Tonight’s selections from David Bowie’s sixth LP, 1973’s Aladdin Sane.
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.” — Far Out Magazine
The Jean Genie
From the first crashing chord of "Watch That Man" you know that this is a rock'n' roll album. If Ziggy Stardust was his Sgt. Pepper (a loose-fitting concept about an alter-ego rock band, but staggeringly good songs), then Aladdin Sane is Bowie's Exile on Main Street and, as if to prove a point, there's even a cover of a Stones song on here: the staunch rocker "Let's Spend the Night Together".
The riffs come thick and fast. Mick Ronson might lack Keith Richards' blues licks - he plays guitar like a Hull mechanic, which was pretty much what he was when he joined the Spiders from Mars - but boy, can he play. Listen to "Jean Genie", Cracked Actor" and "Panic In Detroit". Ronson's six-string shuffle turns his guitar's sound into something that chases you with teeth. — BBC
Watch That Man
The twin impulses are to be a star (e.g., Jagger) and to be a star (e.g., Betelgeuse). The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars depicted an impending doomsday, an extraterrestrial visitation and its consequences for rock and society. Although never so billed, Ziggy was a rock opera, with plot, characters and musical and dramatic momentum. Aladdin Sane, in far less systematic fashion, works over the same themes — issuances from the Bowie schema which date back to The Man Who Sold the World. Bowie is cognizant that religion’s geography — the heavens — has been usurped, either by science or by actual beings.
If by conventional lights Bowie is a lad insane, then as an Aladdin, a conjurer of supernatural forces, he is quite sane. The titles may change from album to album — from the superman, the homo superior, Ziggy, to Aladdin — but the vision, and Bowie’s rightful place in it, remain constant. The pun of the title, alternately vaunted and dismissive, plays on his own sense of discrepancy. Which way you read it depends upon whether you are viewing the present from the eyes of the past or the future.
Bowie’s program is not complete, but it involves the elimination of gender differences, the inevitability of Armageddon, and the conquering of death and time as we know them. Stardom is the means towards attaining a vantage point from which to foresee, and an elevation from which to lead. The awesome powers and transformations civilization associates with heaven and hell will be unleashed on earth. — Rolling Stone
Cracked Actor
The album was put together in between Ziggy Stardust U. S. tour dates, motivated by the desperate need for a quick follow-up to capitalize on the listening public’s sudden craving for more tunes from the budding rock ‘n’ roll superstar. Given the circumstances, it’s probably more accurate to view Aladdin Sane as a theatrical work—the soundtrack of Bowie’s U. S. touring experience rather than a carefully-shaped musical opus. Bowie referred to the album as “Ziggy Goes to America,” and Aladdin Sane is a crucial part of Bowie’s adopt-a-persona period which ran from Ziggy Stardust all the way through Station to Station and The Thin White Duke. During this period, Bowie placed equal emphasis on music, style and stagecraft, and Aladdin Sane, with a setlist ranging from glam to doo-wop to cabaret, captures the essence of this phase in Bowie’s career. [...]
“Drive-In Saturday,” one of the singles from the album, was one of two astonishingly gracious gifts that Bowie offered to Mott the Hoople (“Suffragette City” was the first). Ian Hunter had a problem with the complexity of the chord pattern and turned it down. I’m assuming he wasn’t referring to the “Angel Baby” chord pattern of the verses, but the three-step key change in the chorus that does lead to a more varied chord pattern. Fuck, man, that’s the best part of the song! If it weren’t for the key change and new chord structure, “Drive-In Saturday” would be as limp as “Crocodile Rock.” What the fuck’s the matter with you, anyway?
Stunningly, Bowie took the news of Mott’s rejection way too hard and shaved off his eyebrows.
I . . . I . . . don’t know how to deal with that bit of gossip. — AltRockChick
Drive-In Saturday
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Panic in Detroit
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WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Sean Penn, June Squibb, the Avett Brothers
Jimmy Fallon: Ayo Edebiri, Talking Heads, the Linda Lindas
Stephen Colbert: Jude Law, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats
Seth Meyers: Jon Hamm, Bowen Yang, Matt Rogers
After Midnight: Jenna Ushkowitz, Kate Micucci, Eliot Glazer
Watch What Happens Live: James Brolin, Tony Goldwyn
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