Scary Monsters [Remastered] - David Bowie

...song titles (where these the scary Monsters and super creeps that the album title spoke of?) and the cover was drawn by Edward Bell and designed by someone called Duffy.
Now to the song titles the music press had leaked all the names of the song titles weeks before the release of the album.


Side 1
It’s no game (Part 1)
Up The Hill Backwards
Scary Monsters (and super creeps)
Ashes to ...
...lights know what I mean, Scary Monsters, super creeps, Keep me running, running scared” this is maintained until the guitar solo of Fripp and on the fade out, at the time Bowie was trying to impress his public that his use of hard stopped, but a song such as this, that has at it’s heart images of paranoia and violence, give a strong hint that drug-induced schizophrenic states where not something totally left behind, indeed in interviews ... more

On the first of August 1980 the single “Ashes to Ashes” was released in the UK and had the catalogue number RCA BOW 6, Bowie’s record company at the time RCA where taking no chances with this single not being a hit after the relative commercial failure of the previous album “Lodger” the bigwigs with the cigars wanted a hit single before the release of the album that “Ashes to Ashes” came from, cue the marketing department who came up with a rather novel idea, not only would they release the single with 3 different covers, (Bowie in clown costume holding a shoe in various poses) no the annoying part for fans was not only where there 3 covers, there where 4 sheets of stamps to go with the singles!

I thought what the f##k?

Are you kidding me, luckily for me a DJ friend who had bought the single that had the sheet of stamps I didn’t have so for me the problem was solved, but I thought what about the other collectors like myself who didn’t have DJ friends, I pictured a mad dash around record stores by fans demanding to see sheets of stamps.

With the single reaching number 1 in the UK in August 1980, expectations where running high for the album with everyone trying to predict what the forthcoming album was going to sound like?

Living in a small east coast town in Scotland there are not a lot of record shops to shop in to buy (there are even less today) up-coming release of “Scary Monsters” the town had 3 sources of vinyl Woolies, Menzies (now WHSmith’s) and one small outlet called Elena Mae’s and none of them could guarantee me a day of release delivery, what to do I was unemployed at the time so money was kind of scarce, I couldn’t really afford the train ticket to the next big town which was Dundee so I asked round my friends anybody going to Dundee on Monday the 12th of September the day of release of the album. (The day before my 22nd birthday)

Luck was still with me my friend Lloyd who at the time was going to college day release from his job as a paint sprayer at a local garage. (My friend Lloyd who is now an award winning freelance photographer) The only problem was that Lloyd wouldn’t get back from Dundee till later in the day after he had been to college, so I spent the day pacing back and fourth in my house waiting to listen to the album, about 5 o’clock that night he arrived with the album in his hand, I had given him the money to pay for it the day before, I offered him a cup of coffee he said sorry I will need to rush home my mother will expect me for dinner, so I thanked him for getting me the album and he left, now I was alone in my room with the album.

I inspected the cover, Bowie in a clown costume designed by Natasha Kornilof and parts of the cover referred back to other albums and images “Aladdin Sane” “Low” “Heroes” and “Lodger” bits of the covers of these albums where included in the back cover beside the song titles (where these the scary Monsters and super creeps that the album title spoke of?) and the cover was drawn by Edward Bell and designed by someone called Duffy.
Now to the song titles the music press had leaked all the names of the song titles weeks before the release of the album.

Side 1
It’s no game (Part 1)
Up The Hill Backwards
Scary Monsters (and super creeps)
Ashes to Ashes
Fashion

Side 2
Teenage Wildlife
Scream like a Baby
Kingdom Come
Because you’re Young
It’s no Game (Part 2)

Now to break the seal of the album, I ran my thumbnail along the edge of the cover to break the cellophane, I excitedly place the record on the turntable place the stylus in the groove and I then put on my headphones and began reading the lyrics as Bowie sang (I still do the same to this day with any of his new releases)

My ears where greeted with the sound of a vacuum cleaner or is it a sink filling with water? The rattle of a castanet or is that a can of spray paint being shaken?
It sounds like some angry snake which launches the opening salvo of the track, the song is built around an ambient snare drum played by long time Bowie sideman Dennis Davis who that beats the snare constantly throughout that along with another long serving player on Bowies albums George Murray whose bass playing adds the backbone to the song along with Carlos Alomar’s rhythm guitar which plays just behind the rhythm section (this would be the last time these 3 players would appear on a Bowie, they had been playing for him since the 1974 Diamond Dogs tour) then Bowies counts off 1,2 1,2,2 the vocals start gone is the usual croon here we have a screamed vocal that starts with the opening line “Silhouettes and shadows watch the revolution” his singing is done with urgency and he is trying to out scream the Japanese singer Michi Hirota who is repeating the lines that Bowie sings in Japanese Robert Fripp adds further tension in the track with his usual metallic sounding guitar the tension brought about by the lead guitar is sweeten by the backing chorus of Lynn Maitland, Chris Porter, Tony Visconti, and Bowie himself the arrangement of voices sounds like a barber shop quartet, all o-o-o-o and a-a-a-‘s, Bowie said at the time he was trying to break a particular sexist attitude about women and I thought that the Japanese geisha girl typifies it, where everybody sort of pictures a geisha girl – sweet , demure and non-thinking, so Bowie had her sing in a macho, samurai voice.
The song ends with Bowie telling us to shout up repeated twice on the second repeat it sounds like the tape slips and the track ends.

Up The Hill back wards starts with the sound of Tony Visconti playing acoustic guitar along with the sound of a triangle which chimes along and the sound of the snare played on the off beat with the sound of Carlos Alomar’s rhythm guitar adding the melody that is further enhanced by Roy Bittan on piano (who last played on a Bowie album way back in 1976 “Station to Station”) from Bruce Springsteens E street band.
This leads to the first lines “The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom, and the possibilities it seems to offer” on the chorus of “Yea, yea, yea, - up the hill backwards, it’ll be alright ooo-ooo” the snare sounds after the word yea, this gives the chorus more punch and drama for an otherwise run of the mill song until Robert Fripp’s guitar solo towards the climax of the track.
This song was released as the fourth and least successful single from the album it got to number 32 in the singles chart March 1981 catalogue number RCA BOW 9

Now for the title track that is held together by Robert Fripps lead guitar, which adds the drama along with the steady acoustic guitar sound played by Tony Visconti which is the counterpoint to Fripps guitar pyrotechnics.
The sound of drum sticks being hit together at the back of that is someone sliding their hand down the neck of a guitar, and then counting off 1, 2 crack of the snare and the throbbing of the bass guitar, lead guitar runs lead to the main vocal which is done in stylised cockney delivery starts with “She had a horror of rooms she was tried you can’t hid beat, And when I looked in her eyes they where blue but nobody home” as the song rumbles on the chorus is given more menace by the use of metallic percussion sounds at the back of lines starting with “She began to wail jealousies screams, Waiting at the lights know what I mean, Scary Monsters, super creeps, Keep me running, running scared” this is maintained until the guitar solo of Fripp and on the fade out, at the time Bowie was trying to impress his public that his use of hard stopped, but a song such as this, that has at it’s heart images of paranoia and violence, give a strong hint that drug-induced schizophrenic states where not something totally left behind, indeed in interviews given in the 90’s Bowie admitted that his association with hard drugs lasted in the 80’s.
This was the third single from the album and had the catalogue number RCA BOW 8 and reached number 20 in the UK singles chart in January 1981

Now for the familiar song “Ashes to Ashes”, on the album the song is slightly longer than the single release. This Bowie at his pop best multi-layered keyboards set against treated guitars, the song is a wash with the synthesizer playing of Andy Clark, who a year earlier had played the same for Bill Nelson’s Red Noise, the track up-dates the story of Major Tom who is a character from another of Bowies number 1 singles “Space Oddity”, which was number 1 on it’s second re-release in October 1975, and “Ashes to Ashes” is the only song that I can think of that took a sequel to the top of the charts.
Back to the song itself which starts with synth and bass along with the sound of maracas and drums being played on the off beat and treated piano that sounds on the end of the opening line “Do you remember a guy been”.
In the middle section Bowie adds some vocal noises that extend the track but don’t add anything to it.
Of course the big selling tool for this song was the accompanying video that went with the track.
To close the end of side 1 of the vinyl is the track, which according to Tony Visconti was a riff that Bowie had built around the word Jamaica that didn’t take the form of a song until towards the end of the recording process, this nearly lost song fragment went on to be a sizeable hit, this was the second single release from the album and has the catalogue number RCA BOW 7 and got to number 5 in November 1980.
The song Fashion begins with what sounds like to me backwards metallic percussion which allows Fripp to begin his signature guitar style which even has a name “Frippertronics”, the sound of his guitar and the crash of drums and now the national front invade the discos, and dance, politics and fashion itself become metaphors for each other, with the opening line “There’s a brand new dance but I don’t know its name”, interestingly Bowie uses the construction in the track “I’ve not” (as opposed to the more common “I haven’t”) in his conversation as well as in this song “Fashion” is the perfect anti-disco song, as it utilises a classic irresistible dance beat discreetly treated with Frippertronic guitar interruptions that sound like an early-warning alert.
The resulting song is both a jaundiced view of the very musical culture Bowie was using to great effect, that of dance and disco, check the line “It’s loud and it’s tasteless and I’ve head it before” and a sly put-down of style fascism something Bowie could accused of himself, the track has a great driving rhythm section and an arrogant line in the middle 8 section “Listen to me/Don’t listen to Me”.

Side 2 of the vinyl began with the underrated “Teenage Wildlife” which is a sprawling song that for too long has been regarded as an inferior cousin to the song “Heroes” this possibly because of Fripps opening guitar sound which sounds not dissimilar to the song “Heroes”.
In fact the track for me is a superb song, with which Bowie continues the themes lyrically of Fashion with it’s main premise of world-wearied pessimism, with Bowie at the time being a 33 old parental figure passing judgement on youth culture and advises a young punk rocker (or a younger self) check the lines “As ugly as a teenage millionaire, pretending to be a whizz kid world, And you’ll take me aside, and say, David what shall I do? They wait for me in the hallways, I’ll say don’t ask me I don’t know any hallways, But they move in numbers and they’ve got me in a corner, I feel like a group of one, They can’t do this to me, I’m not some piece of teenage wildlife”.
Bowie is heading towards an uncertain middle age and is commenting on this uncertainty, something all of us of a certain age have felt; this is an underrated Bowie classic.

The album continues with the song “Scream like a Baby” that has a calculated New York feel and is based musically on a track Bowie wrote back in 1973 for the singer Ava Cherry’s group “The Astronettes” called “I am Laser” (which is available on a CD called “People from bad Homes” catalogue number Golden Years GY005)
This song continues the Bowie tradition of using old-fashioned science fiction, this time with Bowie acting as narrator he re-tells the futuristic story of incarceration and sexual persecution in a distant past.

The track begins with the sound of the biggest cowbell and a huge rhythm section that has a wall of keyboards that creates the perfect place for the opening line of “Well I wouldn’t buy no merchandise, And I wouldn’t fight no war, And I mixed with other colours, But the nurse doesn’t care, And I hid under blankets, Or did I run away, I really can’t remember, Last time I saw the light of day”.
The use of a chorus of out of sync varispeed voices is just a awesome effect which brilliantly captures the sense of a split personality and the horror that had troubled him in real life, it also describes the demise of the character Sam who would rather die than cooperate, think “All the Madmen” meets “1984” and you are there.

The song “Kingdom Come” is the only cover song on the whole collection the track was written by Televisions front man Tom Verlaine, the use of this song sets the tone for the spiritual creative home for this album which is rooted in the late 70’s, Bowie has used a drum track with a tambourine placed on the snare along with the guitar of Fripp to dance in between the bass and drums with the melody of the song played by Carlos Alomars on his rhythm guitar now Bowie sings a very over blown vocal that in the context of this track works well with the sound of crashing sibyls to add a sense of urgency to the delivered lines, which deal with intolerable suffering sustained by the belief in final absolution and rescue.

The penultimate song “Because You’re Young” begins with Pete Townsend playing his signature suspended chords to introduce the weakest track on the album with Bowie commenting on the past trifles of youth which is now becoming a little taxing and for me Bowie has overplayed his hand, the guitar sound is played against keyboards and drums and bass Bowie croons “Psychodelicate girl – come out to play, little metal faced boy – don’t stay away, He’s war torn and resigned – she can’t take anymore”.
Andy Clark does play some excellent keyboard runs that against the vocal arrangement that has at the back of the main singing an answering chorus repeating the lines, the track fades with Pete Townsend’s guitar disappearing into the distance.

To close off the album there is a re-worked version of the opening track “It’s no game (part 2)” finds the singer and the band exhausted after the intensity of the sonic bruising they’ve just administered, all is quite and calm.
Scary Monsters is a devastating album, the work of a man at the height of his powers, and was the last release for his old record company RCA and for a lot of critics and followers of the singer the end of a golden period that started in 1969.
For me it was the signal for the end of my youth and trusting that the next Bowie release would be up to his usual high standards.

Now back to the album for the first re-release in 1991 EMI (catalogue number CDP 79 9331 2) tacked on some extra tracks which started with a stripped down version of “Space Oddity” that Bowie preformed on the Kenny Everett Video Show, Bowie vocals and 12 string guitar a more desperate sounding version than the lush version from 1969, it was also the B-side to the single “Alabama Song” released in March 1980 catalogue number RCA BOW 5 and got to number 23 in the UK singles chart.
The next extra track was a re-worked inferior version of the classic cut from the Aladdin Sane album “Panic in Detroit” which is of interest only to Bowie to completists and is quite forgettable.
The second last extra track is bit of a rarity at the time of the release of the 1991 version of this album “Crystal Japan” was a piece that Bowie wrote for a Japanese saki TV advert which would not sound out of place on the Low album, it’s all keyboards and moods and strange vocal effects. This track is now available on the Bowie instrumental album All Saints collected instrumentals 1977 - 1999 catalogue number 7243 5 33045 2 2, this album started off as a limited pressing Bowie had done as Christmas presents for friends and family, as far as I know there where a 1,000 original copies only pressed, I was offered a copy a couple of years ago I think the asking price then was £250 if I remember correctly, I said no thank you.

The extra tracks finish with the A-side of the single “Alabama Song” written by Kurt Weil.
The feature that is most attractive to me for the 1991 re-issue is that it re-creates the original album whereas the 1999 version doesn’t some genus at Abbey Road studios has in their infinite wisdom placed track gaps between the songs for the superior sounding 1999 version but historically inaccurate version, why oh why do they not consult the fans or please check the master tapes!!
Since this September is the 25th anniversary of the release of this album could we please correct this horrendous oversight and f***kup, in the form of a double CD package if you please.
The 1999 version does have an excellent booklet with all the lyrics and some rare photos and all the single sleeves of Ashes to Ashes singles are recreated for all you out there who are to young remember the covers and the middle pages have a printing of one of the sheets of stamps and the same has been done on the case as the tray has another sheet decorating it.
 

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