 10 years and your expectations of the pop star as an image to project your own thoughts on.

Design for ‘Nothing has changed’ was a very different task. We have the context of Bowie producing music again and a whole generation acknowledging his influence and also others discovering him anew. We are dealing with a set of tracks that are curated from his past which are already known. It is a not a release which shouts that someone is back with the burning light of new work, but more a collection that needs to be portrayed with a design that is a little bit softer and more reflective in its tone.

Here I was also faced with the task to make something of interest in a world where the record cover has simply become, ‘nice’ and not the subject of discussion or adulation that it was in the 20th century. This is coupled with the fact that most ‘Best Of’ designs are atrocious – overdone montages of library photos of the musician that look as though they were possibly not even seen by them, meaning that the design is not usually for the true fans. There is very little mindspace to find beauty or to identify with the artist. Instead this design for ‘Nothing has changed’ is deliberately restrained, minimal, and well, un-designed, allowing the contemplative nature of the images to come through.

To be true to the content, photos from different times in Bowie’s career are used, including one from today. A different image appears on each format. The linking theme is Bowie looking in the mirror. Something which was a strong enough ‘archetype’ to provide an immediately identifiable visual link, but also to make it clear this was a collection of songs through the experience of one person’s life, not necessarily a specific concept or period of time as albums tend to be.

Each image is captioned (and it has been made to look like a caption rather than a title), with the line from the Bowie song  ‘Sunday’ from ‘Heathen’, which is ‘Nothing has changed’, as the title of the album. All the other information appears upon a sticker which can be peeled off leaving only the image and this sentence. The typography is vaguely reminiscent of the time period but not overtly so. There is nothing that makes me cringe more than a retro cover for a compilation, these kind of releases are only interesting if they are viewed in the light of today, not full of nostalgia for a time that no longer exists.

The use of a caption rather than title creates a dialogue between the image and text. From this there are of course the rather clichéd thoughts about Bowie changing musical styles all through his career but it immediately throws up some other more interesting thoughts. Bowie as the young dandy and the obvious comparisons with Oscar Wilde and ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ with the portrait that ages. In the younger photos, with Bowie looking in the mirror, how is he imagining his future? Does he, as we all do at that time, feel immortal? Does he see himself in the way that others see him? As Ziggy Stardust, does he see the separation between himself and the character he has created? With the later images, as a man who has lived an incredibly unusual life, what is he thinking about? His legacy? How the world perceives him? When he sees his reflection, does he at any moment imagine himself in a similar way to someone who has listened to his music does?

Other questions too that we all face arise in my mind, how does he deal with getting old, his mortality, his looks changing? Is this more difficult for someone who has constantly been photographed and who’s image has been everywhere? Can a soul and the decisions made be seen in someone’s face?

Although I have taken time to explain these covers here, they are meant to be talked about far less than ’The Next Day’, more I hope that they do what a good record cover should do, enhance the experience of listening to the music and also maybe make the listener reflect a little on what a ‘Best Of’ actually is, not just a grab-bag of songs that by a series of unconnected events are regarded as the ‘best tunes’, but a whole life experience of one musician, some of which was planned, some of it was instinctive, some of it influenced by stuff beyond anybody’s control. But, all was driven ultimately by one person’s unique creative force and how they dealt with and interpreted the world.

 

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Barnbrook

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Thanks Jonathan, and congratulations on another beautiful design concept.

 

* For those of you wondering about today’s lyric quotation and what Bowie song contains that line…it’s actually from the Bryan Ferry song, If There Is Something, which appeared on the debut Roxy Music album and was covered by Tin Machine for their second studio album.

 

“A couple of songs from your old scrapbook“

 

Out today is the NME Bowie cover feature we told you about yesterday and last week.

The piece kicks off with a three-page article which has the following standfirst: “’Nothing Has Changed’, claims the title of a new David Bowie greatest hits collection. Dan Stubbs picks through its new material, artwork and track listing to see what it reveals about the man who changed everything”.

The remaining seven pages are headed: “David Bowie’s greatest hits according to NME – with a little help from our friends“.

NME Staff members, along with several contributors with a musical bent, have selected forty Bowie classics from across the years.

It wouldn’t be fair to give you any spoilers now, suffice to say the great majority of the selections are from the seventies, with an occasional toe dipped in the eighties. 1986 being the most recent year covered.

 

“These are your favourite things”

 

David Bowie’s most frequently employed producer, Tony Visconti, has selected his own favourite Bowie recordings for the NME Blog.

It’s a generous list that doesn’t lean as heavily on Tony’s own work with DB as you might have expected from a less giving producer. Indeed, almost 50% of the tracks are the work of other producers.

Anyway, here’s what the master knob-twiddler had to say regarding each track.

 

My Personal Favourite David Bowie Tracks and Why I Love Them by Tony Visconti

 

It’s Gonna Be Me (Produced by Tony Visconti. From Young Americans, 1975)

“If Bowie and Ray Charles wrote a song together, this would be it. Soulful and sad. Great vocal performance.”

 

Sweet Thing (Produced by David Bowie. From Diamond Dogs, 1974)

“Strange, goes to dark places, yet romantic. It’s almost impossible to separate it from the following song Candidate.”

 

Sunday (Produced by David Bowie, Tony Visconti. From Heathen, 2002)

“So ominous and atmospheric. A big shift in his writing. The vocals are wonderful.”

 

Blackout (Produced by David Bowie, Tony Visconti. From “Heroes”, 1977)”

“Insane (in a good way) music, lyrics and vocal performance. Dennis Davis is spectacular, live drums, no overdubs.”

 

Life On Mars? (Produced by Ken Scott, David Bowie. From Hunky Dory, 1971)

“A classic, always very moving to hear. Ronson wrote a wonderful string arrangement. Goosebumps galore!”

 

African Night Flight (Produced by David Bowie, Tony Visconti. From Lodger, 1979)

“Ingenious commandeering of Eno over a standard Roland beat box. Not apparent, but this is a rap song…”

 

She Shook Me Cold (Produced by Tony Visconti. From The Man Who Sold The World, 1970)

“Birth of grunge. I’m proud of all involved, Ronson, Woodmansey and Bowie. No overdubs, just us.”

 

It’s No Game (Part One) (Produced by David Bowie, Tony Visconti. From Scary Monsters, 1980)

“Just when you thought you’ve heard everything – a Japanese woman rapping on a song Bowie wrote when he was 16.”

 

Stay (Produced by David Bowie, Harry Maslin. From Station To Station, 1976)

“Funky and passionate, I always listen to this one to the end (and it’s long).”

 

I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday (Produced by David Bowie, Nile Rodgers. From ‘Black Tie White Noise’, 1993)

“Morrissey wrote it, Bowie made this his own, a tearjerker. One of his best vocal performances ever.”

 

Lady Grinning Soul (Produced by Ken Scott, David Bowie. From ‘Aladdin Sane’, 1973)

“An ex-girlfriend played this over and over. I grew to love it (but not her). One of (pianist) Garson’s shining hours and, again, a great vocal performance.”

 

Check out the NME piece with accompanying videos, here.

 

“Just about the best you can hear”

 

As we mentioned last week, In celebration of the upcoming release of David Bowie’s Nothing Has Changed Best Of compilation, the new issue of the world’s most popular music weekly has a ten-page cover feature wherein they list Bowie’s greatest hits according to NME. (Issue dated October 18th, on sale October 15th)

The blurb on the front cover, which we can exclusively reveal here, reads thus: “BOWIE –  His real greatest hits as decided by NME – with a little help from Thurston Moore, Wild Beasts, Johnny Marr, St Vincent, Temples, Anna Calvi and more.”

And in the words of the magazine itself, ’is it the usual suspects?’.

This NME exclusive is peppered with great pictorial content including original lyric sheets handwritten by David Bowie.

 

“In the world of today, for tomorrow’s man”

 

The advertising strapline ran with the legend: “Tomorrow Belongs To Those Who Can Hear It Coming”, which is ironic considering it seems like “HEROES” was only released yesterday, not 37 years ago!

The Bowie/Visconti produced “HEROES” peaked at #3 in the UK album chart in November 1977, a year in which it was also named Album Of The Year in both NME and Melody Maker. No mean feat considering the stiff competition it was up against at the time.

With this in mind, it’s difficult to understand why the title track, released in September 1977, only made it to #24 on the UK single chart, particularly considering how the track has achieved anthem status these days…the 2012 Olympics being the most recent example of its massive popularity.

Anyway, if the album has thus far escaped your ears, prepare yourself for magic.

 

“I can still hear some pop…popular 6 Music”

 

Congrats to David Bowie and all involved with the creation of Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) with the news that BBC Radio 6 Music has put the track on their ‘A’ Playlist.

Even though several 6 Music DJs are already playing the track, the playlist officially takes effect from this coming Saturday 18th October.

But, in the meantime, don’t forget you can listen to Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) here on the new DavidBowie.com splash page. 

 

“Twenty thousand people, Cross Bösebrücke” or… “To paint that love upon a white balloon”

 

On the 37th anniversary of the release of “Heroes”, AFP has reported that Germany will throw a giant street party next month to mark 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall with light shows, Beethoven and a rendition of David Bowie’s Cold War hit “Heroes”.

Here’s an edited extract from the article.

 

On-stage talks by former anti-communist dissidents will be part of the festivities to mark the anniversary of November 9, 1989, when people power spelt the death-knell of East Germany.

“With the street festival, we will celebrate the peaceful revolution and the fall of the Wall,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters on Tuesday. “We will be thinking of the many courageous and determined people whose persistent protests made possible the happy events of November 9, 1989 and, subsequently, German unity.”

On that day East German border guards, overwhelmed by large crowds, threw open the gates to West Berlin, allowing free passage through the detested barrier for the first time since it was built in 1961 and spelling the beginning of the end of the Iron Curtain.

To mark the anniversary, British singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel will perform “Heroes”, which Bowie recorded at Hansa studio close to the Wall in 1977 when he was living in the then West Berlin.

Celebrations will kick off two days earlier with the launch of an ambitious art project featuring 8,000 illuminated white balloons pegged to the ground along a 15-kilometre (nine-mile) stretch of the Wall’s former path.

On November 9, the balloons will be released from their ropes and symbolically set free into the night sky, to the stirring sounds of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

Berlin city government spokesman Richard Meng predicted “it will be an emotional weekend when Berliners get to celebrate the happiest day in the city’s recent history”.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up a Christian pastor’s daughter in the East, is set to inaugurate a new permanent exhibition at the Berlin Wall Memorial.

 

Listen to Bowie’s original Heroes/Helden on the “Heroes” 4-track EP.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Gabriel’s version of the Bowie classic, he recorded the song in 2010 for his Scratch My Back Album. Listen to it here.

You can read the full AFP news piece here.

 

FOOTNOTE: Bowie is pictured “standing by the Wall” in 1987 by Denis O’Regan.

 

“Just playing (on) that latest record”

 

Many of you have expressed an interest in who the musicians on Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) might be. Well, we aim to please, so here they are.

 

David Bowie: Vocals

 

Maria Schneider Orchestra:

 

Maria Schneider: Arranger, Conductor

Donny McCaslin: Tenor Soloist

Ryan Keberle: Trombone Soloist

 

Jesse Han: Flute, Alto Flute, Bass Flute

David Pietro: Alto Flute, Clarinet, Soprano Sax

Rich Perry: Tenor Sax

Donny McCaslin: Soprano Sax, Tenor Sax 

Scott Robinson: Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Contrabass Clarinet

 

Tony Kadleck: Trumpet, Fluegelhorn

Greg Gisbert: Trumpet, Fluegelhorn

Augie Haas: Trumpet, Fluegelhorn

Mike Rodriguez: Trumpet, Fluegelhorn

 

Keith O’Quinn: Trombone

Ryan Keberle: Trombone

Marshall Gilkes: Trombone

George Flynn: Bass Trombone, Contrabass Trombone

 

Ben Monder: Guitar

Frank Kimbrough: Piano

Jay Anderson: Bass

Mark Guiliana: Drums

 

If you’ve not actually managed to hear Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) yet, there’s a link on the new splash page here on www.DavidBowie.com to the relevant bit of Guy Garvey’s worldwide, exclusive, first play on his BBC Radio 6 Music show yesterday.

Both versions of the 10″ sleeve are pictured here, the Parlophone version, which you are already familiar with (due on November 17), is joined by the Columbia version which will be available exclusively in the US for Record Store Day, Black Friday 2014, on November 28.

 

“And it was stalking time for the Moonboys”

 

For those able to access it, you will have just heard Guy Garvey’s worldwide exclusive, uninterrupted play of the full-length version of David Bowie’s next single release, Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime), on his BBC Radio 6 Music show; Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour. (http://smarturl.it/GGon6)

Kicking off the programme with Life On Mars?, and describing today as David Bowie Day, Guy followed the classic 1971 Hunky Dory track with a fine spoken tribute to Bowie and his contribution to music.

Mr Garvey’s contagious excitement in anticipation of Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) prevailed throughout the first forty minutes, and then, after giving a list of things he doesn’t often utter, he introduced the track thus:

 

“Here’s another thing I never thought I’d find myself saying…Time now for the first play, anywhere ever in the world on the radio, of David Bowie’s new song. It’s called Sue, it’s seven and a half minutes of glorious Bowie-esque drama and it’s my absolute privilege to play it on 6 music, the greatest radio station on Earth. Ladies and gentlemen, David Bowie and Sue…”

 

So what did you think? Did Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) sound how you were expecting it to?

For those of you wondering about the relevance of today’s lyric quotation, the loose theme of the show was The Moon.

And no, that’s not Sue in our picture, it’s Maria Schneider of the Maria Schneider Orchestra who recorded the Bowie/Visconti produced track with Bowie in New York during the summer.

 

To save you trying to transcribe them, we’ll leave you with the full set of lyrics to Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) which is released as a single via Parlophone on November 17th in the UK. (Regional variations apply)

 

Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)

 

Sue, I got the job

We’ll buy the house

You’ll need to rest

But now we’ll make it

 

Sue, the clinic called

The x-ray’s fine

I brought you home

I just said home

 

Sue, you said you wanted writ

“Sue the virgin” on your stone

For your grave

 

Why too dark to speak the words?

For I know that you have a son

Oh, folly, Sue

 

Ride the train I’m far from home

In a season of crime none need atone

I kissed your face

 

Sue, I pushed you down beneath the weeds

Endless faith in hopeless deeds

I kissed your face

I touched your face

Sue, Good-bye

 

Sue, I found your note

That you wrote last night

It can’t be right

You went with him

 

Sue, I never dreamed

I’m such a fool

Right from the start

You went with that clown

 

10″ – http://smarturl.it/BowieSue10

Digital – http://smarturl.it/BowieSueiTunes