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!

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.

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)

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.