A Sense of Doubt blog post #3443 - SoD Reprint (and more): David Bowie's "Up The Hill Backwards" - Music Monday for 2407.22

 A Sense of Doubt blog post #3443 - SoD Reprint (and more): David Bowie's "Up The Hill Backwards" - Music Monday for 2407.22

Reprint time but with new content!!

I am reading Silhouettes and Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) by Adam Steiner, and I was reading the chapter on the album's second track, "Up the Hill Backwards," the other day.

It seems like even more of a song for the time than it seemed in 2016 when I originally wrote the post reprinted below.

I wanted to clip text nuggets from Steiner's book, but there's no Kindle version of it. FOR REALS.

It only exists in paper form.

Largely, Steiner's illumination of Bowie's unusual 1980 single "Up the Hill Backwards" focused on this line:

"I'm Okay; You're so-so."

I had never pondered the obvious allusion here to Thomas Anthony Harris' wildly popular 1969 self-help book: I'm Okay, You're Okay. My mother or father bought a copy, I think. Unless I did, though not in 1969. I own a paperback copy, so later in the 1970s.

Steiner suggests that Bowie's humorous jab at the book's title affirms the song's "caution against looking for all the answers in one place" (Steiner 44).

Steiner sees "Up The Hill Backwards" as another step in his ongoing recovery from what he called his "Hollywood High" in "Cracked Actor" off Aladdin Sane. "Bowie mocks the feel-good doctor's approach to forced happiness..." (Steiner 45) both on this song and "Ashes to Ashes" with the line "hope you're happy, too," which is a clip of an English phrase. In  "Up The Hill Backwards," the connecting line is "It'll be all right." As Steiner notes, "when Bowie sings,  "It'll be all right," it is with the half-hearted resolve of a man long suffering from diminished expectations; regardless, "Up the Hill" lingers a little too long on self-satisfaction, resigned to greater forces that he (Bowie) can neither control nor understand" (45).

I would push back on this and assert that the "lingering" Steiner criticizes is the whole point of the song in which progress is made but "backwards," which is why in the 3:16 song the last lyrics are at the 2:06 mark and then there's a long end to the song, over a minute, with a long fade as Fripp shreds and and the out of sync drums and congas (wood blocks?) clatter along.

Steiner seems clear on Bowie's struggle and aims: "For Bowie, the idea of becoming a better person as citizen who simply conforms to societal expectations offers limited appeal. Instead of a bleached-blank life, Bowie's major project was to try to become more than oneself, to push against limitations" (45).

Steiner's chapter contains exacting and smart analysis of the song and deconstruction of its allusions and source materials, such as the nearly fully quoted line from Nietzsche's Twilight of the Gods: "there are more idols than realities in this world."

Still, despite his criticisms, Steiner "gets" the ending as do I...

"Robert Fripp's juddery riff soon shakes off any previous hesitation, sprinting into a furious tremolo sound that runs away with itself to become the restless mind now unleashed. Putting his shoulder against the thundering toms and slugging bass line that holds down the beat, Fripp takes a chainsaw to the feel-good industry in favor of righteous anarchy, destroying the hollow body of the new "normal." By this time, Bowie has already left the song, having abandoned his search for love in an airless space; the song becomes one long drift away from promised reconciliation with the self, in a world slowly fading to gray" (Steiner 51).

Steiner's book is a great with gripping writing that will grab a hold and chew out your insides.

Here's some more content including my reprint.

Thanks for tuning in.


Chris O'Leary's full take... (an excerpt of this blog entry is in the reprint farther below):

https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/up-the-hill-backwards/

Up the Hill Backwards

Cameras in Brooklyn (early studio take, rough mix).
Up the Hill Backwards.
Up the Hill Backwards (live, 1987).

“Up the Hill Backwards” is a cryptic anti-self-help manual (Bowie mocks the quintessential ’70s life guide I’m OK,  You’re OK in the lyric), its central message suggesting a late Dylan line: I was born here and I’ll die here/against my will. Accept that you have no control, that the course that life takes has little, if anything, to do with you, and gain some hard comfort. Whatever you believe, the earth keeps on turning, the witnesses of its endless cycles keep dying off.

That’s what the four verses suggest; the refrain denies them. “Up the hill backwards—it’ll be alright” seems like a booster—keep on keeping on—but it’s a dark form of encouragement. There’s a poem for children that begins, “He walked up the hill backwards/So as not to see how high it was.” That’s how we make do, stumbling blindly towards a future that we can’t (or won’t) imagine, our eyes trained on the ground that we’ve already crossed. Up the hill backwards! A pep talk that tells us to blind ourselves.

The lyric is chanted/sung by Bowie, Tony Visconti and Lynn Maitland, Bowie’s voice submerged in the collective. It’s the first time in his recorded life that Bowie’s truly shared the vocal spotlight; his voice is a flavor, rather than dominating the mix (the vocal sound is close to the David Byrne-Tina Weymouth chorus in the Talking Heads’ “The Good Thing”). Bowie said he intended “Backwards” to be “very MOR voiced,” so as to sound like the “epitome of indifference,” and never more so than in its first verse:

The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom
And the possibilities it seems to offer,
It’s got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it.

“Backwards” has a cyclical chord structure to match its lyrical saṃsāra: the song is built of three variations of four-chord groupings. Its 8-bar verses alternate lines of A-D-E-A (I-IV-V-I) “the vacuum created by the arrival of freedom,” and A-F# minor-E-D (I-VI-V-IV), as on “we’re legally crippled, it’s the death of love.” The refrain is the last variant, D-E-D-A (IV-V-IV-I). At times the lyric ironically complements the harmonics, with the “arrival of freedom” landing on the return to the tonic, A major, suggesting retreat rather than escape.

“Backwards” started life as “Cameras in Brooklyn,” though its lyric was nearly the same (Bowie originally sang “Skylabs are falling”—Skylab, the “space hotel” satellite that fell to earth in 1979, was an all-purpose symbol of American decline).*

The raw mix of an early version that escaped on bootlegs documents the contributions of George Murray and Dennis Davis—Murray’s melodic playing in the verses reduces the harshness of the narrow-ranged vocal line (as does the bed provided by the organ), while his funky freer lines in the outro are a counterweight to Robert Fripp’s soloing. Davis, after holding together the tricky rhythms of the opening, drives the verses like a drill sergeant, with calls to order on his snare; as with Murray, Davis is finally free to cut loose during the closing guitar jam. His performance is aided, in the final mix, by an intricate percussion track—what sounds like claves (like the Who’s “Magic Bus”) in the intro, while open spaces in the refrain are injected with what sound like steam whistles or synthesized machine noises (Harmonized cymbals?).

Angus MacKinnon: In ‘Up The Hill Backwards’ on the new album there’s more than a suggestion of admitting defeat, or if not that them implying that there’s bugger all you or I or anybody can do about the state of things.

Bowie: Well, admitting it? I don’t actually agree with that viewpoint, you see. To digress completely for a moment—I still adopt the view that music itself carries its own message, instrumentally I mean…That’s why I’m furious you didn’t get to hear the album because the lyrics taken on their own are nothing without the secondary sub-text of what the musical arrangement has to say…

NME, “The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be,” September 1980.

Bowie bookended “Backwards” with what he called “a high-energy Fripp quasi-Bo Diddley thing,” two guitar breaks, starting in 7/4 time (Visconti, playing acoustic guitar, recalled gritting his teeth and counting “1&2&3&4&5&6&7” throughout the takes). These free the song from its cycles. Fripp’s closing solo, which he described at the time as “a system of echo repeats, fairly fast, on the guitar,” is fairly constrained, melodically, but Fripp’s power, his aggressive tone, expand the song; he won’t let the other players settle.

That was the intention. Bowie later said the Fripp guitar breaks “give [“Backwards’] another kind of switch: it has far more power than it would first seem. In fact it has a very strong commitment, but it’s disguised in indifference.” It’s not just Fripp who offers a way out, as the collective sound of the track—the trio of voices finally relaxing in the last verse and building up together in the refrain; the liberation of the rhythm section—eventually denies the lyric’s fatalism. It’s making common cause against the void, loudly.

Recorded February 1980, Power Station, NYC; April 1980, Good Earth Studios, London. Released as the last Scary Monsters single in March 1981 (RCA BOW 9, c/w “Crystal Japan,” #32 UK); the TOTP interpretive dance performance by Legs & Co. is a marvel—dry ice, Tomahawk chops, writhing; it’s likely the only dance routine ever choreographed to a Fripp guitar solo. Performed live only on the Glass Spider tour of 1987, as part of a medley with the Spider.

* “Skylab could fall on your head right now and you’d go down saying the government had done its best.” Harry tries to picture this happening and agrees, “Maybe so. They’re strapped these days like everybody else.” John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich, 1981.

Dedicated to my friend and neighbor J. Johnson.

Top: Michael Sean Edwards, “Subway, Grand Central Station” NYC, 1980.

https://www.wallofsoundgallery.com/en/bowie-by-masayoshi-sukita-david-bowie-C-a-day-in-kyoto----hankyu-train-C--i3636

Since I originally posted this blog entry in 2016 -- 1604.25 actually -- this 2017 remaster was not made yet, so I present it below.

Up the Hill Backwards (2017 Remaster) · David Bowie

℗ 1980, 2017 Jones/Tintoretto Entertainment Company LLC under exclusive license to Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company

Guitar: Carlos Alomar

Backing  Vocals: Chris Porter

Recording  Engineer: David Bowie

Keyboards, Vocals: David Bowie

Producer: David Bowie

Backing  Vocals: David Bowie

Percussion: Dennis Davis

Bass  Guitar: George Murray

Assistant: Jeff Hendrickson

Assistant: Larry Alexander

Backing  Vocals: Lynn Maitland

Mastering  Engineer: Ray Staff

Guitar: Robert Fripp

Mastering  Engineer: Tony Visconti

Recording  Engineer: Tony Visconti

Acoustic  Guitar: Tony Visconti

Producer: Tony Visconti

Backing  Vocals: Tony Visconti

Writer: David Bowie

THE REPRINT

Monday, April 25, 2016

The Daily Bowie #65 - "Up the Hill Backwards"

The Daily Bowie #65 - "Up the Hill Backwards"

This is a fitting song today as I head into exam week.

Down and dirty today without a lot of preamble.

"More idols than realities"

DAVID BOWIE

"UP THE HILL BACKWARDS"

SCARY MONSTERS (AND SUPER CREEPS)

FROM PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME: "UP THE HILL BACKWARDS"

“Up the Hill Backwards” is a cryptic anti-self-help manual (Bowie mocks the quintessential ’70s life guide I’m OK,  You’re OK in the lyric), its central message suggesting a late Dylan line: I was born here and I’ll die here/against my will. Accept that you have no control, that the course that life takes has little, if anything, to do with you, and gain some hard comfort. Whatever you believe, the earth keeps on turning, the witnesses of its endless cycles keep dying off.

That’s what the four verses suggest; the refrain denies them. “Up the hill backwards—it’ll be alright” seems like a booster—keep on keeping on—but it’s a dark form of encouragement. There’s a poem for children that begins, “He walked up the hill backwards/So as not to see how high it was.” That’s how we make do, stumbling blindly towards a future that we can’t (or won’t) imagine, our eyes trained on the ground that we’ve already crossed. Up the hill backwards! A pep talk that tells us to blind ourselves.

The lyric is chanted/sung by Bowie, Tony Visconti and Lynn Maitland, Bowie’s voice submerged in the collective. It’s the first time in his recorded life that Bowie’s truly shared the vocal spotlight; his voice is a flavor, rather than dominating the mix (the vocal sound is close to the David Byrne-Tina Weymouth chorus in the Talking Heads’ “The Good Thing”). Bowie said he intended “Backwards” to be “very MOR voiced,” so as to sound like the “epitome of indifference,” and never more so than in its first verse:

The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom
And the possibilities it seems to offer,
It’s got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it.



"Up the Hill Backwards" - SCARY MONSTERS (and Super Creeps) - 1980




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"Up The Hill Backwards"

The vacuum created 

by the arrival of freedom

And the possibilities it seems to offer

It's got nothing to do with you,

if one can grasp it 

It's got nothing to do with you, 

if one can grasp it

A series of shocks - sneakers fall apart

Earth keeps on rolling 

witnesses falling

It's got nothing to do with you,

if one can grasp it

It's got nothing to do with you,

if one can grasp it

Yeah, yeah, yeah 

up the hill backwards

It'll be alright ooo-ooo

While we sleep they go to work

We're legally crippled

it's the death of love

It's got nothing to do with you,

if one can grasp it

It's got nothing to do with you, 

if one can grasp it

More idols than realities

I'm OK, you're so-so

Yeah, yeah, yeah - up the hill backwards

It'll be alright ooo-ooo

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THE DAILY BOWIE LIST
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

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Rest in peace, David. We miss you.

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1604.25 - time

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).

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2407.22 - 10:10

- Days ago = 3307 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.