Getting old means you have a lot to look back on but sadly little left to go for. Having had the luxury to do whatever he liked doing for a very long period indeed, mister chameleon David Bowie has looked back on his latest trilogy of efforts and decided it was time to go back to his older love, back to the period in which he was Ziggy Stardust. Getting ‘old’ friend Tony Visconti back in, Bowie suddenly finds himself back in fashion because the same approach towards arrangements which Visconti adapted for the likes of Mercury Rev are applied here which gives the album a very contemporary feel yet goes back as far as David’s humble beginnings ! It is magic which works both ways and by inviting guests as diverse as Pete Townshend and Dave Grohl he makes sure several generations will like what they hear. Although at times it’s difficult to know who plays what and where, I do know that Jordan Rudess performs the piano, the sound of which was treated in a peculiar way as we can finally hear during ‘Slip away’. Jordan explains : ‘What happened was that they had two pianos in the room, one Steinway grand and one old upright piano. Mikes were put in and around that old upright piano whilst the foot pedal was clamped down. I played the Steinway grand but we got resonance from the upright. It was an original experiment, but this once again created new sounds, and you know me and my constant search for new, innovative and interesting sounds!’ Those new sounds alternate with the vintage
structure of the songs harking back as far as his fruitful collaborations with
Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. David even sings about Coney Island at one point !
Bowie even takes the ‘old’ stylophone out of the cupboard whilst
introducing a fair amount of Radiohead soundscapes into the arrangements.
However if you listen to the album “Low” then you know he’s been
experimenting with sounds for a decent amount of time already. For prog fans
it is also remarkable to notice that Bowie has worked with Rick Wakeman (he
even asked if Rick wanted to become ‘orchestral director’ for the Spiders
from Mars !), Brian Eno, Tony Kaye and Jordan Rudess. The man certainly has an
ear for talent ! Add to that the wonderful orchestral arrangements from the
patented Visconti household and you simply have to sence that “Headen” is
indeed a very, VERY good David Bowie album ! An interesting feature is the
fact that a lot of the music you hear on this album comes directly from the
demo sessions as these contained the right atmosphere which David was aiming
for. As a result the album sounds very intimate, as if you’re sitting next
to David who is singing you some wonderful stories. The first single of the album ‘Slow burn’
almost hides a Tamla Motown beat on top of which Pete Townshend can introduce
his powerful rhythm guitar. ‘Afraid’ holds a similar energy which we found
on ‘Little wonder’ yet with some nice string sections. Because Nirvana’s
Dave Grohl is also a big Neil Young fan Bowie invited Dave to guest on his
cover version of Neil’s ‘I’ve been waiting for you’. The song should
have had the help of what Bowie calls ‘a worldfamous keyboardplayer’ whose
name he doesn’t want to mention. That partcular musician sadly turned up
with some programmed synthsounds which was not at all what Bowie intended. How
long will this remain the mystery on “Heathen” or do we have to call Rick
Wakeman straight away ? Since it’s recording the song ‘I would be your
slave’ has received a completely different meaning than why it was written
for originally. Recorded two days after the september 11th incident
the song features the Scorchio Quartet of which two of it’s members lived
just around the corner of the World Trade Center. Whilst Bowie was recording
this album on the outskirts of New York the attacks happened. As he was
talking to his wife Iman on the
phone the second plane crashed into the trade center. Although Bowie panicked
Iman stayed calm repeating the same sentence over and over again :
‘lightning always strikes twice’. Having witnessed it all from that close
needless to say ‘I would be your slave’ has become a very intimate
statement with the strings adding to it’s modesty. We clearly go back to
David’s early ears with the acoustic nature of ‘Everyone says ‘hi’’
in which, just like during those early years, he introduces some great yet
simple and effective synths but also some sounds which carry the Air
trademark. In the end this is a superb and radiofriendly song which might be
issued as a single later on. Again the september 11th situation has
drastically changed David’s vision on the world especially as he has a young
daughter who is not even two years old when he is already 55 hence the main
idea behind a song like ‘A better future’. Well let’s hope this better
future will give more people throughout the world a chance to listen to this
fine album. In
order to let his own compositions shine David has also included some
coverversions. One is ‘Cactus’ originally penned by the Pixies whilst
‘I’ve been waiting for you’ is from Neil Young. The most remarkable
however is ‘I took a trip on a gemini spaceship’ by the Legendary Stardust
Cowboy which is the song that inspired Ziggy Stardust in the first place. As I
said before : once you get ‘older’ you tend to go back into the past, a
long way into the past ! “Heathen” is like a spaceship excursion taking
you ‘back into the future’ and landing in the best period you could ever
hope for !
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