Tonight from 8, Stuart McHoney's Freak Zone.
At 6, now playing.
Right now, it's Adam Buxton on David Bowie.
Hi, this is B. Mitch Reid along with Richard Kimball from the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.
And the house lights are about to go down for the appearance of David Bowie.
Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Giddy And the spiders were smart, when he leaned and left a hand When he made it to Baja, he became the special man
And then we were sick and spent Now Ziggy really sank Screwed up eyes and screwed up hair, dude Like some cat in Japan You could kill him by smiling But you'd leave him to hang I came on so lowly, man Well, Mom, I'm so white-haired
So where were the spiders?
While the cloud tried to break our bones Just a bit of light to guide us So we raced about these lands Exchanging glances with hands
I think he played for time, driving us that we were fooled too.
But this was just a crash.
You know I can't watch the night with God-given eyes.
Now he took it all too far.
Good boy, can he play?
Sticking socks up his...
I'm sick of playing guitar
Ziggy Stardust from the album Live in Santa Monica 72, capturing David with the spiders from Mars at the peak of their spider powers.
Hey, this is Adam Buxton.
Thanks for joining me for this personalised ramble through the career of David Bowie so far.
I'll be playing some of my favourite Bowie tracks, as well as a few interview clips from the archives and other random Bowie nonsense.
Back in 1981, when I was 12 years old, I liked Madness, Adam and the Ants, and Gary Newman.
Actually, I still do.
But one day, a friend at school brought in a compilation tape his older brother had made that had some songs on it by The Jam, The Beatles, and a few by this guy David Bowie.
One of the tracks on that tape really stood out from the rest.
It sounded like a whole film in a single song.
The name of that track
was Footloose.
No, it wasn't.
Footloose hadn't even been recorded then.
It was a very dark time.
It was five years, the opening track on the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, released in 1972.
I'd never bought an album before, but as soon as I could, I went out to WH Smith's in the Earls Court Road and I purchased the living heck out of Ziggy Stardust for £2.99, and five minutes later
I was at home listening to Mick Woody Woodmansey's brilliant drum intro and studying the credits on the back of the sleeve, where I found the instruction, to be played at maximum volume.
I played that record at approximately one third of maximum volume, as the record player was in the front room, and I didn't want my mummy to hear someone saying, the cop knelt and kissed the feet of the priest and the queer threw up at the sight of that.
the market square.
In fact, I still don't.
So many mothers dying.
News had just come over.
We had five years left to cry in.
News guy wept and told us.
Earth was really dying.
He cried so much his face was wet Then I knew he was not lying I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare I had to cram so many things to store Everything in there, and all the facts
tall shot people I love the nobody people I love the somebody people I never thought I'd need so many people girl my age went off ahead
If the black had not pulled her off I think she would have killed them A soldier with a broken arm Fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac The cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest And the queer threw up and decided that
I think I saw you in an ice cream parlor Drinking milkshakes cold and long Smiling and waving and looking so fine Don't think you knew you were in the song And it was cold and it rained So I felt like an actor and I thought
Your race, the way that you talk I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk We've got five years stuck on mine Five years, what a surprise We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot Five years, that's all we've got
Thank you, God!
Five years.
One of the best songs ever to sing with friends after a glass or two of fine merlot.
And probably one of the worst songs to listen to a group of friends singing after a glass or two of fine merlot.
Actually, that's not true.
I've never done a bad five years, although my shouting at the end can become a little bit frighteningly intense.
So for this program I thought I'd go kind of documentary style in the course of focusing on some of the parts of Bowie's life I've personally found interesting over the years.
Apologies in advance for any factual inaccuracy, although sometimes that will be because I have made things up.
A trick I learned from Bowie himself.
Okay, let's fiddle with the fabric of time.
I have reordered time.
I have turned the world upside down.
And I have done it all for you.
He's waiting in the wings He speaks of senseless things His script is you and me, boy
That's not appropriate, sorry about that.
You see, that's what happens when you fiddle with the fabric of time.
Speaking of which, prepare to travel to the summer of 1968 for a formative romantic encounter.
Here's David.
It was about that time that I met... Wait, it was a what?
It was a, was a, was a, was... Was a, was a, was a, was... Was a, was a, was a, was... Was a, was a, was a, was... Was a, was a, was a, was about that time that I met Hermione Farthingale.
Ah, Hermione Farthingale.
She's a big piece in the Bowie puzzle.
Born Hermione Dennis, she was a trained ballerina who met Bowie in 1968 at a class in Covent Garden taught by dancer and mime artist Lindsey Kemp.
After the class, Bowie accompanied Hermione back to Shepherd's Bush on the Tube.
During the journey, the pair fell in love and made plans for the future.
So Hermione, do you enjoy using the tube as much as I do?
I love sitting here looking at all the people, the fat skinny people, the tall short people.
I find it tremendously inspiring just travelling from station to station.
Oh yes, I love the central line.
It's so straight and really seems to know where it's going.
Like you, David.
I don't know about the straight part, but thanks.
Hermione, would you like to form a mixed media trio called Turquoise with my friend Tony Hill?
We could replace Tony with John Hutchinson later on and rename the band Feathers.
Oh, David, I'd love to.
What kind of songs would we do?
Well, I've got one called Chingaling that I'm very pleased with.
It's about a doodah horn.
Oh, that sounds groovy.
Yes, it is.
And it's got quite a nice little refrain that I may recycle in a couple of years for a track called Save Your Machine on my album The Man Who Sold The World.
While flying through an azure cloud, a crystal girl I spy.
She kissed the bluebird's honey tongue and stuttered as she sighed.
I wish to sing the jingling song, the jingling song's fine.
I was in a mixed media, a mixed media group, which means that one of us could dance, another one could sing, and another one had some rotten poetry and put it all together.
and went underground.
It was called Feathers, and the girl was Hermione Farthingale, who I fell in love with.
And I'm glad I fell in love, because it gave rise to lots of songs.
A young Bowie putting a brave face on his relationship with Hermione Farthingale, which ended in 1969 when Hermione got a dancing job in a film called Song of Norway and fell in love with one of her male dancing counterpart men.
It took Bowie years to get over the heartbreak and references to that time pop up in his work to this day.
Check out the video for Where Are We Now, the first single to be taken from Bowie's first album in 10 years, 2013's The Next Day.
Alongside recollections of his time in Berlin are shots of the 66-year-old David looking forlorn and wearing a Song of Norway t-shirt.
In 2002, Bowie told Jonathan Ross how he came to own it.
This is the strangest thing.
A year or two ago, and he was wearing the T-shirt.
Song of Norway.
He had no idea.
He was an American guy.
I said, where did you get that T-shirt?
He said, I don't know.
I said, do you know what that is?
He said, no.
I said, can I buy it off you?
He said, no, you're going to have it.
And he gave me the T-shirt.
That guy sounds cool.
Anyway, a legacy of the relationship more substantial, perhaps, than T-shirts, were the songs that Bowie wrote to try and make Hermione feel bad for copping off with the dancing man.
The album Man of Words, Man of Music, released in 1969, later reissued as Space Oddity, featured the fairly unambiguous Letter to Hermione, in which, at one point, Bowie imagines his lost love sharing sexy time with her new man and wonders if, perhaps in the throes of passion, he ever gets a shout-out.
And when he's strong, he's strong for you And when you kiss it's something new But did you ever call my name just by mistake?
I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to do
So I'll just write some love to you.
Did you ever call my name?
Just by mistake?
A sentiment simultaneously poignant and well pathetic.
This is Guy Garvey.
Why do I have a radio program on Six Music?
Picture three-year-old Guy in a pram in the front room.
Five sisters who all love music and have decided that I'm having their taste in music.
From soul through disco to prog rock.
I wasn't just played records, I was told why it was the best record.
This is my childhood.
A scared, open-eyed, open-mouthed young boy saying, can't I just like it all?
What I try and do on The Finest Hour is I will always give a reason for playing a song.
I play so many different, diverse kinds of music, and the listeners help me do that by them sending me recommendations.
And we all get richer where music's concerned.
It's exploring music, finding new music, and that's great.
Guy Garvey's Finest Hour.
Tonight from 10 on BBC Radio 6 Music.
down the high street when I heard footsteps behind me and there was a little old man in scarlet and grey shuffling away
Back to my house And he sat beside the telly With his tiny hands on his tummy Chuckling away, laughing all day I ought to report you to the gnome office I'm a laughing gnome and you can't catch me
said the laughing gnome.
Well I gave him roasted toadstools and a glass of dandelion wine.
Then I put him on a train to Eastmore, carried his bag and gave him a fag.
In the morning when I woke up He was sitting on the edge of my bed With his brother whose name was Fred He brought him along to sing me a song Alright, let's hear it.
What's that clicking noise?
I'm a laughing gnome and you can't catch me I'm a laughing gnome and you can't catch me Oh look, I'm a gnome, hello!
Haven't you got a gnome to go to?
No, we are gnomes actually!
Didn't they teach you to get your hair cut at school?
You look like a rolling gnome!
Now they're staying at me chimney And we're living on caviar and honey Cos they're earning me lots of money Fighting comedy pros for radio shows It's the er, it's the known service of course Ha ha ha, hee hee hee Laughing loudly
We'll love it all when you come and join in.
One more time.
The Laughing Gnome.
Hello, Adam Buxton here, the Hairy Gnome, dragging you through some of my favourite moments from the career of David Bowie.
The Laughing Gnome was released in April 1967, when for some reason it failed to set the world completely on fire.
But then in 1973, at the height of Ziggy Mania, it was re-released and became a top ten hit.
Why?
Because it's very, very good.
That's why I played the whole thing just then.
And yet it's regarded by some as something of a joke.
In their otherwise excellent book, Bowie, An Illustrated Record, ex-NME journalists Roy Carr and Charles Shah Murray describe the song as the most embarrassing example of Bowie juvenilia, and they call themselves writers.
A better name for them would be wrongers.
Here's a list of critically sound reasons why I love The Laughing Gnome.
1.
I love Bowie's genuine laughter in it.
I like laughter in any song.
There's not enough chuckling on the new Atoms for Peace album, for example.
Two, my children like The Laughing Gnome, and for a while I had to sing it to them at bedtime every night, which I always enjoyed and was very good at.
Three, Bowie's answer to the question, why did you record The Laughing Gnome?
Just because I could do it.
And because it was there.
You know, I think it just seemed like the most silly song to do, and I quite like silliness, plain silliness.
It never really fazed me.
I mean, it was just like that inconsequential to us.
We just did this very silly track, you know, because we had the technology.
But it was, you know, it was like we were still having fun, slowing tapes down and stuff like that.
I'd always associate laughing now with Gus Dudgeon, because he used to sit there doing tricks with his glasses whilst I was making it.
He would make them do funny things.
He'd touch the back and the fronts would go up and down on his nose.
But he used to keep me in fits, because he was a great visual comedian, very Chaplin-esque, Gus.
Actually, it rather reminded me of people
Peter Sellers in a way.
There you go.
Interesting fact.
Gus Dudgeon, as well as being a very gifted producer, was also a comic genius, like Peter Sellers.
And the final reason The Laughing Gnome is clearly an excellent song, music legend Scott Walker covered it for his recent album Bish Bosh, but had to leave it off because it wasn't sufficiently insane.
down the high street.
When I heard footsteps behind me, there was a little old man, scarlet and grey, chuckling away.
So I took him back to my house.
He sat beside the telly,
His tiny hands on his tummy Chuckling away Laughing all day Ha ha ha Hee hee hee hee I'm a laughing gnome And you can't catch me Didn't they teach you to get your hair cut at school?
You look like a rolling gnome I ought to report you to the gnome office
Scott Walker, with his rare cover of The Laughing Gnome, never actually released, or even recorded.
The Laughing Gnome was a song that Bowie's detractors pointed to as an indication that he was not really an artist to be taken seriously.
To me, it's just proof that Bowie was always a more interesting and multifaceted songwriter than any of his contemporaries.
Where's the equivalent in Bob Dylan's back catalogue?
Or Lou Reed's?
Or Joni Mitchell's?
Where's Mick Jagger's laughing gnome, apart from in his trousers?
I first came across the track as a 15-year-old in the 80s.
I'd already made my way through most of the so-called classic Bowie albums on the RCA label, and all that was left for me to explore were his recordings from the very beginning of his career in the mid to late 60s.
Some of those early Bowie songs like Liza Jane by Davy Jones and the King Bees from 1964 were pretty standard R&B numbers that bands like the Rolling Stones were becoming successful with at the time.
But the songs that really got under my skin when I bought a couple of compilations of early Bowie on the Decca label were from his Tony Newley phase.
Antony Newley was a Hackney-born singer, songwriter and actor who enjoyed huge success in the 60s and was the kind of sparky, all-round entertainer that Bowie aspired to become too.
Here's the Tony Newley song, Mumbo Jumbo, from 1966, a satire on the empty rhetoric of political candidates.
Watch out politicians, you're about to get Newlified!
Fellow citizens, our speaker for tonight is the opportunist candidate for this constituency, Mr. Littlechap!
Mumbo-jumbo, rhubarb-rhubarb, tickety-boo-barb, yak-yak-yak.
Mumbo-jum, red-white and blue-barb, poor Britannia's on her back.
Mumbo Jumbo, Rubab Rubab, nothing new bab, cha cha cha.
Mumbo Jumbo, Castro's kebab, I think someone's gone too far.
Mumbo Jumbo, Rubab Rubab, voulez-vous bab avec moi?
Mumbo Jumbo, entre nous bab, Brigitte Bardot, ooh la la.
You see, they play a bit of the tunes associated with the people they're talking about.
Did you get that?
You can see Antony Newley singing Mumbo Jumbo on YouTube in a clip from the 1966 film Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.
He's wearing the same kind of Pierrot mime makeup that Bowie II would be sporting a few months later.
Bowie II would also be trying his hand at a similar kind of character-based musical satire.
And as a 15-year-old, I liked it.
So, while the cool guys at my school were listening to the Gun Club, XMAL Deutschland and Alien Sex Fiend, I was enjoying Bowie Lampooning the Swinging London of 1966 in Join the Gang.
Let me introduce you to the gang.
Johnny plays the sitar, he's an existentialist.
Once he had a name, now he plays our game.
You won't feel so good now that you've joined the gang Molly is the model in the ads Crazy clothes and acid, full of soul and crazy hip Someone switched her on, then her beam went wrong Cos she can't switch off now that she's joined the gang
Arthur is a singer with a band.
Arthur drinks two bottles just before he goes on stage.
Look at Arthur rave.
All the kids have faded.
They want to see the croaking man who joined the gang.
You won't be alone.
We've all got weary grins.
It's a big illusion, but at least you're in.
At least you're in.
Well, here I am.
I'm a bit sort of mixed up creatively.
I've got all these things going.
I like doing it once on stage or whatever.
I'm not quite sure if I'm a mime or a songwriter or a singer.
Or do I want to go back to painting again?
Why am I doing any of these things anyway?
And I realized it was because I wanted to be well-known, basically.
And that I wanted to be thought of as somebody who was very much a trendy person.
rather than a trend.
I didn't want to be a trend.
I wanted to be the instigator of new ideas.
I wanted to turn people onto new things and new perspectives.
I always wanted to be that sort of catalystic kind of thing.
Bowie talking about his early struggles to become a catalystic converter.
Join the Gang is one of the many great tracks on David Bowie's self-titled debut album from 1967, along with The Laughing Gnome, Rubber Band, We Are Hungry Men, love that one, She's Got Medals, amazing, The List Goes On, Uncle Arthur, brilliant.
If I'm honest, I've probably listened to that album more than some of the so-called classics like Young Americans or even Heroes.
Okay, maybe not heroes.
Suffice to say, those early songs hold a very dear, albeit demented, place in my heart.
And yet, upon their release, they were met with bafflement and derision.
Here's comic genius Gus Dudgeon speaking in the early 90s about that album.
It is a weird album.
And when I listen to it now, I can't believe that it was actually released, because it must have been about the weirdest thing DRAM had ever put out.
In fact, it's probably one of the weirdest things any record company had ever put out.
And it was so tame as well.
It's incredibly tame, really, when you listen to it.
It doesn't ever really get going by today's standards.
I don't think it's slotted in anywhere.
I think that was part of what made it so charming and so different, really.
I mean, the mere fact that he did the gravedigger thing with no accompaniment at all other than me raiding the Decca sound effects library for Thunder and stuff.
And he did that actually standing in a box of gravel.
I mean, those footsteps are him.
And the sneeze is incredibly good.
In fact, if you listen to that, that's a very early piece of acting from Bowie.
And it's actually pretty damn good, because, I mean, how many people do you know who can fake a sneeze?
I certainly can't.
Excuse me.
Please, Mr. Gravedigger, don't feel ashamed as you dig little holes for the dead and the maimed.
Please, Mr. Gravedigger, I couldn't care if you found a golden bucket full of some girl's hair and you put it in your bucket.
OK, that's probably enough.
Please, Mr Gravedigger, I would generally skip past that one at the end of side two.
But for Bowie, these songs were important steps towards creating musical characters that would soon bestride the world like spangly colossuses.
I was aware of what story form should be like, and I knew that it wasn't...
the right thing to write a completely pat little piece that didn't have the twist and turns that you find in real life.
So it was my first sort of, you know, stumbling steps toward trying to write both sides of the ambiguities of life rather than just a straightforward, you know, hey, it's a wonderful life kind of thing.
Because I was never comfortable when I did come to do those kinds of songs that were kind of the breezy, brisk pieces where the sun shone in all the time.
You know, I always felt, oh, this isn't,
This doesn't smack true somehow.
Not for me, anyway.
David, looking for a truth smack?
This is Adam Buxton on David Bowie.
And speaking of getting smacked by the truth, it's time for the news.
What's up, what's up, what's up?
This is BBC Radio 6 Music.
Ministers defend welfare cuts, body found at Glencoe.
Boat race getting underway.
BBC News at 4.30, I'm Adam Porter.
The government has defended changes to the benefits system, saying almost a million people will be lifted out of poverty.
It follows criticism from a group of four churches who say the measures are unjust.
Richard Wellings from the Institute of Economic Affairs says the government is walking a difficult line.
Welfare and health put together are basically around half of government spending, so cuts are necessary.
The economy is in deep trouble.
Borrowing is absolutely enormous and at dangerous levels.
Having said that, they need to get the detail right.
We have a range of changes, a raft of them, coming in all at once, and this is going to affect people very deeply.
David Cameron's released an Easter message in which he says that faith institutions play an incredible role in society.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister was accused of feeding anxieties among Christians by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey.
The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has used his first Easter message to warn against ignoring human complexity and fallibility.
In a sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, he suggested that politicians couldn't be expected to fix the economy in five years and he couldn't deal with all the Church's problems.
Mountain rescuers have found a body at Glencoe in the Highlands.
A skier was reported missing yesterday after an avalanche.
The boat race is getting underway on the Thames.
Security is tight after last year's race was disrupted by a protester who forced the cruise to stop.
The president of the Oxford Boat Club, Alex Davidson, says the race is one of the great British sporting spectacles.
Quite a lot of the challenge is trying to remain focused on the race but then there are days like this occasionally where
You allow yourself to become immersed in what you're doing and kind of appreciate that you are taking part in what's a very special event.
Football, Aston Villa have lost 2-1 at home to Liverpool in the Premier League.
The defeat leaves them firmly in the relegation zone.
That's 6 Music News, the next updates at 5pm.
Sailing through the water and upon the coast To the city of solid iron through the kingdom of the post Send your friend away now, let her sail back home tonight
Dancing face to face Something like a drowning Dancing out his face No one here can see you Dancing face to face No one here can beat you Dancing out his face
Silent as George Rodenbach, mist and silhouette Girl, you move like water, you got stars upon your head You've got my name and number, you've got to take the floor
Something like religion, dancing face to face Something like a drowning, dancing out of space No one here can see you, dancing face to face No one here can beat you, dancing out of space
Big baby!
That's what he's saying, isn't it?
Hello, this is Adam Buxton.
Thanks for joining me for this trawl through some of my favourite Bowie moments, old and new.
That was Dancing Out in Space, from David Bowie's new album, The Next Day.
Clearly David's not worried about being pigeonholed as Pop's go-to guy for anything space-related, which has always been good news for me.
When you're a 12-year-old science fiction fan, as I was when I first got into Bowie, the mere mention of planets, moons, space, stars and satellites is exciting, and with Bowie, the astronomical never seemed too far off.
I really didn't pick up on the fact that most of the imagery from the Ziggy era was also probably related to glamour and celebrity.
It didn't occur to me that Starman might be about someone becoming famous.
I just thought it was about an alien man from space.
It was actually meant to be a male version of Judy Garland's Over the Rainbow.
I mean I thought you know I mean that's yeah there's a take on that but star man is in fact somewhere over the rainbow and I just went from there and just took it somewhere else to be you know this thing because it was like so any day it'll come it'll be for me one of those things you know this kind of if you hang around long enough thing you can overcome any obstacle
And so that became a blueprint for that.
But it got kind of turned on its end.
I mean, anything I touch always gets kind of perverted out of all kind of recognizable form.
But that's half the fun of it.
It's kind of, you know, taking a system and throwing a spanner into it.
Didn't know what time it was when lights were low.
I leaned back on my rails.
Some cat was laying down some rock'n'roll Let us all listen Then the loud sounds that seemed to fight Came back like a slow voice on a wave of ice That weren't no DJ, that was ice
There's a starman waiting in the sky He'd like to come and meet us But he thinks he'd blow our minds There's a starman waiting in the sky He's told us not to blow it Cos he knows it's all worth while he's home Let the children lose it Let the children use it Let all the children boogie
Hey, that's far out, so you heard him too.
Switch on the TV, we may pick him up on channel two.
Look out your window, I can see his light.
If we can sparkle, he may land tonight.
Don't tell your papa, or he'll get us all.
There's a star man waiting in the sky He'd like to come and meet us But he thinks he'd blow our minds There's a star man
He's told us not to blow it, cos he knows it's all worthwhile He told me, let the children lose it, let the children use it Let all the children boogie Starman, waiting in the sky He'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he's all mine
And waiting in the sky, he's told us not to blow it Cause he knows it's all worthwhile, he told me Let the children use it, let the children use it Let all the children boogie
Starman from Ziggy Stardust.
One day when I was 12, the phone rang.
I picked it up and it was William Mullins who was one of the cool guys at school.
He said, hey, I had to phone someone so I picked on you.
I said, hey, that's a line from Starman, isn't it?
I get the reference.
He said, yeah, it is.
That was one of the greatest days of my life up until that point.
Of course, the quintessential space-related track from Bowie's career, and probably the greatest space song of all time, is Hello Spaceboy.
No, it's not that one, although that is a great space track, and when they put the first boy in space, that's the track they'll use for the coverage, I would say almost certainly.
Here's Bowie's long-term friend and producer Tony Visconti talking quite snootily about the song I'm thinking of.
He wrote it, genuinely wrote it one night as an idea.
He made a lovely little demo of it.
And he was under pressure to come up with something commercial.
He really, you know, this is the man who said that the fugs were the greatest thing on earth.
Lou Reed in the form of Velvet Underground was the greatest thing on earth.
And now he comes up with something incredibly crass and simple.
And it was, as I called it, a cheap shot, you know, a cheap shot of publicity.
I told David, I said, if you put out Space Oddity as a single, it's going to be a hit, but you'll never, ever write another song like that again, which I believe he never has actually.
And I said, you'll have a problem.
I said, because it's a novelty record.
It's not a David Bowie record.
It's a novelty record, like Ernie the Milkman or something like that.
I put it in that category at the time.
and the clatter of the wheels as they spun round and round.
And he galloped into Market Street, his badge upon his chest, his name was Ernie, and he drove the fastest milk cart in the West.
Yeah, Benny Hill, with Ernie, the fastest milkman in the West, from 1970.
A song that was picked by Tory leader David Cameron as one of his top ten favourites on Desert Island Discs.
Interesting fact.
It's a very, very good song, but I'm gonna stick my neck out and say that it's not quite as good as Space Oddity, though clearly Tony Visconti didn't think so.
In the end, he passed on the producing job to Gus Dudgeon, who you'll recall had already worked with Bowie on The Laughing Gnome, so he was already primed for greatness.
Dudgeon brilliantly realized Space Oddity's potential to be more than just a novelty song, and helped create something intimate, trippy, and cinematically epic in its emotional sweep.
Ground Control to Major Tom.
Ground Control to Major Tom.
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.
Ground Control to Major Tom.
seven six commencing countdown engines on two two check ignition and may god's love be with you
This is ground control to Major Tom You've really made the grade And the papers want to know whose shirt you wear Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare
This is major time to ground control I'm stepping through the door And I'm floating in a most peculiar way And the stars look very different today
Where am I sitting in a tin can?
Far above the world Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do
I'm feeling very scared And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Ground control to Major Tom Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear my project where my team can?
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do
It was actually written because of 2001.
That was the reason it got written, because I went stoned out of my mind to see the movie, and it really, really freaked me out, especially the trip passage when you go through the universe.
I thought, oh, this is glorious.
I want to be in there.
And it came very quickly after that.
I wrote that very quickly after that.
And I was really over the moon when, I didn't want to say that, when it was used as part of the background track for the landing of Neil Armstrong.
I mean, I think they used it on that program, on the moon landing program.
I just couldn't believe they were doing that.
I was thinking, did they know what this song's about?
What do you mean?
It's about a spaceman, in space, on a rocket mission.
What are you saying about Major Tom?
Here's Bowie elucidating, kind of, in the early 80s.
I saw him as a person who thought he was a very regular person, but actually put in a situation that he couldn't handle, would reduce him to something quite extraordinary, where he had no intention of going back to Earth.
That was implicit in the song originally.
I read the song that it was his intention not to come back, that it wasn't anything to do with ground control or failure on the part of the spaceship.
Whoa, whoa, wait a second.
I'd always assumed that the tragic loss of Major Tom had been down to catastrophic systems failure.
Now you're telling me he had no intention of returning in the first place?
Well, for crying out loud, this was a multi-million dollar piece of hardware.
Why was this man ever allowed on board?
I always thought he looked dopey.
Major Tom.
Major Tom what?
Use your surname, man.
I'm furious.
I should have just told him.
Look, if you're not cut out for the space program...
This is Guy Garvey.
Why do I have a radio program on Six Music?
Picture three-year-old Guy in a pram in the front room.
Five sisters who all love music and have decided that I'm having their taste in music.
From soul through disco to prog rock, I wasn't just played records, I was told why it was the best record.
This is my childhood.
A scared, open-eyed, open-mouthed young boy saying, can't I just like it all?
What I try and do on The Finest Hour is I will always give a reason for playing a song.
I play so many different diverse kinds of music and the listeners help me do that by them sending me recommendations and we all get richer where music's concerned.
It's exploring music, finding new music and that's great.
Tonight from 10 on BBC Radio 6 Music.
Do you remember where God has been?
It's such an ugly song I've heard a rumour from Ground Control Oh no, don't say it's true They got a message from the action man
I've loved all unneeded love, saw the details fall away
The shaking of nothing is killing just pictures of chapters in synthesis And I ain't got no money and I ain't got no hands But I'm hoping to kick but the planet is glowing
Ashes to ash and fuck to fuck it We know major talks are junkie Strung out in heaven's pie Hitting at all times
I've never done good things I've never done bad things I've never did anything out of the blue
I want an axe to break the ice I want it come down right now Ashes to ashes, funk to funky We know Major Tom's a junkie Stuck out in heaven's high Pitying our own time
Ashes to Ashes, from the album Scary Monsters, released in 1980.
I think Ashes to Ashes might be my favorite song ever.
I've never done good things.
I've never done bad things.
I've never did anything out of the blue.
Everyone feels like that sometimes, don't they?
Especially if they've spent a long time in the blue man group.
Ashes to Ashes found Bowie aged only 33, concluding a decade that still stands as his most really, really good.
It was also an opportunity to bid farewell to the disgracefully irresponsible Major Tom — good riddance, I say, he should have been court-martialed — who had been for Bowie an important part of his creative development.
It was the first time I'd been able to create a character that was very credible, and I think for any writer that's a high point.
He preceded all the others, and I suppose one has a special place for him.
I do, yes.
So do I.
Of course, the Bowie character that really caught the world's imagination most completely was Screaming Lord Byron from the Blue Jean video in 1984.
All right, then, it wasn't Screaming Lord Byron, although that is a brilliant short film by Julian Temple which you should seek out if you don't know it.
Bowie plays a ludicrous Ponce rock star, Lord Byron, seen at one point applying his daft make-up in his dressing room whilst listening to Bowie's album Low.
In the film, Bowie also plays an awkward but cheeky geezer who's stalking Lord Byron in order to impress a girl he fancies.
Several times in the film, Bowie's cheeky geezer shtick is so similar to the tics and mannerisms of Ricky Gervais that the film almost looks like a blueprint for Ricky's self-referential career.
Jazz in for Blue Jean was all very post-modern, before celebrities taking the mick out of themselves had become something that everyone famous was expected to do.
At the end of the video, the girl cops off, not with our cheeky hero, but with the ludicrous Ponce rock star, and Bowie's outraged geezer character yells at Lord Byron,
Yeah, although that wasn't the case with Never Let Me Down, where the record sleeve is a pretty good indication of the songs therein.
For a Bowie fan, it was fun to see that he had a sense of humour about the faintly daft business of creating these characters in the first place, but it didn't take away from the fact that when he'd got it right, as he did with Ziggy Stardust, he was able to have his massive glittery cake and then eat it by playing a larger-than-life frontman who nevertheless sang songs with the power to really make you feel your life meant something.
and however lonely you might sometimes feel, you were not alone.
Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth.
You pull on your finger, then another finger, then cigarette.
The water wall is calling It lingers, then you forget Oh, oh, oh, oh You're a rock'n'roll suicide You're too old to lose it Too young to choose it And the clock waits so patiently on your song
You walk past the cafe that you don't eat when you've lived too long.
Oh no, no, no, you're a rock and roll suicide.
Shift brake for snarling as you stumble across the road.
But the day breaks instead, so you hurry home.
Don't let the sun blast your shadow Don't let the milk float round your mind They're so natural, religiously unkind Oh no, love, you're not alone You're watching yourself, but you're too unfair You've got your head on fire
Not alone Just turn on with me and you're not alone Let's turn on and be not alone Give me your hands and you're wonderful
Whoa.
That's how you finish an album.
Rock and roll suicide from Ziggy Stardust.
Hey, this is Adam Buxton, taking you on a personalised ramble through the career of David Bowie.
Here's Mick Woody Woodmansey, drummer from The Spiders From Mars, talking about Bowie's ability to carry off his crazy character creations.
He loves acting.
I mean, he used to put on shows in the front row, and we used to sit and watch him.
He would come in dressed as an old woman.
with, like, a crooked back and dressed in woman's clothes with makeup on.
And, like, his face was an old woman's.
Without that much makeup, he totally got into an old woman's total thing, you know?
And it was scary.
I mean, he really can get into things that he wants to get into.
And it's so convincing as well.
It's not like you... You're looking at him and thinking, like, oh, yes, it's David Bowie being an old woman.
It was like an old woman.
and it hit you really strong.
And then a few thoughts would come in, oh, it's Dave.
It was really good.
Mick Woodmansey talking about being hit by an old woman.
But what kind of toll did playing these characters take on the old woman herself?
Well, I didn't know.
When did that mix up?
And I've been mixed up, man.
I mean, really, it was one doesn't know.
One half of me is putting a concept forward and the other half is trying to sort out my own emotions.
And a lot of my space creations are in fact assets of me.
I have now since discovered.
But I wouldn't even admit that to myself at the time.
Then I would put everything, just make everything a little kind of upfront personification of how I felt about things.
Ziggy would be something, and it would relate to me now, I find.
And Major Tom in Space Oddity was something.
Aladdin's saying, they're all facets of me.
And I wasn't really, I got lost at one point.
I couldn't decide whether I was writing characters, or whether the characters were writing me, or whether we were all one and the same.
And the rumours spread that I was aging fast
Well, I said hello, and I said hello And I asked why not, and I replied, I don't know So he asked a simple black man, who is obvious to me Well, he laughed and sang, and quipped, call it different And I cried for all the others, till the day was nearly through For I realized that God
I'm home!
Hello, Mr. Stardust.
How are you?
Oh, yes.
Very well, thank you, Angie.
I've had a marvellous afternoon, actually.
It's been very productive.
I've made a decision.
I'm going to kill off Ziggy.
Oh.
Is that a really good idea?
I can't carry on being Ziggy Stardust forever, can I?
I was thinking that maybe you could.
No, no, no, Angie.
It's starting to interfere with my id.
Oh.
I need a different mask.
A different character to channel my energies.
Here, look.
I've come up with a few.
See what you think.
Okay.
Okay, here's the first one.
Cobbler Bob.
Did you say Cobbler Bob?
Yes, Cobbler Bob.
Cobbler Bob.
Bob is a cobbler.
There's a hole in my soul.
Who is Cobbler Bob?
It's an aspect of my psyche, Angie.
You know, Bob, like David Robert Jones.
But he's a cobbler, he makes shoes.
I could have giant shoes, with massive platforms, big enough for the band to fit into.
The sheer theatricality would be superlative, Angie.
It's great.
Do you have any others?
Amadeus.
Amadeus.
Amadeus.
Amadeus.
Amadeus.
Yeah, I get it.
And what does he do?
He's a composer of classical music who comes to believe that he's God.
I'd love to try some classical music, Angie.
Classical?
I don't think the kids are going to like that, David.
All right, the Groovy Gardener.
The Groovy Gardener?
No.
Masterchef.
No.
Viscount Gismarck.
No.
Oh, Aladdin Sane.
Oh.
Who is Aladinsane?
He's like Ziggy, but with a different name and some sort of strange fluid leaking out of his collarbone.
What's the fluid?
Could you make it Pepsi?
No, it's a sort of gel.
Like a kind of bonding agent for dentures.
Oh.
Could you make it orange juice?
I don't know.
Possibly.
I love it, David.
It's brilliant.
That's the one you should go with.
So it's between Aladinsane and Cobbler Bob.
Yes, that's right.
Except not Cobbler Bob.
All right then.
Swinging an old bouquet of flowers and sake and strange divine.
You'll make it.
Passion with bright young things takes him away to war.
Don't fake it.
Settling with sand or strings.
You'll know you can Ooh, we'll love a life insane Battle cries and champagne Just in time for sunrise Ooh, we'll love a life insane Motor sensation, my
In Paris or maybe Hull I'm waiting, crutches of sadness Wait for a light and say, you'll make it Ooh, we'll love a light and say A million sweet bounties, just in case it's sunrise Ooh, we'll love a light and say
Time for one of the most amazing piano solos in rock right now, and here's its architect, Mike Garson, to tell you more about its creation.
So the band was playing... And the first recording of my overdub on the piano, I played like... David said, that's great, but that's not what I want.
Then I went again, he didn't say what to play, and I played a Latin one, and I went...
And he said, not quite.
And then he said, play that avant-garde thing we used to talk about in the car when driving to gigs.
And then that's what I did.
That's crazy stuff like that over the chords and in rhythm.
And that's the one they used.
just in case
Aladdin Sane, a song about an Arabian boy who decides not to enlist the help of a genie with the voice of Robin Williams.
It may also be about Bowie's fears that he might be going crazy.
Yeah, that's been sort of a part of the family, really.
Well, family's nuts.
Regular.
They're all pretty crazy.
I don't know if they still are.
I've not seen any of them for years.
There's quite an amount of insanity within any family, I think.
I think we've just got more than our share.
But it's better to sort of recognize the angels and devils within oneself, I think.
And that prevents true insanity.
I'm no more insane than the next man.
But I keep making myself aware of how flighty I am and what a grasshopper I am and how my moods change such a lot, so drastically.
And even my persona privately changes a lot.
There's one minute I can be
quite verbose and articulate and the next minute I just I feel like a stumbling philistine.
I can't express anything and I can't even think the same way and my points of view change all the time.
I think as long as you keep recognizing it and you kind of stand outside whoever's taken over at the time and the other one stands outside and has a look.
Thank you.
Mike Garson on piano, getting paid more than the rest of the band.
I don't think they realise that, until now.
But look, not only is this the last show of the tour, but, and get ready for this because it's going to blow your mind and ruin your night.
I haven't even told the rest of the band yet.
It's the last show we'll ever do.
It's okay, it's okay.
Because Cobbler Bob is coming.
Cobbler Bob.
Bob is a cobbler.
Ow!
Who threw that lolly?
Who was it?
Was it you?
That is a height of ungratefulness.
It's the glass spider for you, son.
And you can stop laughing, Mick Woody Woodmansey.
Bowie's so-called farewell at the Hammersmith Odeon on the 3rd of July 1973 spelt the end for the characters of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane.
But it wasn't quite the end of the road for the Spiders from Mars, who weeks later reconvened just outside Paris for Pin Ups, an album of covers featuring some of the classic British rock that had influenced the young Bowie.
The result was an album that sounded very much like what it was.
Some knackered, rather grumpy guys coming to a fork in the road and having one more jam before parting ways, more or less for good.
to give the Spiders something to do.
I didn't quite know how to fit them into the next thing, so I thought we'd just sort of go in the studio and play a few old favourites to keep their interest up more than anything else.
It was really, that was an Insiders album, that was for me to keep the band together, or break it up, one of the two.
I thought, you know, I thought something like that might do it.
To give them something without any concept and see if they really enjoyed doing it.
And they did, you see.
And they decided that they wanted to work more like that.
And I said, no, I'm going back to big, heavy melodrama.
And you don't fit into my scheme of things.
And I finished it.
A cruel and cutting blow.
But it had to be done sometimes.
You've got to be cruel to be kind.
Available now at the Six Music website.
I wanted to be thought of as somebody who was very much a trendy person.
Six Music celebrates David Bowie.
We've been exploring the life and music of a creative icon.
There's no comparison between David Bowie on stage and David Bowie off.
They're hopelessly different.
With interviews, documentaries and live sessions from the BBC archives.
Plus Adam Buxton on David Bowie.
Wait, it was a what?
It was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was.
Bowie's Heroes with Matt Everitt.
I'm still inspired by him.
Music wouldn't be the same without him.
And Bowie and Beyond, a music fan's guide to Berlin.
This is one of the most famous recording studios in the world, isn't it?
Yeah, man, that's the big hall by the wall.
Catch up on any of our special Bowie programs right now at the Six Music website.
I'm a few years from my Hollywood highs The best of the last, the cleanest larvae of the hive I'm sniffing my legend, the films that I made Forget that I'm 50, cause you just got paid Crack baby crack, show me you're real Smack baby smackers
You called yourself a trick down on Sunset and Vine But since he pinched your baby shoulder from too high You sold me illusions for a sack of checks You made a bad connection cause I just want your sex
That's Cracked Actor from Aladdin Sane.
Hey, this is Adam Buxton.
Thanks for joining me on my Bowie ramble.
We focus now on one of the early highlights of Bowie's career as an actor.
You see, that's why I played Cracked Actor there.
Yeah?
I've thought all of this through, and it's going to be relevant again in a minute.
Just wait, it'll blow your mind.
Of course Bowie's various musical characters were a brilliant way to keep things fresh and entertaining for his audiences and for himself, but Ken Pitt, his manager in pre-Ziggy days, had always done his best to find acting roles in TV and film for Bowie too.
However, apart from a lolly commercial directed by a young Ridley Scott in which Bowie sings an early version of Space Oddity, and a small part in The Virgin Soldiers, good roles were hard to come by.
All that changed with the arrival of superstardom.
In 1975, director Nicholas Roeg, who had previously cast Bowie's arch-rival Mick Jagger in his film Performance, was beginning production on a film based on a book by American writer Walter Tevis called The Man Who Fell to Earth.
When it came to casting the main part of Thomas Jerome Newton, described in the book as tall and willowy, Rogue had originally considered Peter O'Toole, and even the author and screenwriter, Michael Crichton, who was nearly seven foot tall.
He was a giant guy!
But he went for the comparatively diminutive Bowie after seeing Alan Yentob's BBC TV documentary Cracked Actor in January 1975.
You see, Cracked Actor catches up with Bowie in September 74 on the Diamond Dogs tour, and it finds David skidding between various cocaine-induced states of paranoia, fae self-absorption, and a kind of jokey bumptiousness.
I never wanted to be a rock and roll star.
I never, honestly, I wasn't even there.
But I was, you see, I was there, that's what happened.
No, um... No, it excited me, just because it was there, that was enough.
I mean, personally, I was playing saxophone, and I was trying to make up my mind whether I wanted to play rock'n'roll or jazz, unless I wasn't very good at jazz, and I could fake it pretty well on rock'n'roll.
So I played rock'n'roll.
He played rock'n'roll, cos he liked rock'n'roll.
If you're good at rock'n'roll, you should play rock'n'roll.
If you're not very good, give rock'n'roll a miss, but he liked rock'n'roll.
So I played rock'n'roll.
Simple as that.
Rock'n'roll had made him a big star on the back of Ziggy Stardust, and he was about to become even more successful with Young Americans, and the strain was beginning to show.
He looks gaunt and fragile, albeit quite sexy a lot of the time, although I should point out I am not suggesting it's a good idea for anyone to strive for sexiness by becoming an internationally famous 27-year-old musician and getting hooked on crazy drugs.
It was a very dark time for Bowie, and he needed tissues for his eyes.
A tissue for my eyes, please.
No, can I have tissues, please?
From Nick Rogue's point of view, this pasty ponce was perfect to play a brittle, awkward alien visiting Earth in an attempt to save his dying planet, but getting corrupted by human vices in the process.
So, did Rogue have any specific advice for Bowie?
No, he just said, be yourself.
Nick I think Nick realized I had some serious problems at the time and just thought he's perfect just put him in just change his clothes just put him in as he is let him just walk through it and I did I mean I was just out of my skull on that movie but I was a good boy I turned up on time and I did you know everything I was supposed to do but it really was next film I mean I don't think I really had any kind of say in how I was gonna
do anything in that movie.
I just he said right now look left and I look left and that was it.
A typically self-effacing Bowie covering up the fact that he is rightly proud of his performance in The Man Who Fell to Earth.
I first saw the film as a 14 year old when I stayed up late to watch it on BBC2 sometime in 1983.
All I knew about it was what I'd read in the radio times, that it was a science fiction film and it starred David Bowie, two of my favourite things.
By that time, my mum liked Bowie's songs too, so she stayed up to watch it with me.
It quickly became clear that this film was not going to be like Star Wars.
If it weren't for Bowie, I probably wouldn't have sat through it.
But in an age before it was possible to see footage of your favourite star anytime you liked, I found myself riveted by him and watched it right the way through.
It was my introduction to a kind of film I hadn't seen before, a film in which not everything necessarily makes sense, and where some of the images are used not to drive a plot, but simply for their own sake.
It was an arty film.
It was also my introduction to scenes containing frank sexual nudosity, scenes which still pack quite a sexy punch today.
You even get a brief glimpse of David's laughing gnome, all of which made for a very uncomfortable watch with my mum.
But the film made a huge impression on me and cemented my affection for and fascination with its star.
Oh oh oh oh oh
I give my complete attention to her, very good for the mind She's got a funny face, she's got good channels So all around her go my titties in one pile I brought my baby home, she sat around for long She stole my titties in one pile, baby's gone, yeah She caught right up my mind
Baby, you're my bravery Each night I sit there feelin' Set back, my dreams are chillin' She's my main feature My TVC one time It just stays back on blinkin' So all around me blow my TVC one time While all these lights are dimmin' Jump down that rainbow way Be with my baby We'll spend some time together
So I
Each night I sit there bleedin', turn back my dreams just later She's my main feature, my TV's in one light It just turns back my weekend, so hologrammical, my TV's in one life One of these nights I may just jump down that rainbow way, be with my baby lady We'll spend some time together, so hologrammical, my TV's in one life
Somewhere, somewhere she runs reeling in the sky So all the cravat go up to the sky
TVC 15, a song about a guy whose girlfriend is eaten by his television, from the album Station to Station, recorded in late 1975, immediately after Bowie finished shooting on The Man Who Fell to Earth.
It's now possible to see that film as the jumping off point for a period in Bowie's career that is regarded by many as perhaps his most creatively fruitful, the run of albums that starts with Station to Station and then heads to Berlin for Low, Heroes and Lodger, made with Brian Eno.
In fact, the first two of those albums both have sleeves that feature images from The Man Who Fell to Earth.
On the cover of Station to Station, you can see Bowie as Thomas Newton peering inside the ship he's built to take him back to his home planet.
Just out of shot is the actor Rip Torn, a.k.a.
Artie from Larry Sanders.
He stars alongside Bowie in the film and in that scene chats with Newton about space travel and television.
Would you be comfortable in here?
I think I'd last about 20 minutes.
And then?
I'd start screaming.
Wouldn't everyone?
Last night I was watching television.
I saw these ex-astronauts.
Some of them are basket cases now.
Television.
The strange thing about television is that it doesn't tell you everything.
It shows you everything about life on Earth.
The true mysteries remain.
Perhaps it's in the nature of time.
Just waves in space.
Waves in space.
A scene from The Man Who Fell to Earth with a mellow soundtrack cue that I wrongly assumed, watching the film for the first time, was by Bowie himself.
Indeed, upon completing Station to Station, Bowie had started work on a soundtrack.
Here he is on the American TV show Soul Train in November 75, taking a question from an audience member.
Hi, my name is Ella Walker and I would like to know, do you plan on doing any soundtracks for movies?
I'm doing the soundtrack for the man who fell to earth, with a friend of mine, Paul Buckmaster.
In fact, the bulk of the original music for the film ended up being composed by John Phillips, ex of the Mamas and the Poppers, with the help of Mick Taylor, who'd just left the Rolling Stones.
You can hear some of it playing here.
This is Rumba Boogie.
It's quite demented.
As for the tracks Bowie recorded with Paul Buckmaster, an arranger and composer who'd worked with David on Space Oddity, none of them made it to the finished film.
I presumed, I don't know why, probably because I was arrogant enough to think it so, therefore I acted upon it, that I had been asked to write the music for this film.
And I spent two or three months putting bits and pieces of material together.
I had no idea that nobody had asked me to write the music for this film.
In fact, it had been an idea that was banded about.
And I constructed a thing which, in the death, never became the soundtrack to the movie, but became the album Low.
Some of it went on to Station to Station, but another chunk of it went on to Low, which was the album that I did with Brian Eno in Berlin a few years later.
Subterraneans, the last track on Low that supposedly started its life in those November 75 Man Who Fell To Earth soundtrack sessions.
It was unlike anything Bowie or any other contemporary mainstream pop musician had previously recorded, and it pointed the way clearly to the direction at least one side of Low was going to take.
One of the people who was doing something similar at the time was ex-Roxy Music keyboard nutbucket Brian Eno.
So,
This is Be Calmed, from Eno's album Another Green World, which is an absolute peach.
It was released weeks before Bowie began working on the Man Who Fell to Earth soundtrack.
Clearly, Bowie appreciated what Eno was up to, and happily, the feeling was mutual.
A few months later, they'd begin work on some of the most interesting, enjoyable, and influential pop music of the last 40 or 50 thousand years.
Jasmine, I saw you breathing As I pushed my foot down to the floor I was going round and round
always cracking
David Bowie, always crashing in the same car from the album Low, which kicked off his Berlin period.
More of that when we return.
Hey, it's Adam Buxton here.
Right now, time for the news.
This is BBC Radio 6 Music.
Government rejects fears over welfare cuts.
Body of skier found.
Oxford win the boat race.
BBC News at 5.30, I'm Adam Porter.
Ministers have been defending changes to the welfare system that come into force from tomorrow, saying they'll lift almost a million people out of poverty.
But a group of four churches says the measures unfairly target the less well-off.
Catherine Saxe-Jones from the Homelessness Charity Crisis is worried about the effect of cuts to housing benefit for people with spare bedrooms.
The government does say it's about reducing under occupancy, but actually the cuts are going to have the biggest impact in areas of the country where there are not smaller properties for people to move into.
So what that's going to mean is many people will end up facing homelessness.
Rescue teams in the Scottish Highlands, who've been searching for a skier who went missing after an avalanche, say they found his body.
Daniel Maddox, who was 41 and from Clackmannanshire, was skiing in an off-piste area behind Glencoe Ski Centre.
Scotland Yard says its inquiries are continuing into the row between officers and the former Cabinet Minister Andrew Mitchell at Downing Street.
Mr Mitchell has lodged an official complaint, claiming details of the police report on the matter were leaked.
He denies calling officers plebs.
A police officer is suing the manager of a petrol station in Norfolk after tripping over a step on his property.
Lawyers for Kelly-Jones say she injured herself when she was called to a suspected burglary.
Oxford have won the boat race.
They were in front of Cambridge for most of the four-and-a-quarter-mile course on the River Thames and won by one-and-a-half boat lengths.
The Olympic rower James Cracknell thought Cambridge had the wrong tactics.
They chose to accept a small margin of defeat rather than risk everything halfway down the course and I think it's better to lose by 10 lengths and be able to look in the mirror and say I gave everything to win rather than accept a smaller margin.
I wonder if you can row that close to someone you should have taken a risk earlier on.
That's Six Music News.
The next update is at 6.30.
A New Career in a New Town by David Bowie from the album Lowe.
Wait, it's just occurred to me that that title might be a nod to the character Bowie played in The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Thomas Newton, like New Town.
And that film was the beginning of a new phase in Bowie's career, so, uh, a new career in a new town.
Oh, I'm losing perspective, sorry about that.
This is Adam Buxton going Bowie crazy here on BBC6 Music, and we're into the Sparse Gliders collaborations with Brian Eno right now.
Here's Brian talking about where David was at when those Berlin albums began.
What I think he was trying to do was to duck the momentum of a successful career.
You know, the main problem with success is that it is a huge momentum.
It's like you've got this big train behind you and it all wants you to carry on going the same way.
Nobody wants you to step off the tracks and start looking around in the scrub around the edges, you know, because nobody can see anything promising there.
Of course they can't.
It's not their job to see that.
And
I think he could, and he started certainly on Station to Station.
I felt, well, I think that's such an innovative record.
I can say that because I had nothing to do with it whatsoever.
I think the other ones are as well, but people would say, well, you would say that, wouldn't you?
But that record really indicates to me that he had a nose for the future.
And yeah, I think he certainly did want to be with someone who he felt also had that and was keen to encourage that and to say, don't worry, there's something at the end of this.
It doesn't fizzle out.
It's worth working on.
There's something to go for.
Warsowa, or Wazowa, to use the proper pronunciation.
Before they became Joy Division, Warsaw named themselves after this track.
Low fun fact.
It's the first of three largely instrumental moodscapes on side two of Low, most of which were written by Brian Eno, with Bowie providing made-up language vocal embellishment.
At the time of recording the album, in September 76, David was having to shuttle between the studio at the Château de Rouville in northern France, where Pin-Ups was recorded, and Paris, an hour away, where legal wrangles with his former manager Michael Lippmann were taking place.
In Bowie's absences, Eno would use the time to compose pieces of music on his portable EMS synthesizer, currently on display at the V&A Bowie exhibition.
Here's an exact recreation of what those days were like.
Hello, Brian Eno.
Hello, Tony Visconti.
I just got back from Paris.
Ah, yes.
How are your legal wrangles with your former manager Michael Lippman progressing, David?
Oh, Brian, it's just awful.
I'm not sure I've ever felt so low.
Oh, we're going to have to start calling you Han.
Zuri?
Ah, no.
That film hasn't been made yet, has it?
When you see Star Wars, you'll chuckle.
Right.
So, what have you been up to while I've been away then, Brian?
Well, I've been working on a piece of music, actually, David.
If you don't like it, I'll use it on one of my weird albums.
Do you want to have a listen?
Yes, I'd love to hear it.
I could use some cheering up.
Could you roll the tape for us, please, Tony Visconti?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, I am co-producing this record, so it's not a big problem for me.
Doing a lot of co-production, probably more than people think.
Here we go.
So, there you go.
What do you think, David?
Can you use it on the record?
Yes, absolutely, Brian.
I might just add a little something, though, so I won't feel so bad when people assume I did it on my own.
Good idea, David.
What sort of thing were you thinking of?
Well, it's a rivetingly depressing piece of music, Brian.
It reminds me of the train journey I took across Poland recently with Jim Osterberg, aka Iggy Pop.
I think I might just step inside the vocal booth and freeform some impressionistic word decorations.
Get ready to capture the magic, Tony.
Yes, I will, David.
I'm co-producing this album, so it's not a problem.
Would you like me to put this through the Eventide Harmonizer?
It fiddles with the fabric of time.
It's okay, Tony.
Just a bit of reverb would be splendid.
Thanks.
Bit of reverb from co-producer Tony Visconti, doing more than people think on this record.
How's that for you, David?
I'm in a scary cave with bats.
That's lovely.
Thanks, Tony.
Okay, here we go.
I once went to Warsaw on a train with Iggy Pop What I saw from the windows of the train was depressing
What do you think, Brian?
Is it too on the nose?
I think it may have been, David, yes.
Perhaps it's time to use the oblique strategy cards again, Derek.
Yes, Clive, that sounds like a very good idea.
I love doing the Derek and Clive voices, David.
So do I, Brian.
Co-producer can do Derek and Clive if you need it to.
OK, let's take a look at the first card and see what unexpected creative directions it sends us in.
It says beer, offal, cocaine for the weekend.
Oh no, I think that's just the shopping list, Brian.
Oh yes, let's try again.
Right, it says do like a made-up language that sounds kind of Italian.
Can you do that, David?
I can certainly have a try.
Here goes.
I think we've got it, Brian.
Yes, maybe just one more, David.
All right, Mr. Kubrick.
And here's how the track ended up.
I'm Paul Gambaccini.
So loving
Oh
alone.
Well, I think probably the time that was really very hard for me to understand exactly what I got myself into was when I first delivered Lowe to RCA.
At that particular time, I got from their head office in New York, they sent me a telegram.
And they said, look, we can't sell this.
They didn't use the word rubbish, but they said, we can't sell this kind of stuff.
We'll give you the money, go back to Philadelphia and do another Young Americans.
I was absolutely devastated because I thought that Lowe was
Probably one of the best things I'd ever done in my life and they just couldn't see it at all What was that time you were just talking about David it was was was you know, it doesn't matter just sing heroes in German and we'll move on I
You cut again I'm all of this I'm shot by the sun
Ich kam da zum Träumen, zum Träumen Die Mauer im Hochenweck halt so alt Schüsse an, reißen die Luft, reißen die Luft Dach mit Kussern
is
one of the foreign language versions of Heroes that Bowie recorded at the Hansa studio in Berlin, autumn 1977.
Almost exactly four years later, he would return to record there one more time.
Bowie had been cast as the lead in a BBC TV production of Bertolt Brecht's play Baal, about a wastrel youth who becomes involved in several sexual affairs and at least one murder, and features songs composed by Brecht himself.
I remember watching it when it went out in 1982.
I was 13 years old, and it was very, very confusing.
Over the two-day recording session in September 1981, Bowie turned in some of the best vocal performances of his life.
Here's The Drowned Girl.
It's not cheery, but check out Damad's singing skills on this.
Once she had drowned and started her slow descent Down the streams to where the great river's broadened O'er the open sky shone most magnificent
As if it was acting as her body's guardian Brack and duckweed slowly increased her weight By clasping her in their slimy grip
Through her limbs the cold-blooded fishes played Creatures in plant life kept on thus obstructing her last trip
And the sky that same evening grew dark as smoke And its stars through the night kept the brightness still soaring But it quickly grew clear when dawn now broke To see that she got one furthermore
Once her palate drunk had rotted beyond repair It happened quite slowly that she gently slid from God's thoughts First with her face, then her hands, right at the last with her hair Leaving those corpse-choked rivers to fall
He'll be doing it on the next series of The X Factor, you wait.
That's The Drowned Girl from the EP David Bowie and Bertolt Brecht's Ball.
I'm Adam Buxton with a few of my favourite Bowie moments here on BBC Six Music.
A few more to come shortly.
Hello, I'm Mark Riley.
Now some people say I spend too much time listening to music for me programme.
Hello Mark, it's Jim here from Django Django.
Look, we're all going to catch up to this pipe there and try to get in touch with you so fast if you want.
Well, I don't think that's true.
You can never listen to too much music.
Hello Mark, Barry here.
Are you there?
I could be accused of being somewhat antisocial.
I ain't right, but I'm sure as hell as fast as you remember me.
You know, there's more to life than music.
There's golf.
But that's what you've got to do if you want to find the next Django Django.
Hello Mark.
I don't know.
Why don't you just go for a drink with Lou Reed?
That's pretty freaky, Bowie.
Ooh, Bowie!
Is it cold out in space, Bowie?
You can borrow my jumper if you like, Bowie.
Does the cold of deep space make your nipples get pointed, Bowie?
Do you use your pointy nipples as telescopic antennae to transmit data back to Earth?
I bet you do, you freaky old bastard, you do.
What a very disrespectful and inaccurate impression from Flight of the Conchords.
Must be very strange for Bowie to have to process that kind of thing.
He may not be aware of it, of course, but I bet he is.
He keeps up with things.
He's got his ear to the ground, his finger on the pulse, and his old chap stuck in a floppy drive.
He doesn't surf the net, he rollerblades the net.
Yeah.
Besides, he knows what it's like to be a fan and make something affectionately weird about your hero, only to find out your hero's completely baffled by it.
I'd like to take a sim and fix bigger standing cinema Dress my friends up just for show, see them as they really are Put the people in my brain, two new pens to have a go I'd like to be a gallery, put you all inside my show
Andy, whoa-oh, looks a-scream, had him on now, whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh.
Andy, whoa-oh, silver screen, can't tell us apart at all.
Yeah, and got absolutely no response whatsoever.
I mean, I think actually, I heard later he was fairly insulted by it.
He thought, you know, those words are really weird, you know.
But am I really?
Is that what he really thinks of me?
I wasn't aware that, like most of us, Warhol was very sensitive about what people said about him.
Because I'd bought the whole pop art thing that he was like, you know, wasn't a real person.
That he was just this creation, you know.
Fifteen years after that, I'd be looking at myself and saying, don't people realise I'm a human being?
But we did.
The only touch point that we had was a pair of shoes that I was wearing from Enelo and David.
They were kind of real strange little jobs.
I think they were yellow.
As far as I remember, they were yellow with a half, no, a two-inch heel on them.
And he really liked them, and of course it occurred to me.
The one reason he was getting kind of fascinated about it is he used to be a shoe designer.
Or at least he used to do a lot of drawings of shoes, anyway, because I remember seeing them.
So I thought, oh, well, he liked those then.
Let's talk about my shoes.
So we talked about my shoes.
That's all I got out of him, really.
It was also quite a disillusionment in its own way.
But on the other hand, it supported everything I wanted to believe about him, is that, you know, I was with Warhol for an hour and he said nothing except about my shoes.
It just became, wow, that's a real anecdote.
Fill your heart with love today, don't play the game of time.
Things that happened in the past only happened in your mind, only in your mind.
Forget your mind and you'll be free, yeah The writing's on the wall
Just remember lovers never lose, cause they are free of thoughts impure and of thoughts unkind.
Happiness will clear your soul, love will free your mind and make you whole.
Happiness is happening Dragons have been bled Gentleness is everywhere Fear's just in your head Only in your head Fear is in your head Only in your head So forget your head And you'll be free
just remember lovers never lose cause they are free of thoughts impure and of thoughts unkind happiness will clear your soul love will clean your mind
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Fill Your Heart, recorded for Bob Harris' radio show Sounds of the Seventies in September 1971.
There's a nice bit of incidental audio at the end of that recording, with an impressed studio engineer on the talkback mic saying, Unbelievable!
And then Bowie asks if it was alright, as if he were a very old lady.
Listen.
Yeah, that was pretty good, David.
Well done.
I've never met David Bowie.
I've come close a couple of times, but luckily for him he's always managed to get away before our respective atoms collide and form pure awkwardness.
The closest I came to invading his consciousness was in 2002 when he curated the Meltdown Festival on London's South Bank.
Jonathan Ross had just had David as a guest on his TV talk show, and Bowie reciprocated by inviting him to DJ at a Meltdown event.
Jonathan, as a friend and fellow Bowie obsessive, asked me if I'd make a CD of some music for him to play in his DJ set.
And when Bowie appeared as a guest on his Radio 2 show, Jonathan showed him the CD I'd made.
See what you think of it.
Oh, it's gonna be good.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
Uncontrollable urge!
What do you think?
Crawford, Public Enemy, Jean-Michel Jarre.
Oh, this is great.
War, Lowrider.
Wow.
And a friend of mine, Adam Buxton, from Adam and Jo, he helped me put these together.
And Jonathan Richman.
Oh, do you like Jonathan Richman?
Love him.
Fantastic.
Helped me put this together.
I didn't mind that Jonathan had so brutally marginalised my involvement with the compilation project.
All I could think about was that the CD jewel case that hours earlier I'd prized apart to slip the track listing into was now resting in the delicate grasp of the man responsible for getting me into most of the music on there in the first place.
Devo, Jonathan Richmond, Talking Heads, Little Richard, The Minute Men, Pixies, The Cars, yes, even Jean-Michel Jarre.
All of them have been stops or detours on a musical roadmap that Bowie's albums have created for me.
Well, that's nearly it for this show.
Sorry about all the great tracks I didn't play and the amazing albums I ignored, but to do them all justice would take months and several weeks just for Tin Machine.
I'd just like to quickly thank Paul Trinker, who wrote the Bowie book Starman and chatted to me for a while about David, although if he's listened to this show, he's probably wondering why he bothered.
Thanks too to Ian Larson for inspiring the dramatic recreations, and thanks to you, listeners, for joining me.
Good to be back here on 6 again.
I'll conclude today with a song from Bowie's last album of the noughties, Reality, from 2003, which distinguished itself from his other records by featuring a cover design that eschewed the traditional intriguing photo of Bowie and opted instead for what appeared to be some bold Photoshop experimentation by a gifted toddler.
The track is called Days.
It's just a lovely tune and a touchingly sincere sentiment.
All the days of my life I owe you.
Which is actually sort of the way I feel about all the pleasure, inspiration and musical companionship that Bowie himself continues to afford me through my life.
Thanks David.
I love you.
Bye.
I've done for me All you gave, you gave for free I gave nothing in return And there's little left of me
For your gentle voice, those storms keep pounding through my hidden heart I pray don't soothe my sorrowful soul upon the days of my life
All the days of my life.