David Bowie – ‘Aladdin Sane’
After a slow-burning rise, David Bowie reached his first significant career peak in 1972 with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars. The emphatic fifth album introduced Bowie’s first major alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, in an 11-track conceptual odyssey. The release took the US charts by storm and promised a bright future for Mr Stardust. Then, in one of the most brazen moves in rock history, Bowie retired his kooky alter ego onstage on July 3rd, 1973, at London’s Hammersmith Odeon.
From the stage, Bowie announced: “Of all the shows on the tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest because not only is it the last show of the tour, it’s the last show we’ll ever do.” The understandably outraged and upset fans were left anxiously awaiting news on Bowie’s next move. What they hadn’t realised was that Bowie’s next alter ego had already debuted on April 19th, 1973, with the arrival of Aladdin Sane.
The LP arrived with Bowie’s iconic lightning bolt makeup photograph. The high-resolution print on the gatefold sleeve made it the most expensive cover ever at the time. Although Bowie struggled to break even on sales, the lightning bolt symbol was a vital bookmark in both his career and the broader field of 20th-century pop culture.
Like Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane was an androgynous superstar, but one with a more terrestrial origin. The closed eyes on the cover give an air of sorrow indicative of the album’s morose content. Aladdin Sane, in part, deals with the issues of transatlantic fame and its impact on the mind. After all, the title is a revealing quip: “A Lad Insane”.
Aladdin Sane is more stylistically varied than Ziggy Stardust, and while it remains comfortably within the glam-rock bracket, it disembarks to a heavier rock sound. The heightened tempo pervading much of the album appears to echo Bowie’s concurrent experiences. It is an album plucked from the mire of meddling excesses.
On paper, Bowie’s dream of global fame had become a reality, but his time in the US introduced him to the decadence that would push him to the brink of insanity. Like many artists of his era and calibre, Bowie found his artistic poignance in dysphoria. Behind the gloss of uptempo glam, Bowie brandishes the horrors of urban decay, sex, drugs, violence and death.
‘The Jean Genie’ is the album’s signature track and most commercially accessible moment. It is a masterclass in glam-pop that never fails to fill the dance floor with its bouncing Bo Diddley-inspired rhythm and harmonica intrusions. Bowie once described the song as an ode of sorts to his friend Iggy Pop. Bowie describes the track as follows: “[The Jean Genie is an] Iggy-type character…a white-trash, kind of trailer-park kid thing—the closet intellectual who wouldn’t want the world to know that he reads.”
‘Drive-In Saturday’ follows this commercial angle. What it lacked in danceable kerosene, it gained in compositional allure. The baroque verse floats with ethereal ease on clouds of saxophone before the soaring chorus sections take might from Mike Garson’s bold piano chords.
Garson is Aladdin Sane’s secret weapon, bringing unbound vigour to the album’s greatest moments. Of course, ‘The Gene Jeanie’ and ‘Drive-In Saturday’ are great songs to dip one’s toes into the album, but its highlights lie in the rippling melodies of its obscure depths.
The title track and the album’s swan song, ‘Lady Grinning Soul’, are undeniable highlights, with Garson’s piano virtuosity to thank for much of their appeal. In the former, which follows ‘Watch That Man’ as the album’s second track, Bowie lays out the premise for the ensuing album: “Motor sensational, Paris or maybe hell (I’m waiting) / Clutches of sad remains / Waits for Aladdin Sane you’ll make it / Who’ll love Aladdin Sane”.
Another peak is struck with ‘Time’, a distinctly theatrical track that hears Bowie flex his lyrical muscles with vivid poetic imagery and perverse humour. “Time, he flexes like a whore / Falls wanking to the floor / His trick is you and me, boy / Time, in quaaludes and red wine / Demanding Billy Dolls / And other friends of mine / Take your time,” he sings before the ruminative chorus, “We should be on by now.”
When Aladdin Sane shines, it shines just as brightly as Ziggy Stardust and, in some places, brighter. However, the album is somewhat let down by kitschy tracks. ‘Watch That Man’, for instance, kicks the album off with energy, but the overly catchy chorus implants a chronic earworm that’s hard to shake. I can leave it a few years, and when I hear that interminable chorus again, it feels like I’d heard it five times too many earlier that same day.
Elsewhere, I take issue with Bowie’s reimagining of The Rolling Stones’ 1967 song ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’. Bowie was right to honour his fellow Brits since they profoundly influenced the album, but perhaps it would have been better off transplanted to the covers album Pin Ups, which arrived only six months later. It’s not quite emetic, but the Stones’ original was more enjoyable, and I find covers as such only serve to detract from an album’s creative integrity, which makes its presence on Aladdin Sane an oddity, because this is Bowie brimming with madcap ideas.