The Man Who Sold the World (45 page)

“Rubber Band” and “Please Mr. Gravedigger” [A22] were selected by Bowie to represent his new approach, and recorded alongside the older “The London Boys” [A21] during a remarkably productive day at Oak Studios in London. The three songs won Bowie a contract with Decca's newly coined subsidiary label, Deram, alongside an array of kitsch easy-listening ensembles but also songwriter Cat Stevens, whose own brand of character-led songs, such as “Matthew and Son,” proved to be more overtly commercial than Bowie's.

Because (like Pye a year earlier) Decca blanched at promoting the “controversial” “The London Boys,” “Rubber Band” was selected as Bowie's debut single in his new guise. Its title—like that of another Decca act, the Elastic Band—was a simple pun, extended by Bowie into an economically told tale of a World War I soldier who loses his love to the “little chappy” (the coyness was endemic to this era of his career) conducting a brass band in the park.

Operating under financial constraints that the British prime minister in 1966, Harold Wilson, would have recognized, Bowie and his bassist/arranger Dek Fearnley hired two musicians to impersonate the brass band, alongside the members of the Buzz. Though he lacked the orchestral colors that the song required, Fearnley compensated with a dexterous arrangement that involved multiple changes of tempo and key.
*
Like an artist's signature, he offered a magnificently inventive bass guitar run under the opening bars, before letting a peripatetic tuba take over the bass's role. Having oom-pahed its way majestically through the entire song, accompanied by trumpet and an occasional flourish of oboe, the tuba gradually slowed to a halt, like an exhausted bandsman struggling under its weight on a scorching July afternoon.

Bowie's melody was equally pictorial: trapped in its circularity during the verse, then rising in a pitch of rapidly quelled emotion as he lamented the band's inability to stay in tune.
*
Most striking, in retrospect, was his vocal performance, which featured none of the jazzy “swing” of his recent singles—or, for that matter, of Anthony Newley's approach to novelty tunes. Instead, his delivery was formal and precise, like an H. G. Wells hero (Kipps, say, or Mr. Polly) of lower birth attempting not to disgrace himself in the presence of his betters. Yet as the key changed and he abandoned the lower register of the introductory verse, he exhibited a sense of desperation that hinted at the
Station to Station
and
“Heroes”
LPs a decade ahead. As if the two-octave expanse of the song weren't enough, he let loose a series of whoops and cries that carried him far beyond the high G that he regarded as the summit of his range.

Four months later, “Rubber Band” was re-recorded more “professionally,” with a less surreal tuba accompaniment, and at a markedly slower tempo, for Bowie's debut LP. “I hope you break your baton,” he quipped as the song ended, replacing the repressed anger of the single with a theatrical wave to show that it had all been an act.

 

[A21] THE LONDON BOYS

(Bowie)

Recorded October 1966; single B-side

The most enduring of Bowie's pre-fame compositions was originally composed in the final months of 1965—before, it should be noted, any of his British contemporaries had dared to explore social commentary in their songs. What isn't certain is how closely his original blueprint of the song resembled the record he made a full year later. The holy grail for those intrigued by Bowie's early career would certainly be the original recording of “The London Boys,” taped in November 1965 for Tony Hatch at Pye Records. “It goes down very well in the stage act, and lots of fans said I should have released it,” Bowie said shortly afterward, “but Tony and I thought the words were a bit strong . . . we didn't think the lyrics were quite up many people's street.” “Can't Help Thinking About Me” [A14] was released instead, and the 1965 tape of “The London Boys” seems to have been lost in one of Pye's vault-clearing exercises.
*

Almost a year later, Bowie was still anxious to commit “The London Boys” to tape; indeed, it was with that purpose in mind that he visited Kenneth Pitt at his London apartment in September 1966, seeking assistance and funding. Under the expert guidance of Dek Fearnley, he emerged with a remarkably astute portrayal of teenage life, as redolent of the metropolitan perils of its era as the groundbreaking television drama
Cathy Come Home
(first screened on November 16, 1966, four weeks after Bowie's recording session). The song, Bowie claimed of its original incarnation, “generally belittles the London night life scene.” That description might have applied more accurately to “Join the Gang” [A27], as it underplayed the psychological insight and empathy of “The London Boys.” The latter peeled away the heady glamour of life in what Ray Davies of the Kinks called the “Big Black Smoke”
*
to reveal the alienation and emptiness beneath. It presented a seventeen-year-old girl, tempted into using “pills” (barbiturates
*
or “speed,” most likely) to feign a sense of ease on London's Mod scene, and aware that she can never return home. Then the perspective shifted to the boys whose approval she craved, and whose pride Bowie revealed to be as hollow as her mask of security.

In Dek Fearnley's almost baroque arrangement, using the orchestral textures of “Rubber Band” to much darker effect, it climbed through a series of dramatic key changes, reached a peak of despair—and then subsided gravely into a reprise of its oboe-led opening motif, leaving the characters adrift in their confused isolation. It's impossible to imagine the Lower Third, Bowie's backing group in November 1965, negotiating the complex twists of the chord structure, or even attempting them on guitar. The arrangement gave every indication of having been concocted at a keyboard, with Bowie at Fearnley's side to ensure that his voice was equal to the modulations.

Perhaps because, as an outsider from distant Bromley, he could identify with both the newcomer and the initiates, Bowie delivered a masterful performance. Registering each subtle emotional shift with the precision of a trained actor, he moved from the somber resignation of the opening lines to the dramatic pathos of the finale—negotiating the octave leap at the end of each verse (“
some
one cares . . .”) with ease. Such was his commitment to the song, in fact, that it was tempting to wonder whether the central character, who hates her job, takes too many pills, and is desperate for a milieu to replace her family, was none other than Bowie himself.

“The London Boys” clearly evoked the mid-sixties era perfectly for Bowie, who in assembling his
Pin Ups
album of material from this era in 1973 toyed with the idea of re-recording the song in small segments as a method of linking the other tracks. Sadly, the plan—similar to the structure of Elvis Presley's 1971 album,
Elvis Country
—was never followed through. But Bowie did reprise “The London Boys” for his unreleased album
Toy
at the turn of the century.

 

[A22] PLEASE MR. GRAVEDIGGER

(Bowie)

Recorded October 1966; unreleased. Re-recorded December 1966;
David Bowie
LP

To judge by its companions, the lost recording of “Mr. Gravedigger” from the October 1966 session would probably have incorporated numerous key changes and some subtle touches from a tuba and oboe. Two months later, producer Gus Dudgeon stripped away all its musical elements except for Bowie's plaintive voice and a funereal church bell. This slice of Grand Guignol starred a germ-infested serial killer and the heartless gravedigger of the (elongated) title, both played by Bowie with a theatrical panache that suggested his ideal medium might have been radio drama.

 

[A23] UNCLE ARTHUR

(Bowie)

Recorded November 1966;
David Bowie
LP

Bowie's earliest composition to merit a comparison with Anthony Newley's Cockney whimsicality, “Uncle Arthur” was a Donald McGill seaside postcard brought to life. Its cartoon characters—smothering mum, inadequate son—deserved to be painted in exaggerated tones, and Bowie
performed
rather than sang this major chord, music hall romp in the (recent) tradition of the Kinks' “Dandy,” sounding more like a stage school graduate than an R&B-obsessed Mod. An oboe offered a sixteenth-century English dance to set the scene. Then the lyric began with stage directions to heighten the theatricality, Bowie telegraphed the laughs with Newley-style vim (“not just
lust
,” he leered) and only the call-and-response chorus—reminiscent in its three-chord simplicity to the Who's 1966 hit “Substitute”—hinted at his past or future.

 

[A24] SHE'S GOT MEDALS

(Bowie)

Recorded November 1966;
David Bowie
LP

Another woodwind fanfare—oboe and flute trilling to introduce the theme—led into this uneasy blend of West End musical, garage rock, and confused sexual politics. The opening lines of each verse were built around the distinctive chord sequence behind the Byrds' arrangement of “Hey Joe,” over which Bowie recited the outré scenario as if he were Tommy Steele's understudy. Each line was crammed with syllables, anticipating the verbal rush of “Hang Onto Yourself” [31] five years later, before the title offered the punch line, chorused with all the grace of a pub full of drunken builders. The major plot development was revealed in the middle section, which wandered around its chord changes
*
with the same ease that its hero(ine) altered her gender. Some commentators have found presages here of Bowie's later profession of bisexuality, but his vocal mannerisms suggested this was simply being played for fun.

 

[A25] THERE IS A HAPPY LAND

(Bowie)

Recorded November 1966;
David Bowie
LP

Bowie named novelist and journalist Keith Waterhouse as one of his favorite authors in a 1966 interview, and this song borrowed the title
*
of a 1958 novel that was added to the secondary school curriculum a decade later. The book's poignant evocation of childhood resilience and burgeoning sexual awareness endured long beyond Bowie's tribute. But the song, like the novel, was immersed in a world psychologically and physically separated from adulthood, and Bowie delivered it in a voice full of knowledge and disillusion.

Under the influence of psychedelic drugs, other rock performers were beginning to investigate childhood in 1966–67, usually invoking innocence as a golden state (John Lennon's “She Said She Said” offering a totemic example). Bowie's lyric wanted to believe in that innocence, though his performance undercut his hope. But there was an unexpected coda: after a deliciously melancholy stroll through a modal set of chords, the door was opened to sunlight, and Bowie scat-sang a potential trumpet solo to the fade over sumptuous chords that bridged the chasm between happiness and regret.

 

[A26] WE ARE HUNGRY MEN

(Bowie)

Recorded November 1966;
David Bowie
LP

Another book, Harry Harrison's popular 1966 science fiction novel
Make Room! Make Room!
, was a likely source for this ambitious but ultimately unwieldy blend of environmental doom and arch comedy. Certainly their scenarios were similar: a world in which overpopulation has drained its most precious natural resources. It was a timely concern, as scientists calculated that the world's population had doubled from two billion to four billion in the previous thirty-five years, a rate of growth they believed to be unsustainable.
*
To halt this rise, experts stressed the importance of birth control, and suggested enforcing limits on the size of families; otherwise war (sparked by shortages of resources) and famine would take their toll. To these drastic solutions, “We Are Hungry Men” added another: cannibalism (or, in his central character's amendment, exophagy: eating those who don't belong to one's own tribe). This was unconventional territory for a budding pop star, which was presumably why Bowie gave the subject a comic treatment, with producer Gus Dudgeon offering vocal impersonations like a cut-rate Peter Sellers.

Musical connections still being Bowie's weakness as a composer, the multisectioned nature of “We Are Hungry Men” resembled an awkward rock opera. After the dissonant chaos of the opening monologue, Bowie's messianic character declaimed a repetitive and restricted verse melody. The populace replied with a hovering (and, again, melodically compressed) sequence of major ninth chords in (appropriately enough) a different key, the droning organ acutely reminiscent of Pink Floyd's
*
early experiments with the rock idiom. The menacing unison vocals looked ahead to the eerie ambience of “Sons of the Silent Age” [152]. Yet the darkest moment was still to come: after Dudgeon's monologue in the style of Sellers's Dr. Strangelove, Bowie launched into a recitative that veered close to Schoenberg's
Sprechgesang
,
*
while trumpets added anarchic, rootless blasts. The effect was both urgent and disquieting, evoking a situation plummeting out of control, and setting up the final, carnivorous punch line.

 

[A27] JOIN THE GANG