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

The third and final album in Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy” was recorded in Montreaux, Switzerland and mixed in New York City…go figure ! As great as it is I find it confusing in places. Not because of the content but it’s always struck me that it’s not very well recorded…. maybe it was meant to sound like that, I don’t know, but Visconti has never seemed to me like a sloppy producer and on the whole “Lodger” isn’t a fantastic sounding record.

Some of it may be because on some tracks the musicians swapped instruments, for ”Boys Keep Swinging” guitarist Carlos Alomar plays drums and drummer Dennis Davies plays Bass (with some help from Visconti in the mix). But then on ”Red Sails”  guitarist Adrian Belew very obviously squashes a note in the main riff and it’s been left in there. Also the way the album starts with “Fantastic Voyage” apologetically stumbling in, it’s weird.

None of that is me saying “Lodger” is a bad album, it’s patently not. It is home to (after “Heroes”) my favourite of Bowie’s songs, “Look Back In Anger”. Bowie turns in quite the vocal performance here but the spotlight should really be shone on Dennis Davies, his drumming on this track is beyond superb. He drives the song from start to finish, and yes I know it’s more than one take and there are congas involved in the mix but it is a performance of the absolute highest skill, quality and above all feel, it flat out swings daddio ! (There’s a video on YouTube of Tony Visconti guiding Dennis’ young son through the track and absolutely delighting in explaining to this kid how great his Dad was, search it out).

The album also coughed up two great singles in the previously mentioned ”Boys Keep Swinging” and “DJ”. “Move On”, Red Sails”, “Repetition” and “Yassassin” are all great songs. Finally, closing song “Red Money” is a reworking of “Sister Midnight”, the opening track on Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot”, thus bringing the whole Iggy, Eno, Berlin period full circle and to a close.

Look Back In Anger - https://youtu.be/eszZfu_1JM0