Mars happy nation…
To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Life On Mars? single release, we’ve decided to post David’s recollections regarding the track from next week’s
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For this CD compilation I?ve selected twelve of my songs that I don?t seem to tire of. Few of them are well known but many of them still get sung at my concerts. Usually by me. I?ll start off with the hit.
Life On Mars?
This song was so easy. Being young was easy. A really beautiful day in the park, sitting on the steps of the bandstand. ?Sailors bap-bap-bap-bap-baaa-bap?. An anomic (not a ?gnomic?) heroine. Middle class ecstasy. I took a walk to Beckenham High Street to catch a bus to Lewisham to buy shoes and shirts but couldn?t get the riff out of my head. Jumped off two stops into the ride and more or less loped back to the house up on Southend Road.
Workspace was a big empty room with a chaise lounge; a bargain priced art nouveau screen (?William Morris? so I told anyone who asked); a huge overflowing freestanding ashtray and a grand piano. Little else. I started working it out on the piano and had the whole lyric and melody finished by late afternoon. Nice. Rick Wakeman came over a couple of weeks later and embellished the piano part and guitarist Mick Ronson created one of his first and best string parts for this song which now has become something of a fixture in my live shows.
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Not bad for an afternoon’s work!
If you missed them the first time, you can read David’s comments about the new version of Time Will Crawl in this news story from last week: 06.16.2008 NEWS: NEW BOWIE RECORDING ON M.O.S. iSELECTBOWIE CD.