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Ashes to Ashes (David Bowie song)

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"Ashes to Ashes"
Song

"Ashes to Ashes" is a single by David Bowie, released in 1980. It made #1 in the UK and was the first cut from the Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) album, also a #1 hit. As well as its musical qualities, it is noted for its innovative video, directed by Bowie and David Mallet. Bowie has said that with this song he was "wrapping up the seventies really for myself, and that seemed a good enough epitaph for it".[1]

Music and lyrics

Melancholic and introspective, "Ashes to Ashes" featured Bowie’s reinterpretation of "a guy that’s been in such an early song", namely Major Tom from his first hit in 1969, "Space Oddity". Described as "containing more messages per second" than any single released in 1980,[2] the song also included plaintive reflections on the singer’s moral and artistic journey:

I’ve never done good things
I’ve never done bad things
I never did anything out of the blue

Instead of a hippie astronaut who casually slips the bonds of a crass and material world to journey beyond the stars, Bowie now saw Major Tom as a "junkie, strung out in heaven's high, hitting an all-time low". The last line was interpreted as a play on the title of Bowie’s 1977 album Low, which charted his withdrawal inwards following his drug excesses in America a short time before, another reversal of Major Tom’s original withdrawal 'outwards' or towards space.[2]

The final lines, "My mama said, to get things done, you better not mess with Major Tom", have been compared to the verse from a nursery rhyme:[3]

My mother said
That I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood

Bowie himself said in an interview with NME shortly after the single's release, "It really is an ode to childhood, if you like, a popular nursery rhyme. It's about space men becoming junkies (laughs)."[4]

Musically "Ashes to Ashes" was notable for its delicate synthetic string sound, counterpointed by hard-edged funk bass, and its complex vocal layering. Perhaps Bowie's most sophisticated sonic work to date, its choir-like textures were created by Chuck Hammer with four multi-tracked guitar synthesizers, each playing opposing chord inversions; this was underpinned by Bowie's dead-pan, chanted background voices.[5]

Video

File:Ashes to Ashes video.jpg
Solarised colour in the music video

The video clip for "Ashes to Ashes" was one of the most iconic of the 1980s. Costing £250,000, it was at the time the most expensive music video ever made.[3] It incorporated scenes both in solarised colour (helped by an innovative Quantel Paintbox technique) and in stark black-and-white, featuring Bowie in the gaudy pierrot costume that became the dominant visual representation of his Scary Monsters phase. Also appearing were Steve Strange and other members of the London Blitz scene, forerunners of (later participants in) the New Romantic movement that was heavily influenced by Bowie’s music and image.[3]

Bowie described the shot of himself and the Blitz Kids marching towards the camera in front of a bulldozer as symbolising "oncoming violence".[6] Scenes of the singer in a space suit - that suggested a hospital life-support system - and others showing him locked in what appeared to be a padded room, made reference to both Major Tom and to Bowie’s new, rueful interpretation of him. Contrary to received opinion, the elderly woman lecturing Bowie at the end of the clip was not his real mother.[1] Record Mirror readers voted "Ashes to Ashes" and Bowie's next single, "Fashion", the best music videos of 1980.[7]

Release

"Ashes to Ashes" hit #4 in the UK Singles Chart in its first week of release, rising to #1 a week later, making it Bowie’s fastest-selling single to that point in time.[3] It was issued in three different sleeves, the first 100,000 copies including one of four sets of stamps, all featuring Bowie in the pierrot outfit he wore in the video.[8] The B-side, "Move On", was a track lifted from his previous album, Lodger (1979). The US release had "It's No Game (No. 1)" as the B-side, while the flip side of the German release was "Alabama Song". The single did not chart in America.

Track listing

  1. "Ashes to Ashes" (Bowie) – 3:34
  2. "Move On" (Bowie) – 3:16

Production credits

Alternate versions

There have long been rumours of an extended unreleased version of the song, allegedly some 13 minutes long and featuring additional verses, a longer outro and a synthesizer solo.[1] A 12:55 version that appeared on the bootleg From a Phoenix... The Ashes Shall Rise was a fake, repeating the song's instrumental breaks to achieve its additional length.[9] Similarly, an 11:44 version on bootleg albums such as Glamour, Vampires of the Human Flesh and Monsters to Ashes was again nothing more the original track with segments repeated and looped.

Live versions

Other releases

  • To promote the single in August 1980, a so-called medley of "Space Oddity" and "Ashes to Ashes", called "The Continuing Story of Major Tom", was released on 12" in the US.[8] However, this medley was simply "Space Oddity" cross-fading into the 7" single edit of "Ashes to Ashes". The promo's B-side was the full-length album version of "Ashes to Ashes".
  • It has appeared on the following Bowie compilations:

Cover versions

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Nicholas Pegg (2000). The Complete David Bowie: pp.29-31
  2. ^ a b Roy Carr & Charles Shaar Murray (1981). Bowie: An Illustrated Record: pp.109-116
  3. ^ a b c d David Buckley (1999). Strange Fascination - David Bowie: The Definitive Story: pp.366-369
  4. ^ Angus MacKinnon (1980). "The Future Isn't What It Used to Be". NME (13 September1980): p.37
  5. ^ Chris Welch (1999). David Bowie: We Could Be Heroes: p.136
  6. ^ Steve Malins (2007). "Meeting the New Romantics", MOJO 60 Years of Bowie: p.78
  7. ^ Nicholas Pegg (2000). Op Cit: pp.75-76
  8. ^ a b Scary Monsters at BowieGoldenYears
  9. ^ Illustrated db Discography
Preceded by UK number one single
August 23 1980 		Succeeded by
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