The Intro

Is this where 80s pop music truly began? Much as David Bowie’s first number 1 Space Oddity bid farewell to the 60s, its sequel Ashes to Ashes saw ‘the Action Man’ put a full stop on his most experimental period, while future New Romantics took note.

Before

Not that his best-selling single achieved the top spot when the public first heard the tale of Major Tom in 1969. It was a 1975 reissue by RCA, released after his album Young Americans. Soon after the re-release came Golden Years, a bridge between the blue-eyed soul of the last LP and his next, which peaked at eight. But as great as the new material was, Bowie was becoming more and more addicted to cocaine. Weight was falling off his already slender body, he wasn’t sleeping, and his brain was flirting with an unhealthy interest in fascism.

All this and an upcoming starring role as an alien in an adaptation of The Man Who Fell to Earth resulted in his latest character, the Thin White Duke. He later claimed to have no memory of recording his next album. That one of his greatest albums, Station to Station, was the result, is insane. A brilliant mix of soul, funk, balladry and krautrock, this LP was another sign of what was to come – the so-called ‘Berlin Trilogy’.

Whether the ‘Victoria Station Incident’, where Bowie may or may not have greeted fans with a Nazi salute, happened or not, the controversy suggested the Thin White Duke was entering dangerous territory. However, his decision to move to West Berlin in 1976 along with partner-in-crime Iggy Pop was actually an attempt to get better. Working with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti, Bowie took his interest in krautrock further than before, and released Low, recorded in France, in 1977.

Despite Low’s reputation, there is still great pop amongst the ambient and experimental music within. Most explicitly, Sound and Vision, which despite the long instrumental opening and spacey sound, was catchy as hell, and became one of his bestselling 70s hits, reaching three, despite a distinct lack of promotion.

The next LP, “Heroes”, was the only full Bowie album actually recorded in Berlin. But although this time was fully on board with promoting his latest work, the title track, now rightly considered one of his greatest songs, surprisingly only got as far as 24. Now cleaner, if not 100% clean of drugs, Bowie was increasingly busy, touring the material from Low and “Heroes” and releasing a recording – Stage – in 1978, as well as narrating a recording of Peter and the Wolf.

Recorded in the latter stage of his Isolar II world tour, Lodger, released in 1979, ditched the ambient instrumentals of his previous Berlin Trilogy work, and was a mix of new wave and world music. Lodger is underrated, and features great material, including number seven hit Boys Keep Swinging.

In December 1979, Bowie, perhaps with the 10-year anniversary of Space Oddity in mind, re-recorded his 1975 number 1 for Will Kenny Everett Ever Make It to 1980? Show. Stripped down to acoustic guitar, bass, drums and piano, this sparse mix was released as a B-side to his insane cover of Alabama Song. Released in February 1980, somehow this single reached 23. Probably because of the novelty factor of an alternative version of Space Oddity, rather than the A-side.

Returning to Space Oddity got Bowie thinking. What happened to Major Tom, as that song faded away and Ground Control lost contact? In a promo interview for the subsequent album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), Bowie said ‘We come to him 10 years later and find the whole thing has soured, because there was no reason for putting him up there… The most disastrous thing I could think of is that he finds solace in some kind of heroin-type drug, actually cosmic space feeding him: an addiction. He wants to return to the womb from whence he came.’ Sound familiar? Bowie reached for the stars, got what he strived for, and ended up losing touch with himself, strung out in heaven’s high, hitting an all-time Low – literally.

Bowie was already reaching into his past for Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). He was reworking old demos of unfinished songs. In 2022, the box set Divine Symmetry was released, featuring early Hunky Dory material and fragments of songs that he returned to nine years later. Tired of My Life became eventual album opener It’s No Game Pt 1, and 30 seconds into a track called King of the City, you can plainly hear what became the middle-eight of Ashes to Ashes. It’s a fascinating listen.

When the sessions for Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) began at the Power Station in New York in February 1980, no lyrics existed for Ashes to Ashes, or People Are Turning to Gold, as it was called then, just lots of ‘la la las’. Interesting to wonder what the song would have become if this title had remained. The band assembled was the same as for his last four albums – Carlos Alomar on guitar, George Murray on bass and Dennis Davis on drums. Also contributing were pianist Roy Bittan from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band – who were recording The River next door – and Chuck Hammer, who played guitar synthesiser.

While Alomar set to work playing reggae, and Murray put down a funky baseline with some slapping, Davis understandably struggled with the ska drumbeat Bowie envisioned. The singer demonstrated with a chair and cardboard box, which Davis learned and laid down the following day. Visconti originally wanted Bittan’s piano lines to be recorded on a Wurlitzer electric piano, but after discovering it would take too long to get hold of the instrument, he instead ran the grand piano through an Eventide Instant Flanger, which created that distinctive, wonky riff the rhythm is built around. Hammer, who had toured with Lou Reed and was hired for his inventive ‘guitarchitecture’, created and layered four different multi-track guitar textures, each receiving different treatments through an Eventide Harmoniser (which Visconti had famously claimed ‘fucks with the fabric of time’ for extra reverb.

So far, so good. So very, very good. But unlike his recent albums, where Bowie wrote the lyrics often immediately after the backing tracks, he took his time on Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). The band reconvened in April at Visconti’s Good Earth Studios in London. Visconti added additional percussion, plus keyboard parts by session keyboardist Andy Clark. Everyone involved knew they had something special upon completion, and it was inevitable this would be the lead single from the LP.

Review

Bowie wrote lots of great music after Ashes to Ashes, but it’s most probably his final absolute classic, in effect waving goodbye to a decade of startling creativity. In his excellent Bowie blog, Pushing Ahead of the Dame, Chris O’Leary has a very good point in calling it his last song. It’s a dark nursery rhyme, full of strange phrasing, vocal lines, and imagery, all underpinned by quirky, infectious groove. ‘Do you remember a guy that’s been/In such an early song?’ is an odd opening gambit for the listener. But it’s only the start, as Ground Control reveals the rumour is true: ‘They got a message from the action man’. And while ‘I’m happy, hope you’re happy too’ bodes well, the lyrics get murkier, but make it clear that Major Tom needs bringing down to earth….

‘The shrieking of nothing is killing, just
Pictures of Jap girls in synthesis and I
Ain’t got no money and I ain’t got no hair
But I’m hoping to kick but the planet it’s glowing’

What surreal, bleak imagery, and a bridge like no other in the annals of number 1s. What makes it all the more remarkable is how it sounds – Bowie’s deadpan intonation sounds in danger of causing the already complex tune to fall apart. And underneath, ghostly backing vocals, possibly repeating Major Tom, it’s hard to tell at this point.

The almost comical moroseness of the chorus, masked in a creepy nursery rhyme, of course, totally hits the spot, and you can’t help but think of Major Tom, floating in a tin can, and the mirror image of Bowie, weighing six-stone, living off cocaine and milk and dabbling with the occult, as he was in the mid-70s, when Space Oddity was at the top of the hit parade.

Things get even weirder in the second verse, with Bowie’s chilling falsetto revealing that Major Tom can’t beat his addiction. ‘But the little green wheels are following me/Oh no, not again’ – what a ridiculous, sublime way to detail drug dependency.

In the next bridge, Bowie’s ‘valuable friend’ is louder, and it’s apparent he is just repeating himself, right down to the deadpan ‘Woh-o-woh’. It’s just occurred to me that ‘out of the blue’ could be taken literally – that Major Tom, since swapping the blue sky of Earth for the stars, has been content to live as a junkie, and essentially done nothing since he ‘really made the grade’.

I forget where, but someone once pointed out that ‘Wanna come down right now’ signifies Bowie’s need to figuratively get back to living clean but also signposts his 80s direction as a relatively straight-edge pop superstar. Whether it was intentional or not, it’s a very good point.

As Ashes to Ashes descends into malevolent childish chanting of its close, and the already amazing production breaks out into ghostly synths, you can picture Major Tom’s ship either flirting further out into the outer reaches of space, or landing back on home soil, a broken man inside, but one that can be saved?

David Mallet’s groundbreaking video, recorded over three days in May, was the most expensive ever at that point. It remains one of the most costly, with Bowie storyboarding and dictating the editing process. The use of a Quantel Paintbox, soon to be used extensively in film and TV, creates a ghostly alien world of black sky and pink ocean at Beachy Head and Hastings. Bowie is three characters, clown, astronaut and asylum inmate, all of which represent aspects of his past as a mime and, well, the other two are obvious, all things considered. The scenes of Bowie in his spacesuit were deliberately designed to reflect HR Giger’s incredible work in Alien, released the year before.

While such futurism looks charmingly dated now, a less distant future is also on show, with Steve Strange of Visage walking with Bowie along the sand, as a bulldozer menacingly creeps up behind them. Fellow Blitz Kids Marilyn and Boy George were passed over. If you haven’t heard Bowie superfan Adam Buxton’s telling of a charming anecdote about the filming of this scene, check it out here.

After

The album mix of Ashes to Ashes was edited down from 4:23 to 3:35 for the single release, which could be bought in three different picture sleeves, which each contained a sheet of adhesive stamps of Bowie in his Pierrot costume. The variety of ways to buy may well have contributed to its success in the UK, where it became Bowie’s second number 1 for a fortnight in late summer after debuting at four.

Live performances of Ashes to Ashes were rare through the years, which, considering its complexity, is understandable.

Major Tom did return briefly to the charts in 1996, courtesy of the Pet Shop Boys remix of Hallo Spaceboy. Initially reticent when told of their plan, he agreed it worked well upon hearing their disco take on the track from 1.Outside.

The video to Ashes to Ashes remains one of the most influential examples of the medium, and everyone sat up and took notice as to what could be done. Music videos may have existed since the 60s, but in the MTV age, they were about to be ubiquitous.

The Outro

Ashes to Ashes was sampled in Samantha Mumba’s top five hit Body II Body in 2000, and again by James Murphy for his remix of Bowie’s own Love Is Lost in 2013. It was also the name of the BBC’s sequel to police drama Life on Mars.

In late-2015, the surreal video to Bowie’s penultimate single in his lifetime, Blackstar, featured a dead astronaut, discovered by a woman with a tail. She takes his jewel-encrusted skull to a strange alien town, where a circle of women perform a ritual while the astronaut’s bones float towards a solar eclipse. Director Johan Renck said after Bowie’s death he believed the astronaut was meant to be Major Tom.

The Info

Written by

David Bowie

Producers

David Bowie & Tony Visconti

Weeks at number 1

2 (23 August-5 September)

Trivia

Births

23 August: Actress Joanne Froggatt
28 August: Chef Rachel Khoo
4 September: Football coach Michael Beale

Deaths

24 August: Actress Yootha Joyce/Linguist Gerard Shelley
26 August: Olympic swimmer Lucy Morton
27 August: Suffragette Arabella Scott
28 August: Academic Roy Pascal
31 August: Writer Anne Tibble
1 September: Film director Arthur Greville Collins
3 September: Surgeon Russell Brock, Baron Brock/Physician Sir George Pickering

Meanwhile…

28 August: For the first time since 1935, unemployment stands at 2 million.

1 September: Ford launches the third generation Escort, which later becomes the best-selling car of the decade in Britain.