A compilation released by RCA in 1982. I guess by now they knew he was leaving so decided to make some money out of him. In fairness when this was initially released it was chock full of stuff that many of us had never heard before or had been released before. 

I’m not going to go through it track by track (if you want to know everything that’s here and where it came from have a look in the comments here https://www.45worlds.com/vinyl/album/pl45406) but I do want to highlight a couple of things. 

The record opens with “Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola” an Italian language song sung over the backing track to “Space Oddity”. It is not, as you might think, a translation of the Major Tom story but a completely new lyric written by Italian lyricist Mogol (real name Giulio Rapetti) with lines that translate back to English as:

 My mind has took flight, A thought, just one

I walk while the city sleeps, Her eyes in the night

White lights in the night, A voice which speaks to me, who will be?

Tell me, alone boy, where are you going,

Why so much pain?

You have lost a great love, no doubt

But the city is filled with love

The title itself translates as “Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl” and is the story of a lonely boy and girl who meet on a mountain top !

The other great track one “Rare” is “Helden”, an English/German version of the full length album version of “Heroes”. It works perfectly and actually adds something to the song. The lyric “We can be heroes, just for one day” is sung as “Wir sind dann helden, Für einen tag” and sounds perfectly right. There is also a French translation single “Heros” which is just wrong ! It sounds like the vocal was tacked on as a complete afterthought and it sits very obtrusively in the mix, whereas “Helden” just fits.

An album for the Bowie nerds (raises hand and nods).

Helden - https://youtu.be/0PsWL6u_P6s

Journalist Gary Mulholland wrote two fantastic books that kept me company when I was laid up at home with a broken ankle. “This Is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk And Disco” and “Fear Of Music: The Greatest 261 Albums Since Punk and Disco”. In “Fear Of Music” on the subject of “Scary Monsters” he opines that this album is Bowie saying “right, that’s enough…I’ve shown you the way for the last 10 years, it’s your turn now”. Effectively he’s making one last great statement and handing off the baton to a younger generation who have grown up hanging on his every note.

And here it is, the last in a run of 11 consecutive studio albums (as I’ve said before I’m not counting “PinUps”) over 9 years where he barely put a foot wrong musically. In just 9 years he went from “the sun machine is coming down and we’re gonna have a party” hippy-dom to “ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Major Tom’s a junkie”.

There’s a school of thought that thinks, with “Scary Monsters”, Bowie invents the 80’s. The New Romantics hadn’t really happened yet. The Blitz kids had their little scene going (originally advertised as Bowie & Roxy nights) and Bowie had visited The Blitz and caused quite the commotion. Let’s not forget that the first time most of us saw New Romantics was when Steve Strange and some of the other Blitz kids were invited to appear in the “Ashes To Ashes” video. 

“It’s No Game” bookends the album starting out with Michi Hirota sounding very angry in Japanese, I have no idea what she’s saying. It even seems Bowie has had enough of it all in the end screaming “Shut Up…SHUT UP!”. That’s followed by 4 songs that were all released as singles “Up The Hill Backwards” and “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)” see the return of some old friends with Roy Bittan on the former and Robert Fripp on both.

That brings us to one of Bowie’s great songs, “Ashes To Ashes”. The video for “Ashes To Ashes” reveals much about the song, priests, a girl in a pretty dress, a bulldozer, a Pierrot, all in a funeral procession. It could all be the hallucinations of a guy in a padded cell. Was Major Tom flying out in space all those years ago or did we all really know “Major Tom’s a junkie” who was imagining it all ? “Space Oddity” was David Bowie’s beginning point, so was “Ashes To Ashes” meant as his end ? We all know that wasn’t the way things worked out now but things were happening behind the scenes that point to a metaphorical ”end” for David Bowie.

And you all know about “Fashion” don’t ya ? The last song finished for this album and one that, although Bowie went to great lengths to tell that it wasn’t about Neo-facism, certainly has that feel about it lyrically…“we are the goon squad and we’re coming to town,” and “turn to the left, turn to the right”…

Side 2 contains a trio of songs not often mentioned. I’m gonna gloss over the cover of Tom Verlaine’s “Kingdom Come”, it’s not bad but I’m sure he had better somewhere. Cos “Teenage Wildlife”, “Scream Like A Baby” and “Because You’re Young” (featuring Pete Townshend) show that Bowie was on a roll in the songwriting department.

10 years after this album Bowie said

“Scary Monsters for me has always been some kind of purge. It was me eradicating the feelings within myself that I was uncomfortable with…You have to accommodate your pasts within your persona. You have to understand why you went through them. That’s the major thing. You cannot just ignore them or put them out of your mind or pretend they didn’t happen or just say “Oh I was different then.” David Bowie, Musician, July 1990

As a closer on this period there’s a story from the making of the “Ashes To Ashes” video (at that point in time the most expensive promo video that had been made) that makes me chuckle. As they were filming at Pett Level beach near Hastings an old fella started walking his dog (as apparently he did every day) along the beach. One of the production crew rushed over to him and told him he couldn’t walk through there as they were making a video and “don’t you know who that is ?”. The old chap looked Bowie, resplendent in his Pierrot costume, up and down and responded “It’s some c*nt in a clown suit”. Bowie continued to tell himself after that, when he got a bit full of himself or drunk on his own self importance, “You’re just a c*nt in a clown suit”…

Teenage Wildlife - https://youtu.be/1hIwB97p3r0

Here’s one I almost forgot I had, a compilation and soundtrack from a German film about the young Heroin addicts that congregate around Bahnhof Zoo station in Berlin (apologies to any German speakers that realise me saying Bahnhof Zoo station is a little like saying Station Zoo station !). I don’t play it much (hence almost forgetting it) as all the contents are tracks from “Station To Station” and the “Berlin” trilogy.

 Bowie makes a brief appearance in the film when Christiane goes to see him in concert. The film is quite harrowing but worth seeing.

 Warszawa - https://youtu.be/iFIhGmi5CHU