The Daily Bowie #66 - "I'd Rather Be High"

"I stumble to the graveyard and I

Lay down by my parents, whisper..."

The Daily Bowie #66 - "I'd Rather Be High"

I was attracted to this song simply because of its title and my memory of listening to it.

Especially after taking the day off yesterday, I wanted to make a comment on being back to work today (though not yet this morning).

And then I found this gorgeous Louis Vuitton advertisement campaign in which Bowie participated.

Great stuff for a Monday. The video contains the main TV ad, the director's cut of the TV ad (extended), and the full song with video.

LOUIS VUITTON CAMPAIGN - BOWIE - FASHION SOUNDTRACK

ROLLING STONE: David Bowie Confronts War in 'I'd Rather Be High (Venetian Mix)'

THE NEXT DAY

DAVID BOWIE

PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME: "I'd Rather Be High"

In November 2013, Bowie showed up in a Louis Vuitton ad, directed by Romain Gavras. It starred the model Arizona Muse, who worked the Vuitton merchandise while Bowie and a Louis XVI court setting provided her with a lavish, slightly surreal backdrop. There are nods to the ball scene in Labyrinth (Bowie as another aging satyr ogling a young woman), Adam Ant’s “Prince Charming,” Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and so forth. Creepy doubles, a festooned man who looks like a plague victim, a set of levitating monks: it comes off like a budget-bursting episode of Russell T. Davies’ version of Doctor Who.

For the ad, Bowie offered a new mix of the song with prominent harpsichord (played by Henry Hey, as per the Next Day Extra credits, which suggests the “Venetian” mix was planned for the Vuitton ad early on, or that perhaps it was a scrapped earlier mix of the track that Bowie earmarked for the ad—some versions of the ad used a harpsichord-only variation in spots).

Hey’s harpsichord complemented Gerry Leonard’s lead guitar riff, which, in the track’s original mix, dulled itself through repetition (that said, the original mix better showcased Zachary Alford’s tricky shuffle pattern). While the “Venetian” mix couldn’t salvage the song’s grating bridge, which pops off with Bowie shouting “teenage sex—YEAAH!”, it added batteries of new vocals to the gorgeous outro, whose long-held “flyyyyying”s (in debt to John Lennon’s lysergic vocals on “Rain” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”) were some of Bowie’s finest performances on the record.

"I'd Rather Be High" - THE NEXT DAY - 2013


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"I'd Rather Be High"

Nabokov is sun-licked now

Upon the beach at Grunewald

Brilliant and naked just

The way that authors look

Clare and Lady Manners drink

Until the other cows go home

Gossip till their lips are bleeding

Politics and all

I'd rather be high

I'd rather be flying

I'd rather be dead

Or out of my head

Than training these guns on those men in the sand

I'd rather be high

The Thames was black, the tower dark

I flew to Cairo, find my regiment

City's full of generals

And generals full of shit

I stumble to the graveyard and I

Lay down by my parents, whisper

Just remember duckies

Everybody gets got

I'd rather be high

I'd rather be flying

I'd rather be dead

Or out of my head

Than training these guns on those men in the sand

I'd rather be high

I'm seventeen my looks can prove it

I'm so afraid that I will lose it

I'd rather smoke and phone my ex

Be pleading for some teenage sex

Yeah

I'd rather be high

I'd rather be flying

I'd rather be dead

Or out of my head

Than training these guns on the men in the sand

I'd rather be high

I'd rather be high

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Rest in peace, David. We miss you.

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1605.02 -  8:00

NOTE ON WHY THE DAILY BOWIE IS NO LONGER DAILY: For 53 days, I completed daily Bowie posts. My schedule is too demanding to make a post every day, so this will now be a feature that is called The Daily Bowie, but it will not be daily. I will post as I can. I will post often. But if I miss a day, I will skip it. Otherwise, I get in the position of making five Bowie posts all in one day, and that's a lot of Bowie for people to swallow all at once... (yeah, leaving that badly phrased, innuendo packed statement. I bet Bowie would have laughed at it).