Scary Monsters

David Bowie: Scary Monsters

By the end of the 1970s David Bowie seems to have made a concerted decision to move away from Rock'n'Roll (without giving it up entirely) and investigating acting whether that was as:

• a stage actor (Elephant Man)
• a film actor (see Bowie movies) or even
• providing one-off tracks for movie soundtracks (Cat People, The Falcon & The Snowman, Absolute Beginners)

and signalled this early in 1980 with a couple of highly theatrical performances on Saturday Night LIVE, which you can occasionally find on Youtube.

Scary Monsters, then, has always been a sad album for me. It was the last David Bowie album that really intrigued me and it was also the one in which he attempted to make a clean break from his past.  

Released in 1980, the album broke with a fabulous early music video for the single Ashes To Ashes, which had Bowie in a Pierrot clown suit with really heavy pancake make-up walking along a pebbled beach with fellow weirdos.

Suddenly it cuts to Major Tom, the spaceman from Bowie's first hit, Space Oddity floating comatose in space, while the real Bowie sang underneath:

"...Ashes to ashes
Fun to funky
We know Major Tom's...
...A junkie
Strung out
In Heaven's high
Hitting an...
...All-time low..."

Then it cuts to Bowie the clown, slowly sinking in a lake, intercut with a normal Bowie as an asylum inmate:

"...I've never done good things
I've never done bad things
I never did anything out of the blue..."

Then to the doomed Major Tom, trapped in outer space:

"...Want an axe to break the ice
Want to come down right now..."

...and then to the clown, once more, walking with several weirdos in front of a following bulldozer, seemingly all in agreeance that Major Tom was a junkie. Wild!

David Bowie: Ashes To Ashes

Flip to the album cover and Bowie's in the clown suit. Flip it over and for the first time in his career, he references his past, with an airbrushed montage of:

• Aladdin Sane
• Low
• Heroes &
• Lodger

Something was up and Bowie wanted us all to know.

Robert Fripp dominates proceedings with his arachnid-like careening guitar runs and even more flair than he displayed on Heroes but God only knows what Bowie's lyrics mean. Overall, there's the smell of decay in the air, like the opener, It's No Game with a bizarre, creepy Japanese woman talking gruffly, using lots of great sounding, vaguely threatening Oriental words...

"...Ore genjitsu kara shime dasare
Nani ga okkote irunoka wakara nai
Doko ni kyokun wa arunoka
Hitobito wa yubi o orareteiru
Konna dokusaisha ni iyashime rareru nowa kanashii..."

while Bowie fights to get his desperate vocal heard. Desperate about what? Well, his words don't help...

"...I am bored from the event
I really don't understand the situation
And it's no game..."

         It's No Game

Interestingly, Bowie is supposed to have put a fair bit of pre-production into the album (he normally improvised in the studio) and the whole album sounds tense, grand and abrasive but...mostly self-involved. He's no Joni Mitchell, no sirree, his is not an angst that one can identify directly with, Bowie's angst is delivered for your observation only and perhaps, his.

With that in mind, though, there's still a wonderful noise to be made. Try the second single off the album, Fashion, a slice of anglo funk steroid-pumped by some snippy Robert Fripp angular guitars and a simpleton lyric that seems to send up style-Nazis. If I remember correctly, it was neat for dancing to, as well. 

"...There's a brand new dance
But I don't know it's name
That people from bad homes
Do again and again
It's big and it's bland
Full tension and fear
They do it over there
But we don't do it here

Fashion - Turn to the left
Fashion - Turn to the right
We are the goon squad
And we're coming to town
Beep-beep - Beep-beep..."

             Fashion  

The third single off the album was a shortened version of the title track, issued without a music video, probably as is with most albums, to keep sales chugging along. That's a shame, because Fripp's work is exciting and it would have been great to see a music video create a visual around them.

What's it about? Oh, glad you asked...

 "...She asked me to stay and I stole her room
She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind
Now she's stupid in the street and she can't socialise
Well I love the little girl and I'll love her till the day she dies

She wails
Jimmy's guitar sound jealousies scream
Waiting at the lights know what I mean

Scary monsters, super creeps
Keeps me running, running scared..."

          Scary Monsters

There, now you know.

We could go on like this all day analysing Mr. B's lyrics but "sloppy" is still sloppy even if it is "atmospeheric sloppy". Look, there's some great stuff on Scary Monsters. Enjoy it like a semi-abstract painting and it makes a wonderful, tense noise.   I enjoyed Scarey Monsters, a lot and still do, occasionally...but I agreed with David, Major Tom was "strung up in Heaven's high, hitting an all-time low...".

For more info, see:

• wikipedia: Scary Monsters
• the original Scary Monsters RCA promotional poster
• a very brief but thorough look at Bowie's activities in 1980 from Roger Griffin
• The New York Times with what is now, a quaint analysis of the new artform, music videos, as seen in Bowie's Ashes To Ashes
• a monstrously long New Musical Express article on everything Bowie at that time
• The Face with  a very highbrow article on the Bowie phenomenon which references his then-new album, Scary Monsters, towards the end
• Rolling Stone chat with Bowie about his life, Scary Monsters, then with guitarist Robert Fripp etc.

By the time the promotion of Scary Monsters was winding down, Bowie had re-established himself as a cutting edge, left-field pop star.

However, that wasn't really what he wanted to be. He wanted mainstream success. The first step in that process was a dental makeover, (a long-running process that eventually provided him with brand new teeth) and then, a collaboration with what was then one of the biggest rock acts in the world, Queen.  

While I consider the resultant single, Under Pressure, to be one of the most memorable songs of the 1980s with a particularly interesting lyrical construction. You can read about that and the story behind the song's making at my blog.  Under Pressure has always been available on Queen albums, it's now also available on Bowie's greatest hits collection, Best Of Bowie.