A Sense of Doubt blog post #3635 - BOWIE MONTH: "No More Free Steps to Heaven"

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3635 - BOWIE MONTH: "No More Free Steps to Heaven"

Continuing content derived from Adam Steiner's book Silhouettes and Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie's Scary Monsters and Super Creeps that I last wrote about here:

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3626 - BOWIE MONTH - Thoughts on "Ashes to Ashes" via Adam Steiner's book: Silhouettes and Shadows - The Secret History of David Bowie's Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

LINK TO KINDLE

I wrote about "Ashes to Ashes" in my last post. That's my favorite Bowie song.

In the next post, I will explore my favorite line from that song: "The shrieking of nothing is killing just (me)."

Here, I want to explore one of my other favorite lyrics in all of Bowie's music and from the album 

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps


"No more free steps to Heaven..." ~ David Bowie

from both "It's No Game part one" and "It's No Game part two."

I always had my own ideas about these lyrics.

Payment will now be due. Heaven will no longer be free now that the fascists (referenced elsewhere in the song) are back in power.

Indulgences?

Only the rich will prosper?

Enlightenment costs dearly?

The full lyrics from that first verse are where Steiner gets the title of the book:

"Silhouettes and shadows

Watch the revolution

No more free steps to heaven

It's no game"

Seems to me that the silhouettes and shadows are not revolutionaries (who look a lot like Che Guevara a la "Panic in Detroit" from seven years before), but instead they are those waiting in the wings, watching from the sidelines, not fully seen, unrecognized, waiting for their chance to put their plans into action.

Sounds familiar to Project 2025, doesn't it?

Steiner has other connections, such as a favorite book of Bowie's that examined the fin de siècle Dada movement, Hans Richter's Dada: Art and Anti-Art.

Steiner interprets the line as one of self-actualization rather than the means to self-actualization being stolen from someone: find your own way, don't go through the gate-keepers, take control.

I never saw the line that way.

The menace of the silhouettes and shadows watching the revolution seems more about resistance to political forces than self-actualization. Much of the rest of the song's lyrics confirm this idea.

However, with Bowie, lyrics have many meanings, many potential meanings, more than Bowie himself often acknowledged an awareness of.

It all depends on what one is resisting. Steiner sees the same resistance theme as I do, but resisting what? For what is this revolution?

But this text above is from Steiner's analysis of "Up the Hill Backwards" not "It's No Game."

Likewise, these next parts appear in his analysis of the cover tune, Tom Verlaine's "Kingdom Come":

Here's where Steiner digs into the interpretation I always saw as "Heaven" invoked as a religious concept though also as the spiritual attainment of enlightenment.

The same theme of that line from "It's No Game" resonates in "Kingdom Come" as Steiner explains and then connected to Eddie Cochran's "Three Steps to Heaven":

I like this.

When young, life seems endlessly possible, full of wonder, full of options, and that landscape shrivels with age as fewer things seem possible and a person realizes that one's time is limited and shorter with each year.

And yet. Bowie exemplifies CHANGE as he sang to us all in 1971: 

"Time may change me, but I can't trace time." ~ David Bowie "Changes"

I always thought he was singing "but I can't change time."

Time is fixed.

Tracing time is either tracking a path or copying it like a work of art. Either way it is not a thing to be contained or controlled, and so "turn and face the strange."

Nine years later is Bowie telling us that "it ain't easy"? (Cover tune from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spider from Mars.)

Change will come no matter what, but there are ominous shadow presences watching this revolution and there will be a price, yet heaven is still attainable.

I like to think this realistic optimism is true.

It's going to hurt, but pain is unavoidable, a part of life.

Thanks for tuning in.


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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2501.30 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3499 days ago & DAD = 155 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. 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.