A Sense of Doubt blog post #2519 - Bowie RIP - SIX YEARS AGO - "Word on a Wing" - Musical Monday for 2201.10

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2519 - Bowie RIP - SIX YEARS AGO - "Word on a Wing" - Musical Monday for 2201.10 - DAILY BOWIE - #83

I toyed with many options for today's post to commemorate the passing of David Bowie six years ago. Initially, I thought it had been five years, so I could post "Five Years." Easy.

But then I realized it had been six years. My brain is permanently damaged, obviously.

So, then, I considered posting about the lost album, Toy, just released as a three disc box set, the day before Bowie's birthday. But maybe I want to collect reviews and spend more time listening to it myself, so that will wait for another post.

Then, yesterday, Tuesday as of this writing, a day late with the post, I am in my office at school listening/watching You Tube content, in this case LIVE recording of David Bowie concerts, and I am listening to the 1999 show from the London Astoria , which has since been demolished, sadly.

Watch it destroyed in time lapse:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/demolition-astoria

Bowie performed for 1500 people at the cost of 20 pounds each in 1999 in his resurgence after his floundering in the late 1980s and then his time away from solo work with Tin Machine to burst back on the scene with Outside (1995), Earthling (1997), and then Hours (1999) ; though it's worth mentioning that he really surged back on the scene when he married Iman and released Black Tie White Noise in 1993 as well as the soundtrack to The Buddha of Suburbia (1993), which is one of my top five favorite Bowie albums.

People say the London Astoria was the venue of Radiohead's best show as seen here:

https://www.nme.com/photos/london-astoria-rip-1411762

NME is a go to for all things music and Brit.

ANYWAY.......

I was watching this concert shared at the end of the post, and Bowie launches into "Word on a Wing" (starting at 5:00 minutes through 11:28 minutes). Love that song.

And so perfect thing for the sixth year anniversary of his death.

Damn.

I miss you, David Bowie.

I can only imagine how people who knew you intimately, and not just fans, like Iman, Iggy, Brian Eno, your children, and more, must feel.

But thank you all the joy and wonder.

Here's "Word on a Wing," which was never featured in THE DAILY BOWIE, but is now added to the Daily Bowie that is now, more or less, annual.

As usual, the content on the song from Chris O'Leary's amazing PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME site. Subscribe!!

Anyway, here we go.

But first two posts from Bowie's birthday 2018 and from two days ago.

Monday, January 8, 2018

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #917 - Happy Birthday David Bowie - Musical Monday for 1801.08

and

Saturday, January 8, 2022

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2517 - Happy 75th Birthday David Bowie!

BTW,

"In this age of grand delusion"

is still very true!

David Bowie Word On A Wing

TheSecondComing1789

Station To Station (1976)

Song

Word on a Wing (2016 Remaster)

Artist

David Bowie

Album

Word on a Wing

Writers

David Bowie

Licensed to YouTube by

WMG (on behalf of PLG UK Catalog); UNIAO BRASILEIRA DE EDITORAS DE MUSICA - UBEM, BMG Rights Management (US), LLC, Abramus Digital, LatinAutor - PeerMusic, ARESA, CMRRA, LatinAutor, BMI - Broadcast Music Inc., MINT_BMG, LatinAutorPerf, LatinAutor - SonyATV, Sony ATV Publishing, SOLAR Music Rights Management, and 9 Music Rights Societies

https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/reissues-word-on-a-wing/

Reissues: Word On a Wing

A good place as any to close the “reissues” series, which I hope you’ve enjoyed or tolerated. This is one of the essential Bowie songs of the Seventies, and as such it’s weird, beautiful and a touch over-the-top.

As the man said at the end of the past century, “1975, 1976, and a bit of 1974, and the first few weeks of 1977, were singularly the darkest days of my life. I found myself up to my neck in such negativity. And it was so steeped in awfulness that recall is nigh on impossible, certainly painful…unwittingly this song was therefore a signal of distress. I’m sure it was a call for help.“

Back “live” at some point this month. Have a good rest of the summer.

Originally posted on 16 December 2010, it’s “Word On a Wing”:

Word On a Wing.
Word On a Wing (rehearsal, 1976).
Word On a Wing (live, 1976).
Word On a Wing (live, 1999).
Word On a Wing (VH1 Storytellers, 1999).

With God he has very suspicious relations; they sometimes remind me of the relations of two bears in one den.

Maxim Gorky, on Tolstoy.

The heart and hymn of Station to Station, “Word On a Wing” is a petition to God, though as prayers go it’s more of an opening negotiation, Bowie attempting to use God as leverage in some larger scheme. Hence its warring moods, suppliant and audacious (see Bowie offering his own “word” against the received Word of Christ or the petulant tone of lines like “just because I believe don’t mean I don’t think as well”). As in his love-as-confusion “Stay,” Bowie denies himself from achieving any connection, no matter how desperately he wants it. Here, he’s playing for greater stakes.

He was only nominally Christian. When John Lennon said the Beatles had meant more to British kids than Jesus Christ did, it was the likes of Bowie he was talking about.* This didn’t mean Bowie was spiritually empty: he’d spent his twenties looking for some sort of God figure that met his high standards, a path that took him from Beat existentialism to Tibetan Buddhism to whatever brew of cabbalist Gnosticism he was imbibing in 1975 (see “Station to Station”). “I had this religious fervor,” Bowie recalled in 1993. “I was just looking for some answers. Some secret. Some life force.”

“Word On a Wing,” closing the first side of Station to Station, was Bowie’s (apparently) open plea for salvation from God. He’d been tempted at the time by some sort of evangelical Protestantism, into which Bob Dylan would dive headfirst a few years later. As Bowie began writing “Word On a Wing” while filming The Man Who Fell to Earth, there was a parallel to Lennon’s “Help!”—-both songs are pleas for deliverance written while their composers were stuck on a movie set, paranoid and depressed, wondering what they’d become. In an NME interview in 1980, Bowie regarded his dalliance with Christianity as a nearly-consummated romance: “There was a point when I very nearly got suckered into that narrow sort of looking…finding the cross as the salvation of mankind.”

This sounded similar to how he’d described past relationships to journalists at the time: as an all-consuming passion that had threatened his sense of self. To bend the knee to God, to accept Jesus Christ as one’s personal savior, required humility, an acceptance that there are higher powers beyond your ken, to have faith and to not try to learn the trade secrets of the cosmos. Ultimately this wasn’t enough for Bowie; it was taking the sucker’s bet.

So like his reference to the Stations of the Cross in “Station to Station,” there was a touch of blasphemy in “Word On a Wing,” with Bowie using the imagery and musical trappings of Christian art for occult ends. Bowie crafted the song as white magic to set against the dark “Station to Station,” the two tracks spinning in parallel on an LP side, yin and yang in grooves (“Golden Years,” an ambiguous utopia, keeps them apart). The song was a “protection…something I needed to produce from within myself to safeguard myself against some of the situations that I felt were happening on the film set.”

He felt he needed protection. He’d been under siege by “dark forces” since 1974 (once throwing away a doll his cousin had given him for fear it was a Satanic totem), a predicament worsened upon moving to Los Angeles. When his wife Angela found a house on North Doheny Drive, Bowie wanted it cleansed. Following the instructions of the New York witch Walli Elmlark (which required “a few hundred dollars’ worth of books, talismans and assorted items from Hollywood’s comprehensive selection of fine occult emporia”), Angela performed an exorcism on the house, including the indoor swimming pool, a natural repository for demons.

Bowie was using Dion Fortune’s Psychic Self-Defense as a bulwark. Fortune, a British mystic of the early 20th Century, wrote that man had two Angels, a Dark Angel (which she likened to the subconscious, “a dark temptation from the depths of our lower selves…we think thoughts, or even do deeds, of which we never would have believed ourselves capable”) and a Bright Angel. The mystic’s goal is to summon the latter angel in times of “spiritual crisis, when the very self is being swept away,” she wrote. “The Higher Self comes to the rescue, ‘terrible as an army with banners’.” If successful, one has an expanded consciousness, a sense of calm, “like a ship hove-to, securely riding out the storm.”

Compare this to Bowie’s various public statements about “Word On a Wing,” that it was “something I needed to produce from within myself to safeguard myself” or “I wrote [it] when I felt very much at peace with the world….I wrote the whole thing as a hymn. What better way can a man give thanks for achieving something that he had dreamed of achieving, than doing it with a hymn?” “Word on a Wing” was his protective talisman encased in a song, much like the small crucifix he’d wear around his neck for decades.

Bowie’s brand of fascism, while it embraced irony, was basically serious; or was taken seriously by a certain hermetic compartment of his mind, wherein it dwelt. The rest of him…was deeply uneasy about it; so uneasy that he included on Station to Station a song, “Word On a Wing,” which semi-seriously kept a line open to God in case the demons evoked elsewhere in the album should get out of hand.

Ian MacDonald, “White Lines, Black Magic.”

“Word On a Wing” starts in somber opening verses, which Bowie sings in his low register (on stage in 1976, he sang-spoke the lines, sounding like Lou Reed); it’s in B major, an unusual and remote key for a rock song. He cradles the words “sweet name, you’re born once again” as if he’s consoling God. All at once comes a jolting move to D-flat major (on “Lord, I kneel and offer you…”) which continues for over a dozen unsettled bars until the song steadies in D (“Lord! Lord, my prayer flies…”). The latter section builds to the ornate rise-and-fall phrase that closes the refrain, with Bowie and Geoff MacCormack sounding like woodwinds. And then a swift fall down to earth, back to B major to start another verse. Only after further struggle is “Word On a Wing” content to stay in D major, concluding on the home chord as a celestial soprano bears the song away from its fallen creator.

This voice was generated by the Chamberlin, the precursor to the Mellotron, whose appearance here is similar to its role on the instrumentals of Bowie’s next two albums, Low and “Heroes.” In particular “Sense of Doubt” on the latter, a track that ends ambiguously, either to “resolve itself via faith into religious commitment or be left unresolved, freestanding and wordless,” as Momus once said. It would be a wary response to “Word On a Wing.”

The Chamberlin’s just one of the gorgeous touches, along with the left-mixed vibraphone that’s a counterpart to Roy Bittan’s piano or the acoustic guitar fills. The heart of the song, however, is a work for voice—see the astonishing harmonies by Bowie and MacCormack in the refrains—and piano. Whatever led to Bittan playing on Station to Station, his presence on “Word On a Wing” seems ordained. There are the child’s steps of melody Bittan plays in the intro, his steady chording in the verses, the cascading notes under the “sweet name” section, the sprightly two-note punctuation of the “word on a wing” prayer. A fellow pilgrim, Bittan’s piano has a grace that Bowie desperately craves, much as he spurns it.

Recorded October-November 1975, Cherokee Studios, LA. Performed on the 1976 “Isolar” tour, and revived in 1999.

Top: Close-up of Elizabeth Frink’s Shepherd and Sheep, 1975 (Photo: Steve Rutherford.)

* The decline in British churchgoers, notable even in the war years, was a cause of national concern and as such the subject of several books, the wittiest of which was R.C. Churchill’s The English Sunday (1954): “The Bible itself, however, has ceased in general to be read in England. What, then, do we read instead? Apart from Sunday newspapers a good many people, of course, read nothing at all on Sundays.”

David Bowie, Astoria London dec 2nd 1999

Jun 4, 2018

David Bowie, Astoria London dec 2nd 1999

Attendance 1500

Tickets: 20 GBP

After the show friends and celebrities joined David  to celebrate his one off show at the nearby newly opened Soho hip nightspot "Pop"

guests: Pete Townsend, Norman Cook, Neil Tennant, Bob Geldof, Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, Brian Molko, various members of The Cure, Beverly Knight, Skunk Anansie, Gail Ann Dorsey, Boy George, Gary Numan, Melg G and Jimmy Page

Music in this video

Learn more

Song

Life On Mars? (Live at the Kit Kat Klub, New York, 19th November, 1999)

Artist

David Bowie

Album

Life On Mars?

Licensed to YouTube by

WMG (on behalf of PLG UK Catalog); BMG Rights Management (US), LLC, BMI - Broadcast Music Inc., ARESA, Sony ATV Publishing, MINT_BMG, and 2 Music Rights Societies

David Bowie by Alex Ross

THE DAILY BOWIE LIST (link to You Tube - pod player at end of the entry)
1601.20 - The Daily Bowie #0 - "Space Oddity" - SPACE ODDITY - 1969
1601.21 - The Daily Bowie #1 - "Ashes to Ashes" - SCARY MONSTERS - 1980
1601.22 - The Daily Bowie #2 - "Cat People" - LET'S DANCE - 1983
1601.23 - The Daily Bowie #3 - "Sons of the Silent Age" - HEROES - 1977
1601.24 - The Daily Bowie #4 - "Running Gun Blues" - THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD - 1970
1601.25 - The Daily Bowie #5 - "Sound and Vision" - LOW - 1977
1601.26 - The Daily Bowie #6 - "Fill Your Heart" - HUNKY DORY - 1971
1601.27 - The Daily Bowie #7 - "We Are The Dead" - DIAMOND DOGS - 1974
1601.28 - The Daily Bowie #8 - "Yassassin" - LODGER - 1979
1601.29 - The Daily Bowie #9 - "Time" - ALADDIN SANE - 1973
1601.30 - The Daily Bowie #10 - "Where Are We Now?" - THE NEXT DAY -2013
1601.31 - The Daily Bowie #11 - "Sunday" - HEATHEN - 2002
1602.01 - The Daily Bowie #12 - "Loving the Alien" - TONIGHT - 1984
1602.02 - The Daily Bowie #13 - "The Loneliest Guy" - REALITY - 2003
1602.03 - The Daily Bowie #14 - "Young Americans" - YOUNG AMERICANS - 1975
1602.04 - The Daily Bowie #15 - "Thursday's Child" - 'HOURS...' - 1999
1602.05 - The Daily Bowie #16 - "Buddha of Suburbia" - THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA - 1993
1602.06 - The Daily Bowie #17 - "Please Mr. Gravedigger" - DAVID BOWIE - 1967
1602.07 - The Daily Bowie #18 - "Sorrow" - PINUPS - 1973
1602.08 - The Daily Bowie #19 - "Golden Years" - STATION TO STATION - 1976
1602.09 - The Daily Bowie #20 - "I'm Afraid of Americans" - EARTHLING - 1997
1602.10 - The Daily Bowie #21 - "Pallas Athena" - BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE - 1993
1602.11 - The Daily Bowie #22 - "Glass Spider" - NEVER LET ME DOWN - 1987
1602.12 - The Daily Bowie #23 - "The Heart's Filthy Lesson" - OUTSIDE - 1995
1602.13 - The Daily Bowie #24 - "Rock 'N' Roll Suicide" - THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS - 1972
1602.14 - The Daily Bowie #25 - "Lazarus" - BLACKSTAR - 2016
1602.15 - The Daily Bowie #26 - "Tin Machine" - TIN MACHINE - 1989
1602.16 - The Daily Bowie #27 - "Baby Universal" - TIN MACHINE II - 1991
1602.17 - The Daily Bowie #28 - "Changes" - DAVID LIVE - 1974
1602.18 - The Daily Bowie #29 - "Fame" - STAGE - 1978
1602.19 - The Daily Bowie #30 - "SENSE OF DOUBT" - HEROES - 1977
1602.20 - The Daily Bowie #31 - "John, I'm Only Dancing" - CHANGESONEBOWIE - 1990
1602.21 - The Daily Bowie #32 - "London Bye Ta Ta" - BOWIE AT THE BEEB - 2000
1602.22 - The Daily Bowie #33 - "Real Cool World" - BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE - LIMITED ED - 2003
1602.23 - The Daily Bowie #34 - "Five Years" - THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS - 1972
1602.24 - The Daily Bowie #35 - "Speed of Life" - LOW - 1977
1602.25 - The Daily Bowie #36 - "I'm Deranged" - OUTSIDE - 1995
1602.26 - The Daily Bowie #37 - "Fall Dog Bombs the Moon" - REALITY - 2003
1602.27 - The Daily Bowie #38 - "I Can't Give Everything Away" - BLACKSTAR - 2016
1602.28 - The Daily Bowie #39 - "Diamond Dogs" - DIAMOND DOGS - 1974
1602.29 - The Daily Bowie #40 - "The Laughing Gnome" - THE DERAM ANTHOLOGY 1966-1968 (r.1997)
1603.01 - The Daily Bowie #41 - "Fascination" - YOUNG AMERICANS - 1975
1603.02 - The Daily Bowie #42 - "Panic in Detroit" - ALADDIN SANE - 1973
1603.03 - The Daily Bowie #43 - "Modern Love" - LET'S DANCE - 1983
1603.04 - The Daily Bowie #44 - "Fashion" - SCARY MONSTERS - Deluxe - 1980
1603.05 - The Daily Bowie #45 - "Life On Mars" - HUNKY DORY - 1971
1603.06 - The Daily Bowie #46 - "London Boys" - THE DERAM ANTHOLOGY 1966-1968 (r.1997)
1603.07 - The Daily Bowie #47 - "Fantastic Voyage" - LODGER - 1979
1603.08 - The Daily Bowie #48 - "The Man Who Sold the World" - THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD - 1970
1603.09 - The Daily Bowie #49 - "Stay" - STATION TO STATION - 1976
1603.10 - The Daily Bowie #50 - "Starman" - THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS - 1972
1603.11 - The Daily Bowie #51 - "Crystal Japan" - SCARY MONSTERS - Deluxe - 1980
1603.12 - The Daily Bowie #52 - "An Occasional dream" - SPACE ODDITY - 1969
- FOUR DAY BREAK
1603.17 - The Daily Bowie #53 - "Miracle Goodnight" - BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE - 1993
- TWO DAY BREAK
1603.20 - The Daily Bowie #54 - "5:15 The Angels Have Gone" - HEATHEN - 2002
1603.22 - The Daily Bowie #55 - "Queen Bitch" - HUNKY DORY - 1971
- SEVEN DAY BREAK
1603.29 - The Daily Bowie #56 - "Criminal World" - LET'S DANCE - 1983
- ONE DAY BREAK
1603.31 - The Daily Bowie #57 - "Move On" - LODGER - 1979
1604.01 - The Daily Bowie #58 - "Rebel Rebel" - DIAMOND DOGS - 1974
- TEN DAY BREAK
1604.11 - The Daily Bowie #59 - "Telling Lies" - EARTHLING - 1997
1604.12 - The Daily Bowie #60 - "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" - THE NEXT DAY -2013
- THREE DAY BREAK
1604.15 - The Daily Bowie #61 - "Jean Genie" - ALADDIN SANE -1973
- SEVEN DAY BREAK
1604.22 - The Daily Bowie #62 - "The Dreamers" - HOURS - 1999
1604.23 - The Daily Bowie #63 - "Breaking Glass" - LOW - 1977 - and STAGE - 1978
1604.24 - The Daily Bowie #64 - "Tonight" - TONIGHT - 1984
1604.25 - The Daily Bowie #65 - "Up the Hill Backwards" - SCARY MONSTERS - 1980
- SEVEN DAY BREAK
1605.02 - The Daily Bowie #66 - "I'd Rather Be High" - THE NEXT DAY - 2013
- SEVEN DAY BREAK
1605.09 - The Daily Bowie #67 - "A Better Future" - HEATHEN - 2002
1605.10 - The Daily Bowie #68 - "Strangers When We Meet" - BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA - 1993
- TWO WEEKS OFF
1605.24 - The Daily Bowie #69 - "She'll Drive the Big Car" - REALITY - 2003
- SIX DAYS OFF
1605.31 - The Daily Bowie #70 -"Days" - David Bowie - REALITY - 2003
- SEVEN DAYS OFF
1606.07 - The Daily Bowie #71 - "Under Pressure" - NOTHING HAS CHANGED - D2 - 2014
1606.09 - The Not Quite Daily Bowie - #72 - "Moonage Daydream" - THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS - 1972
- BIG BREAK - 12 days
1606.21 - The Not Quite Daily Bowie - #73 - "Don't Let Me Down & Down" - BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE - 1993
1606.22 - The Daily Bowie - #74 - "If You Can See Me" - THE NEXT DAY - 2013
1607.23 - The Not Quite Daily Bowie - #75 - "Warszawa" - LOW (1977) and STAGE (1978)
- MONTH BREAK-
1608.25 - The Not so often Formerly Daily Bowie - #76 - "Zeroes" - NEVER LET ME DOWN - 1987
MANY MONTHS OFF
1701.10 - The Not so often Formerly Daily Bowie - #77 - "Somebody Up There Likes Me" - YOUNG AMERICANS - 1975
1701.11 - The Not so often Formerly Daily Bowie - #78 - "All the Madmen" - THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD - 1972
1701.12 - The Not so often Formerly Daily Bowie - #79 - "Quicksand" - HUNKY DORY - 1971
-ONE DAY BREAK-
1701.14 - The Not so often Formerly Daily Bowie - #80 - "The Secret Life of Arabia" - HEROES - 1977
-TWO DAY BREAK-
1701.17 - The Not so often Formerly Daily Bowie - #81 - "Candidate" - DIAMOND DOGS - 1974
1701.29 - The Not so often Formerly Daily Bowie - #82 - "Neighborhood Threat" - TONIGHT - 1984
2201.10 - The Not so often Formerly Daily Bowie - #83 - "Word on a Wing" - STATION TO STATION - 1976

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SELECTED FEATURES:

The Not Quite Daily Bowie - #75 - "Warszawa"

The Daily Bowie #67 - "A Better Future"

The Daily Bowie #55 - "Queen Bitch"

The Daily Bowie #47 - "Fantastic Voyage"

The Daily Bowie #42 - "Panic in Detroit"

The Daily Bowie #41 - "Fascination"

The Daily Bowie #30 - "Sense of Doubt"

The Daily Bowie #25 - "Lazarus"

The Daily Bowie #3 - "Sons of the Silent Age"

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2201.10 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2383 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.