Today\u2019s Mail on Sunday has a giveaway CD with \u201cDavid Bowie\u2019s own choice of the 12 greatest tracks of his career.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t resist this even though I have pretty much everything already. It turned out to be worth it, if only for the two pages of new notes by the man himself within the paper. Completists will also want the CD for the reworked \u201cTime will crawl\u201d:<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019ve replaced the drum machine with true drums and added some crickety strings and remixed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Any revelations here? Not really, though there are some touches of detail. Like how Life on Mars came together. He was sitting on the steps of a bandstand in a park in South London when the riff came to him \u201cSailors bap-bap-bap-bap-baaa-bap\u201d, couldn\u2019t get it out of his head and rushed to work it up into a song at Haddon Hall in Southend Road.<\/p>\n
Of the song Bewlay Brothers, which sounds autobiographical, Bowie says:<\/p>\n
\n\u2026this wasn\u2019t just a song about brotherhood, so I didn\u2019t want to misrepresent it by using my true name. Having said that, I wouldn\u2019t know how to interpret the lyric other than suggesting that there are layers of ghosts within it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Bowie says that the aforementioned Time will Crawl was inspired by the Chernobyl, when a nuclear power station exploded:<\/p>\n
\nA complicated crucible of impressions collected in my head, prompted by this insanity, any one of which could have become a song. I stuck them all in Time Will Crawl.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This echoes what Dylan said about his (incomparably greater) song A Hard Rain\u2019s a-gonna fall, which is also associated with nuclear threat. In the sleeve notes to The Freewheelin\u2019 Bob Dylan, Nat Hentoff recalls Dylan saying that Hard Rain was written during the Cuban missile crisis, and adding:<\/p>\n
\nEvery line in it is actually the start of a while song. But when I wrote it, I thought I wouldn\u2019t have enough time alive to write all those songs so I put all I could into this one.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Bowie says he chose \u201csongs that I don\u2019t seem to tire of\u201d. There\u2019s nothing from his iconic album Ziggy Stardust (unless you count the live Hang on to yourself); draw your own conclusions. Here is what he chose:<\/p>\n
\n
- Life on Mars <\/li>\n
- Sweet Thing\/Candidate\/Sweet Thing (reprise) <\/li>\n
- The Bewlay Brothers <\/li>\n
- Lady Grinning Soul <\/li>\n
- Win <\/li>\n
- Some Are <\/li>\n
- Teenage Wildlife <\/li>\n
- Repetition <\/li>\n
- Fantastic Voyage <\/li>\n
- Loving the Alien <\/li>\n
- Time will crawl (MM Remix) <\/li>\n
- Hang on to yourself (Live Santa Monica \u201872) <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
The full article is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Technorati tags: david bowie<\/a>, iselect<\/a>, mail on sunday<\/a>, bob dylan<\/a>, hard rain<\/a>, chernobyl<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s Mail on Sunday has a giveaway CD with \u201cDavid Bowie\u2019s own choice of the 12 greatest tracks of his career.\u201d I couldn\u2019t resist this even though I have pretty much everything already. It turned out to be worth it, if only for the two pages of new notes by the man himself within the … Continue reading Bowie on Bowie in the Mail on Sunday<\/span>