{"id":10378,"date":"2016-02-09T00:45:20","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T23:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/culturedarm.com\/?p=10378"},"modified":"2022-11-22T00:11:08","modified_gmt":"2022-11-21T23:11:08","slug":"behind-the-song-david-bowie-subterraneans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/behind-the-song-david-bowie-subterraneans\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Song: David Bowie &#8211; &#8216;Subterraneans&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"IevwLPV86os\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"David Bowie -  Subterraneans\" width=\"696\" height=\"522\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IevwLPV86os?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>\u2018Subterraneans\u2019 is the\u00a0closing\u00a0song on what has become perhaps David Bowie\u2019s most critically acclaimed album:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/pitchfork.com\/features\/staff-lists\/5932-top-100-albums-of-the-1970s\/10\/\">Pitchfork placed <em>Low<\/em> at number 1 on their \u2018Top 100 Albums of the 1970s\u2019<\/a>, on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.muzieklijstjes.nl\/Q100british.htm\">Q\u2019s list of the \u2018100 Greatest British Albums Ever\u2019<\/a>\u00a0<em>Low<\/em> was Bowie\u2019s highest entry at number 14, and while elsewhere it vies with\u00a0<a style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/blogs\/lists\/2012\/05\/the-70-best-albums-of-the-1970s.html?a=1\">Ziggy<\/a> <a style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"https:\/\/rateyourmusic.com\/charts\/top\/album\/all-time\">Stardust<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uncut.co.uk\/blog\/the-view-from-here\/some-further-thoughts-on-uncuts-200-greatest-albums-of-all-time-72252\">Hunky<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nme.com\/photos\/the-500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-100-1\/324644#\/photo\/87\">Dory<\/a><\/em>, and occasionally\u00a0<em>Station to Station<\/em> and <em>\u201cHeroes\u201d<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Low<\/em> is the constant, a work of abstract art whose crashing three-minute fragments of soul, funk, and rock on side one, and whose blurred electronic soundscapes on side two, seem equally to\u00a0point the way for so much of modern music.\u00a0Philip Glass wrote a 1992 symphony based on the work, but when <em>Low<\/em> was released in 1977 its reception was more mixed, marking yet another change in direction for the artist following the \u2018plastic soul\u2019 period of <em>Young Americans<\/em> and <em>Station to Station<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>While\u00a0they alienated some of his British fanbase, critically and commercially both\u00a0albums were a success. After moving from London first to New York, before settling in Los Angeles, <em>Young Americans<\/em> was Bowie\u2019s most thorough engagement yet with distinctly American forms: recorded in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1974 during a break in the <em>Diamond Dogs<\/em> tour, its sound\u00a0\u2013 described by Bowie as \u2018the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey\u2019 \u2013 drew upon the local dance halls, soul, and R&B, with Andy Newmark, previously a member of Sly and the Family Stone, on drums and a young Luther Vandross providing backing vocals. Issued in March 1975, the album went to number 9 on the <em>Billboard<\/em>\u00a0200, while the single \u2018Fame\u2019, featuring vocals from John Lennon, became\u00a0Bowie\u2019s first US number 1.<\/p>\n<p>Recorded in Los Angeles towards the end of\u00a01975 before its release in January 1976,\u00a0<em>Station to Station<\/em>\u00a0took the soul and R&B of <em>Young Americans<\/em> into dark obscurity, containing several of Bowie\u2019s longest compositions, its lyrics rooted in occultism and the mysticism of Christianity and the Kabbalah, while displaying the artist\u2019s first musical engagement with avant-garde electronics and krautrock. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.robertchristgau.com\/get_album.php?id=958\">Robert Christgau in <em>The Village Voice<\/em> gave the record an A rating<\/a>, writing that Bowie \u2018can merge Lou Reed, disco, and Huey Smith\u2019 and \u2018Miraculously, Bowie\u2019s attraction to black music has matured; even more miraculously, the new relationship seems to have left his hard-and-heavy side untouched\u2019.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=74354\">In <em>Creem<\/em> Lester Bangs \u2013 the champion of Bowie\u2019s early idols and later collaborative partners Lou Reed and Iggy Pop \u2013 regarded\u00a0<em>Station to Station<\/em> as the star\u2019s best record yet<\/a>. Readily admitting to his previous dismissal\u00a0of the artist \u2013 his sense that \u2018all that Ziggy Stardust homo-from-Adelbaran business was a crock of shit\u2019, that Bowie \u2018wrote the absolute worst lyrics\u2019 and musically was no more than an \u2018accomplished eclectician (a.k.a. thief)\u2019 \u2013 he nevertheless described <em>Young Americans<\/em> as a breakthrough, and <em>Station to Station<\/em> as:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u2018an honest attempt\u00a0by a talented artist to take elements of rock, soul music, and his own idiosyncratic and occasionally pompous showtune\/camp predilections and rework this seemingly contradictory melange of styles into something new and powerful that doesn\u2019t have to cop either futuristic attitudes or licks from Anthony Newley and the Velvet Underground because he\u2019s found his own voice at last.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Station to Station<\/em> reached number 3 on the <em>Billboard<\/em> 200, becoming Bowie\u2019s highest charting album in the US until <em>The Next Day<\/em>\u00a0signalled an all-too-brief return in 2013. But at the time, with its roots extending back to the <em>Diamond Dogs<\/em> tour, Bowie was in the throes of a serious addiction to cocaine.\u00a0Some of his regular musicians\u00a0of the period, including the guitarists Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick, would describe the sessions for <em>Station to Station<\/em> as among his most experimental, but Bowie later confessed to remembering nothing of the album\u2019s production, stating \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/7ec%26pg%3Dpa291%26lpg%3Dpa291%26dq%3Dbowie+i+know+it+was+in+la+because+i%27ve+read+it+was%26source%3Dbl%26ots%3Dy9uz9kekt0%26sig%3Df-jaj4cihcjncjpzgxq66eq-huo%26hl%3Den%26sa%3Dx%26ved%3D0ahukewjs3jfxynxkahxbfq8khetrdckq6aeiidab\/#v=onepage&q=bowie%20i%20know%20it%20was%20in%20la%20because%20i've%20read%20it%20was&f=false\">\u2018I know it was in LA because I\u2019ve read it was\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Tony Visconti suggested that by the recording of <em>Young Americans<\/em>, Bowie was <a href=\"http:\/\/score.addicaid.com\/david-bowie-and-cocaine-psychosis\/\">\u2018taking so much cocaine it would have killed a horse\u2019<\/a>. In the guise of his character The Thin White Duke, in Stockholm a \u2018totally crazed\u2019 Bowie told a reporter\u00a0that \u2018Britain could benefit from a fascist leader\u2019, while in London, waving at crowds from an open-top Mercedes, he made what was construed as a Nazi salute. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/music\/artists\/david-bowie-interview-from-1996-i-have-done-just-about-everythin\/\">He later recalled<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u2018I blew my nose one day in California and half my brains came out.\u00a0I was in a serious decline, emotionally and socially I think I was very much on course to be just another rock casualty \u2013 in fact, I\u2019m quite certain I wouldn\u2019t have survived the Seventies if I\u2019d carried on doing what I was doing. But I was lucky enough to know somewhere within me that I really was killing myself, and I had to do something drastic to pull myself out of that. I had to stop, which I did.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Bowie\u00a0departed\u00a0Los Angeles, afterwards remarking <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bowiegoldenyears.com\/articles\/800913-nme.html\">\u2018The fucking place should be wiped off the face of the Earth.\u00a0To be anything to do with rock and roll and go and live in Los Angeles is, I think, just heading for disaster\u2019<\/a>. His destination was continental Europe, where he stayed initially around Paris, before purchasing a seven-bedroom villa\u00a0at Clos des M\u00e9sanges near Vevey in the hills north of Lake Geneva. He began a self-improvement course in painting, classical music, and literature, and became an avid collector of expressionist art, until in late 1976 he moved to West Berlin, where he shared an apartment on the Hauptstrasse with Iggy Pop.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In fact while Bowie\u2019s next three albums would become known as the \u2018Berlin Trilogy\u2019, work had begun near Paris at the <span lang=\"fr\" xml:lang=\"fr\">Ch\u00e2teau<\/span><span lang=\"fr\" xml:lang=\"fr\"> d\u2019H\u00e9ro<\/span><span lang=\"fr\" xml:lang=\"fr\">uville. The ch\u00e2teau, once painted by Vincent van Gogh, had been converted in 1969 into a deluxe residential studio by the French film composer Michel Magne. There in the summer of 1976, an early surge of creative energy went towards\u00a0Iggy Pop\u2019s debut solo album <em>The Idiot<\/em>. The recording of <em>Low<\/em>\u00a0commenced in September, and Bowie, the album\u2019s producer Tony Visconti, and chief collaborator Brian Eno all reported strange experiences with the supernatural, with the rumour that the ch\u00e2teau was haunted by the ghosts of Chopin and George Sand. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bowiegoldenyears.com\/low.html\">Visconti said<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u2018There was certainly some strange energy in that chateau. On the first day David took one look at the master bedroom and said, \u201cI\u2019m not sleeping in there!\u201d He took the room next door. The master bedroom had a very dark corner, right next to the window, ironically, that seem to just suck light into it. It was colder in that corner too. I took the bedroom because I wanted to test my meditation abilities. I never admitted this before. I had read that Buddhists in Tibet meditated all night in a graveyard to test their level of fear\/no fear. Milarepa, the Tibetan saint, sat on his dead mother\u2019s body all night and meditated. It felt like it was haunted as all fuck, but what could Frederic and George really do to me, scare me in French? I loved the look of the room so I decided to spend one night there. If something happened I planned to shout so loud I\u2019d wake up the village.\u00a0Eno claims he was awakened early every morning with someone shaking his shoulder. When he opened his eyes no one was there.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The sessions continued in October at the Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin, often referred to by anglophone\u00a0acts of the time as \u2018Hansa by the Wall\u2019. Carlos Alomar and Ricky Gardiner on rhythm guitar, Dennis Davis on percussion, George Murray on bass, and Roy Young on piano and organ, all contributed to the record\u2019s first side; Iggy Pop provided backing vocals on \u2018What in the World\u2019 and Mary Visconti on \u2018Sound and Vision\u2019; the cello of Eduard Meyer enhanced \u2018Art Decade\u2019; and Brian Eno played synthesizers throughout.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Eno was largely responsible for the composition of the record\u2019s second side. He had written the theme and instrumentation for \u2018Warszawa\u2019 at the <span lang=\"fr\" xml:lang=\"fr\">Ch\u00e2teau<\/span><span lang=\"fr\" xml:lang=\"fr\"> d\u2019H\u00e9ro<\/span><span lang=\"fr\" xml:lang=\"fr\">uville<\/span>\u00a0while Bowie was away in Paris attending court hearings against his former manager Michael Lippman, making good use of Visconti\u2019s four-year-old son for the song, who sat beside him\u00a0playing A, B, C in a loop on the studio piano. The phrase became the basis for the \u2018Warszawa\u2019 theme, and on his return a suitably impressed Bowie\u00a0\u2013 whose agitation over the court case had already determined his imminent move to Berlin \u2013 wrote the song\u2019s lyrics in a matter of minutes. <a href=\"https:\/\/bowiesongs.wordpress.com\/2011\/03\/15\/warszawa\/\">Their oblique yet euphonic patterns of sound echo the \u2018Helokanie\u2019 of Polish composer Stanislaw Hadyna and his folk band Slask, whose records Bowie had bought during a stopover in Warsaw in April<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u2018Sula vie dilejo<br \/>\nSolo vie milejo<br \/>\nCheli venco deho<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Cheli venco deho<br \/>\nMalio<br \/>\nHelibo seyoman<br \/>\nCheli venco raero<br \/>\nMalio<\/em><br \/>\n<em>Malio\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Beyond Eno\u2019s influence, the structure and composition of <em>Low<\/em> had several precedents. The record\u2019s working title was <em>New Music Night and Day<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/bowiesongs.wordpress.com\/2011\/03\/02\/subterraneans\/\">and its two discrete sides bear similarities to <em>Neu! 75<\/em><\/a>, the third album by the krautrock band Neu!, whose hybrid form \u2013 with minimal pieces\u00a0in the original Neu! style\u00a0on side one and more unconventional works, recorded with an expanded four-piece ensemble, on side two \u2013 was the result of a compromise between Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother. <em>Neu! \u201975<\/em> contains a song called\u00a0\u2018Hero\u2019, which is considered one of the inspirations for Bowie\u2019s \u2018\u201dHeroes\u201d\u2018, the title song of <em>Low<\/em>\u2018s successor.<\/p>\n<p>Otherwise some of the ideas on <em>Low<\/em> had their\u00a0genesis in the intended soundtrack for <em>The Man Who Fell to Earth<\/em>,\u00a0the 1976 science fiction film starring Bowie, whose score was ultimately rejected by director Nicolas Roeg. But \u2018Subterraneans\u2019 contains the only physical remnant from the otherwise scrapped recording sessions, which comes in the guise\u00a0of George Murray\u2019s dolorous reversed bassline. Allied to the swells and bleeps of pianos and multilayered synthesizers, played by Bowie and Eno, and to the visceral groans of a submerged chorus, \u2018Subterraneans\u2019 became the most edited song on <em>Low<\/em>. At 0.47, the descending synthesizer melody introduces a motif from Edward Elgar\u2019s \u2018Nimrod\u2019. At 3.11 Bowie\u2019s saxophone splutters into view, weaving and whinnying and trailing off into the distance.\u00a0And at 3.53, in the final third of the song, the chorus briefly finds its tongue, singing a series of short phrases that turn some of the sounds of \u2018Warszawa\u2019 into enigmatic\u00a0images:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u2018Share bride failing star<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Care-line<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Care-line<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Care-line<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Care-line riding me<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Shirley, Shirley, Shirley, own<\/em><br \/>\n<em> Share bride failing star\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Bowie meant \u2018Subterraneans\u2019 to evoke those who \u2018got caught in East Berlin after the separation \u2013 hence the faint jazz saxophones representing the memory of what it was\u2019. The lyrics, which have been linked to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/burroughs-u-s-drag-publication-naked-lunch\/\">William Burroughs\u2019 use of the cut-up technique<\/a>, were again impelled by Eno\u2019s working methods, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.teenagewildlife.com\/Interact\/fc\/misc\/JG\/L.html#S\">with Bowie affirming<\/a>,\u00a0\u2018What he\u2019s injected into it is a totally new way of looking at it, or another reason for writing: he got me off narration which I was so intolerably bored with\u2019. Performed live alongside co-headliners Nine Inch Nails during the 1995 <em>Outside<\/em> tour, \u2018Subterraneans\u2019 instead incorporated the lyrics from the song \u2018Scary Monsters\u2019, which followed \u2018Subterraneans\u2019 on the setlist.<\/p>\n<p>Among critics upon the release of <em>Low<\/em> in January 1977, Robert Christgau praised the \u2018fragments\u2019 of side one as \u2018almost as powerful as the \u201coverlong\u201d tracks on <em>Station to Station<\/em>\u2018, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.robertchristgau.com\/get_album.php?id=960\">however he was less enamoured with side two<\/a>, calling its \u2018movie\u2019 music \u2018far from hypnotic\u2019, before wondering \u2018is Eno really <em>completely<\/em> fascinated by banality?\u2019. In a similar vein, John Milward of <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> averred that \u2018Bowie lacks\u00a0the self-assured humour to pull off his avant-garde aspirations\u2019, and Robert Hilburn of the <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em> argued that too much of the record was \u2018beyond mass pop sensibilities for it to build much enthusiasm\u2019.\u00a0On the other hand, hearing beyond the distant \u2018doggerel\u2019 of the lyrics and the \u2018strange and spacey\u2019 instrumentals, <a href=\"http:\/\/query.nytimes.com\/gst\/abstract.html?res=9D01E5DB1F3AEF33A25757C1A9679C946690D6CF\">John Rockwell at <em>The New York Times<\/em> wrote<\/a>\u00a0\u2018the whole thing strikes this listener as remarkably, alluringly beautiful\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Eno viewed\u00a0the \u2018Berlin Trilogy\u2019 of <em>Low<\/em>, <em>\u201cHeroes\u201d<\/em>, and <em>Lodger<\/em> as a time\u00a0of artistic sympathy and shared exploration, noting \u2018We\u2019d both, quite separately, started to imagine this fusion of European electronica and funk, with a mood overlay, if you like. We were both thinking very cinematically\u2019. Bowie said of <em>Low<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\u2018There\u2019s oodles of pain in the Low album. That was my first attempt to kick cocaine, so that was an awful lot of pain. And I moved to Berlin to do it. I moved out of the coke centre of the world\u00a0into the smack centre of the world. Thankfully, I didn\u2019t have a feeling for smack, so it wasn\u2019t a threat.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Subterraneans\u2019 is the\u00a0closing\u00a0song on what has become perhaps David Bowie\u2019s most critically acclaimed album:\u00a0Pitchfork placed Low at number 1 on their \u2018Top 100 Albums of the 1970s\u2019, on Q\u2019s list of the \u2018100 Greatest British Albums Ever\u2019\u00a0Low was Bowie\u2019s highest entry at number 14, and while elsewhere it vies with\u00a0Ziggy Stardust\u00a0and\u00a0Hunky\u00a0Dory, and occasionally\u00a0Station to Station [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4006,3880],"tags":[4227,894,1836,4226],"class_list":{"0":"post-10378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-behind-the-song","8":"category-music","9":"tag-berlin","10":"tag-david-bowie","11":"tag-low","12":"tag-subterraneans"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Behind the Song: David Bowie - &#039;Subterraneans&#039;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/behind-the-song-david-bowie-subterraneans\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Behind the Song: David Bowie - &#039;Subterraneans&#039;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u2018Subterraneans\u2019 is the\u00a0closing\u00a0song on what has become perhaps David Bowie\u2019s most critically acclaimed album:\u00a0Pitchfork placed Low at number 1 on their \u2018Top 100 Albums of the 1970s\u2019, on Q\u2019s list of the \u2018100 Greatest British Albums Ever\u2019\u00a0Low was Bowie\u2019s highest entry at number 14, and while elsewhere it vies with\u00a0Ziggy Stardust\u00a0and\u00a0Hunky\u00a0Dory, and occasionally\u00a0Station to Station [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/behind-the-song-david-bowie-subterraneans\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Culturedarm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/culturedallroundman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-02-08T23:45:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-11-21T23:11:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/David-Bowie-Subterraneans-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C802&ssl=1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"802\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Christopher Laws\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@https:\/\/twitter.com\/culturedarm\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Christopher Laws\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/behind-the-song-david-bowie-subterraneans\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/behind-the-song-david-bowie-subterraneans\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Christopher Laws\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/culturedarm.com\/#\/schema\/person\/9034b985ef3e4c9cea454b05beb6a4f5\"},\"headline\":\"Behind the Song: David Bowie &#8211; 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