David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
Written by: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 12.09.1980
A friend from another planet came to visit us. He is human, but always in disguise, and it seems he never gets tired of it. Still, Major Tom is always at the center of things, so perhaps that is something we should all keep in mind.
David Bowie's fourteenth album, "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)", was released on September 12, 1980.
David Robert Jones was born in Brixton, London. The unusual appearance of his eyes came from a permanently dilated left pupil after he was punched by his friend George Underwood during a fight over a girl.
Bowie's early musical path, believe it or not, was rhythm and blues. After hearing Elvis Presley and Little Richard sing, he played in several rhythm and blues bands.
Before releasing his first album, Bowie changed his surname from Jones to Bowie because of the similarity between his original name and Davy Jones, singer of "The Monkees".
He took the name Bowie from James Bowie, the American frontiersman and hero of the Battle of the Alamo, after whom the Bowie knife is also named. Early in his career, Bowie focused on pop and psychedelia.
His first taste of major success came with the single "Space Oddity", which tells the story of the astronaut Major Tom, lost in space. Bowie drew inspiration from Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey".
Bowie then moved toward heavier rock, and in 1971 released his fourth album, "Hunky Dory", the first of his albums released by RCA Records. Nine years and 11 albums later, Bowie would part ways with the label as an artist respected both artistically and commercially.
By the 1970s, David Bowie had earned a place of honor for himself. His music was sometimes experimental and sometimes connected directly with the audience, while the many characters and costumes he adopted, from Ziggy Stardust to the repeatedly returning Major Tom, kept all eyes fixed on him. Audiences at his shows did not quite know what to make of the man who seemed to have arrived from Mars.
Alongside the flood of albums he released, 11 during the seventies, David Bowie also proved to be a good friend. He helped his beloved "Mott the Hoople" survive by giving them "All the Young Dudes", and in a similar spirit helped Iggy Pop and "The Stooges".
The drugs he was using at the same time increasingly revealed a darker side, and Bowie moved to West Berlin with Iggy Pop. During that period his Berlin Trilogy was born, "Low", "Heroes" and "Lodger", although the albums themselves were recorded in different places across Europe and only "Heroes" was recorded in Berlin.
The seventies ended, Bowie left Berlin, and his separation from RCA was also approaching. With Brian Eno no longer involved, Robert Fripp returned to collaborate, while Pete Townshend of "The Who" also came in to help.
Bowie created a polished post-punk rock album together with the tireless producer Tony Visconti, and when the first single, "Ashes to Ashes", was released, there was no doubt that Major Tom had returned in a big way. Even if we now knew he was a junkie, Bowie himself was in a very different place. The single reached No. 1 on the UK chart.
The track can be seen as a continuation of Bowie's 1969 hit "Space Oddity". It revisits the fictional astronaut Major Tom, still out in space. He has re-established contact with Ground Control and tells them he is happy, but they now see him as little more than a junkie stranded in the sky and sinking to an all-time low.
Many fans have viewed the track as Bowie's autobiographical reflection on his battle with drug addiction and other personal demons.
The closing refrain, in which a mother warns against messing with Major Tom, suggests that if you want to make the most of the future, you cannot remain trapped in the past.
Another interpretation suggested that "Space Oddity" was itself a veiled reference to a drug trip, and that "Ashes to Ashes" implies that, in order to move forward, Bowie had to leave his drug habits behind.
Bowie explained that "Inchworm", sung by Danny Kaye in the 1952 film "Hans Christian Andersen", had a major influence on "Ashes to Ashes". He said he loved the song as a child, kept returning to it, and that many of his own songs drew from it to some degree.
The video for "Ashes to Ashes" was among the clips broadcast on MTV's very first day, when the new music channel began airing music videos in August 1981.
Many sources have reported that around a quarter of a million pounds was invested in the video, although lower estimates also exist. Either way, it was considered one of the most elaborate music videos of its era. It combines color and black-and-white scenes, with Bowie appearing in a striking Pierrot costume against unsettling imagery. Members of the Blitz scene also appear, including Steve Strange of "Visage" and Darla Jane Gilroy of the New Romantic movement.
In 1983, Peter Schilling released "Major Tom (Coming Home)", based on the Major Tom character. It was a rare case of one artist effectively producing a sequel to another artist's song.
Most of the songs on the album were written by Bowie. Some had been written years earlier and never made it onto an album, while others were written specifically for this record. The exception is "Kingdom Come", written by Tom Verlaine.
On the opening track, "It's No Game (Part 1)", the Japanese passage is performed by Michi Hirota while Bowie screams the English translation as if he were tearing himself apart from the inside. Bowie explained that the choice of a sharp female voice was intended to challenge a certain sexist attitude toward Japanese girls and women.
On the album's title track, "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)", Bowie sings from the point of view of a man who has a strange encounter with a woman, apparently seduces her, gives her a dangerous mind instead of love, and eventually drives her mad.
Bowie described the song in a promotional interview sent to radio stations as a kind of portrait of London's dark side. The character in the song is, in his view, a criminal with a conscience who understands how he has corrupted a good young mind.
The track has a horror-like sound created by producer Tony Visconti. In the notes for "A New Career in a New Town (1977-1982)", Visconti described the backing voices as almost like a demonic choir, an effect created by pushing vocal experimentation and recording techniques to their limits.
Before it became "Scary Monsters", the song began life as "Running Scared" around 1975.
According to Iggy Pop, Bowie played it for him on guitar at a house on Sunset Boulevard, hoping Pop might be able to do something with it. When Pop could not find a way forward, Bowie kept working on the idea for several more years until it evolved into "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)". Bowie was not the kind of artist to waste an idea, even if it had to sit on the shelf for a few years.
Bowie drew inspiration from "The Kinks" for "Fashion", connecting it conceptually with their "Dedicated Follower of Fashion". He criticized the superficial nature of the fashion industry while also expressing a slightly morbid fascination with it.
Bowie recalled that when he began going to discos in New York in the early 1970s, the scene had a powerful sense of natural excitement. Later, it seemed to him that this had been replaced by a grim, calculating determination to be fashionable, surrounded by a strange aura.
The track can also be read as drawing an implied analogy between fashion and fascism. The goon squads mentioned in the lyrics are groups arriving in town to carry out the will of their boss, although Bowie did not present the song as an unequivocal political statement.
In that context, it is also possible to connect the song with the New Romantics, the late-1970s subculture known for its flamboyant sense of fashion.
The section instructing listeners to turn left and turn right can sound not only like the mechanical movements of fashion models, but also like military drill commands. Years after its release, the song became a natural fit for fashion shows and was sampled by RuPaul in the early 1990s for "Supermodel (You Better Work)".
The video for "Fashion" was directed by David Mallet, who had previously directed Bowie's groundbreaking "Ashes to Ashes" video. The promotional clip for "Fashion" was filmed at the New York nightclub and music venue Hurrah, where in 1978 Sid Vicious became involved in a bloody fight with Patti Smith's brother Todd Smith, an incident that led to Vicious spending two months in jail.
The video shows Bowie performing to an empty audience that eventually begins imitating his deliberately awkward dance movements. John Lennon's former partner May Pang and Alan Hunter, who would later become one of MTV's original VJs, both appear in the clip.
According to producer Tony Visconti, the bass line and melody of the song were inspired by Bowie's 1975 soul hit "Golden Years".
Bowie also covers "Kingdom Come", written by "Television" member Tom Verlaine.
Bowie expressed great admiration for Verlaine and considered him one of the best new songwriters in New York. "Kingdom Come" was one of his favorite songs from Verlaine's 1979 solo album, and Carlos Alomar suggested recording it during the "Scary Monsters" sessions in early 1980.
Bowie speaks from experience on "Because You're Young", a song about two lovesick young people viewed through the eyes of someone who already knows something about love.
Bowie said that his son Duncan partly inspired the song. It is difficult not to connect it with the reality of his life, knowing that Bowie's divorce from Angie Barnett was finalized on February 8, 1980, close to the start of the "Scary Monsters" recording sessions in New York. He received custody of their son Duncan, while she received a £500,000 settlement paid in installments, alongside a ten-year silence agreement.
Sometimes all an artist needs is the extra drive that comes from competition with another artist. After his Berlin Trilogy, Bowie influenced artists including "Joy Division", "Talking Heads", "The Human League", Paul Simon and Gary Numan. Numan's success, and the rise of the new wave generation around him, were part of the musical climate Bowie was responding to, and some biographers have indirectly connected that climate with the more focused and accessible direction of "Scary Monsters".
The noisy guitars of Fripp, together with synthesizers layered alongside guitars, bass and electric piano, created a fascinating mixture of sounds and textures across several styles. In the end, it is always worth listening to your mother when she tells you not to mess with Major Tom.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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