Sordid details following. It’s all in here: summing up practically everything from the ‘70s and previewing so many trends to follow in the ‘80s. Everyone heard this, even if they weren’t listening. In this one song you have punk melting down prog and fermenting new wave, done, typically, without a safety net. One flash of light, but no smoking pistol. Nothing by anyone else before or since sounds anything like this. Bowie made being beyond scrutiny a career move, yet if any individual song could summarize (yeah right) what he was about, “Ashes to Ashes” showcases the elements that made him so inimitable: the esoteric conceptualizing, the wit, the irony, the humor (!) and the ways he savors the English language, less a poet than a word painter. (Want an axe to break the ice: There’s an image a young listener can really get his mind warped around. To discover, later, it’s a cheeky riff on Kafka’s famous dictum? Mind = Blown.) So what’s it about? Like much of Bowie’s best work, it’s obvious and impossible to pinpoint a meaning or message.
Strung out in heaven’s high hitting an all-time low: a line leaving little to the imagination; it could be the elevator pitch for the movie, it could encapsulate the willful contradictions of Bowie’s career, it could be a commentary on science, capitalism or Art Itself. For starters. Certainly autobiographical elements abound (Time and again I tell myself, I’ll stay clean tonight), and with the name-check of Major Tom, a brilliant case of art imitating life or vice versa.
I’ve heard a rumour from Ground Control: Where “Space Oddity” which, incidentally, closed out the previous decade, manages to balance discovery and despair, “Ashes to Ashes” is all about wizened desolation (The shrieking of nothing is killing). And could any artist aside from Bowie execute this burnt-out holler from Beyond and make it swing? Fun to funky, indeed. A barren soul, a heavy heart, scared eyes following those green wheels: the diary of a madman, the madcap laughs, you’d better not mess with Major Tom.
I’m stuck with a valuable friend: I never done good things (I never done good things), I never done bad things (I never done bad things), I never did anything out of the blue, woah-oh (woah-oh). That last echoed “woah-oh”: deadpan, droll, disturbing. (Did we even discuss the video? The more said about it, the better.) No heroes, here. Now he’s gone and our planet’s glowing. I’ve loved. All I’ve needed: love. Maybe that’s the message. Of the song, of his life, of any of our lives. I’m happy. Hope you’re happy, too. What he said.
This essay appeared as part of The Weeklings’ tribute to David Bowie, published on 1/21/16.
