DAVID BOWIE: Changesonebowie ( RCA)

I GUESS that one of the main functions of any greatest hits album is to explain to anyone who isn't a hard core fan exactly what all the fuss is all about.

I've always had a sneaking suspicion that David Bowie isn't at heart a rock and roller. He always appeared to be more like a strange auteur actor who used the medium of rock to perform a self scripted and orchestrated on-going drama.

The motive behind this drama isn't always clear. Certainly it constantly contributes to the greater glory of David; the question is, does it really go any further.

If Bowie did set out to use rock and roll as a means to build himself into a superstar he has been immeasurably successful. He has become one of the 70's leading rock innovators without actually innovating. To be totally uncharitable, his work is wholly derivative.

Bowie's talent lies in the way he juxtaposes what has already been done. His sources range over and beyond rock and roll. His knowledge of popular media is like a well stocked card index, and he has an instinct for formulas that will grab the mass imagination.

Before you Bowie fans reach for your knives, let me hasten to add that this kind of eclecticism is a perfectly valid form of art. Problems only occur when that eclecticism ranges into potentially dangerous areas. The current flirtations with the trappings of fascism, always latent in Bowie's presentation but now looking increasingly overt, raises a moral problem. If the means of getting a crowd response involves unpleasant, violent or even deadly side effects, does the artist have to take the responsibility for the results? Is he actually in control, or just part of the power/energy feedback circuit?

The Rolling Stones faced the results of their Satanist period at Altamont, and hurriedly backed away. On another level, the Nazis faced the results of their crowd appeal at the post-war Nuremberg trials, and many were hanged.

Back at the album, the opener is ‘Space Oddity. The record – selected, compiled and titled by Bowie – is presumably some kind of summation of his career so far, and I guess the post-Pepper ‘Oddity’ is as good a place to start as any. This rather light-weight curio was, after all, Bowie's first chart success.

This is followed by a previously unissued version of ‘John, I 'm Only Dancing’. There's almost a feeling of Lennon about the track, except it's decanted in such a limp gay bar environment that it's hard to believe.

‘Changes’ seems strategically placed, as it marks the start of the Big Time in Bowie's career and leads, on the album, into ‘Ziggy Stardust’, the first fully formed Bowie persona.

‘Suffragette City’ follows, and the idea begins to form that Bowie's songs are actually a kind of totem, a prop for his personality experiments. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's a detachment between Bowie and the subject of the song. It's kind of alien to the real core of rock and roll. Maybe that's why it became the anthem of the New York glitter/rough trade junior faggots.

With a riff handed down from the best British R&B, the theme develops in ‘Jean Genie’ (is it about Iggy Stooge?). It's interesting that even in the context of this track Bowie never actually allows himself to cut loose with raw power, a thing that's hard to resist over this riff, believe me.

Side two finds Bowie's apocalyptic vision in full swing. ‘Diamond Dogs’ seems to be the start of the plunge into gratuitous paranoid visions. Perhaps a better phrase is counter-soul, a needless dwelling on the ugly side of the human spirit. Try playing Otis Redding's ‘I've Been Loving You Too Long’ immediately after this and you'll see what I mean.

It's possible that ‘Rebel Rebel’ is the most sympathetic and human track on the whole album; a single and affectionate contact between trick and trade in the middle of the commercialised lust. Certainly the weekend amateur, teen transvestites in their sister's frocks saw it as their ultimate celebration.

Suddenly with ‘Young Americans’ we are presented with another change. The detachment is stripped away with the make-up. The imagery isn't clear, but for the first time Bowie seems to be observing rather than monopolising the central role. Even so, even if, as I assume, ‘Young Americans’ is a post-Vietnam song, its observation has the kind of perverse objectivity that can be found in movies like the Night Porter.

The objectivity slips away on both ‘Fame’ and ‘Golden Years’, to be replaced by the kind of soul cliches that James Brown has passed off for years as a substitute for thought.

Changesone is by no means a complete document. If anything it's a chronicle of an artist stabbing in various ( and in pop terms, usually successful) directions, but keeping up a constant barrier of self-concealment.

Unlike Dylan, Bowie never makes even a deliberate slip. Where Dylan, conducts a complex, even convoluted gavot between expression and privacy; communication and paranoia; between is he/isn't he, Bowie's game only amounts to isn't.

Maybe this is the true paradox of the actor. There may be a vast number of masks to strip away, but there's always the chance that the removal of the final one will leave nothing at all.

Or could that be the ultimate nihilist message of David Bowie?

© Mick Farren 1976

close window