this is something i have kind of been meaning (and trying) to write for quite some time, now, look you see. i think i know what i wish to say, but am unsure i have the confidence to write it all proper as i want. well, today seems as good a day as any to give it a go at last.
broadly, then, this is all about a love affair which, to date, has remained a constant for a remarkable 27 years. may it last for as however long i breathe, or exist. it's for anyone who ever fell instantly in love with a song, too. also, it's trying to understand (or more realistically guess) as to why the creator of this particular song was so very, very keen to have people hear it. yes, then, here we are with my commitment to not not writing of David Bowie at least once a month.
indeed, the list of songs by David Bowie which one may fall instantly in love with, and remain that way, is not short. neither is such a set of songs which he may have been rather keen for us to hear. for this, though, and indeed for me, the song is Strangers When We Meet.
let me try and avoid boring you with too many details of provenance, etc. although for some (obscure) reason for a number of you that seems to be the most interesting part. i was alerted to the existence of a "Bowie soundtrack album" probably by the NME, and off i went to get it. not entirely sure, but for some reason i feel certain it was with birthday money off of Gran (no, the other one), although this does not tie in with the release date. perhaps it was Christmas gift money.
there are many vivid memories i have of giving the record a first play. some would include reading a now bewilderingly deleted from releases, astonishing set of linear notes by Bowie. arguably, i bravely put forward, the linear notes on The Buddha Of Suburbia are the closest we ever came to his writing of an autobiography. for those interested, here you go, click here, as i took it upon myself to throw them on the internet for all to admire.
after reading such i probably would have returned to my typewriter, battering out some letter or other to some one or other, with the music playing. this is, at the very least, true of the first five songs on the record. everything halted the moment track six commenced. at least, in my mind, as i reflect and look back, it did. hopefully this is true.
starting (on the original Buddha Of Suburbia version) (that last bit it brackets shall make sense as we go) (maybe) with a slight, what appears to be (musical) keyboard tap that feels as though it echoes the start of Word On A Wing, it soon moves on. for the sake of a new sentence, it moves into a whirling, dizzy, atmospheric swirl of sound, grounded in a foundation of the ultimate in groove swaying rhythm that is supposed to be in the background but feels as though it fights to be front and centre. much of this astonishing hypnotic rhythm (hope that is the right term, i am not too good with proper musician lingo) is overtly borrowed from works considered to be Bowie's greatest artistic accomplishments. when one hears Strangers When We Meet, one cannot escape the artist paying homage to the arcing music of Station To Station and, in particular, V2-Schneider from the "heroes" album. weirdly, if you can find it, the original demo sounds "not a million miles away" from the version of Hallo Spaceboy what the Pet Shop Boys did with him a few years later.
much of the music on The Buddha Of Suburbia echoes, or "pays a significant amount of respect", to his earlier works, particular the much (rightly) celebrated 70s music. again, as we go, this may make some sense, but the music, structure and content of this record added to the linear notes he provided with the original version all (strongly) suggest everyone really, really, really should have paid a good deal more attention to this record than happened at the time. but, hey ho, us fans love it. i do, at the least.
but what of the lyrics, and the singing? well, here is where i could get stuck, or find myself typing away into a lot of silly bother. all i can tell you is that the words, and the cool, crisp (hello, Faye) delivery of them were not so much as engaging as instantly addictive. every time i play the song, just as was the first time, once he delivers a line in my heart, mind and if such exists soul i crave, i say, deliver more, David, deliver more. this he does, and for me it is one of those songs that you never, ever wish to end.
what's he singing about? that is a very good question. actually, a f*****g good question would perhaps be the most appropriate way to ask. when i went from album to album in a quite random way, a recurring theme was subversion in the true sense of it and not how it is used now to describe poor decisions made in making movies. maybe Strangers When We Meet is the personification of his apparent love or proclivity for subverting lyrics. there is a bleak desolate desperation in the actual words of the song, confusingly countenanced by a sense of love, happiness (maybe), joy and what have you.
it would be fair, honest and realistic to say (not suggest, but say), that i had not really experience a "real or serious" relationship by the time i first heard this song. at the very least, not in the sense which i know and understand such now, if indeed i do. open to debate, but no matter. inexplicably and possibly inaccurately, Strangers When We Meet seemed to sow in me some intrinsic blueprint as to how and what all of that actually was.
the way i wished to start this part was with the words "from a literal point of view, the song is about....". but, no, i cannot. no matter how direct and overt the lyrics are, there is no clear way (to me) to interpret just what's going on. maybe that is where the untouchable genius of the song lies. unquestionably, i would say, there's that the song is set in the aftermath (or if you like climax) of some form of (presumably splendid) sexual encounter. sometimes i think it's a relationship rekindled, covertly, where animosity exists on equal footing to attraction. often i think maybe it is a longstanding relationship built upon an inexplicable drawing and staying together in the face of no understanding whatsoever. from time to time i drop a good deal of either understanding and just think it's David reflecting in a mirror. and many other variations. a compelling argument could be put forward to say that what Ashes To Ashes is to Space Oddity, so Strangers When We Meet is to "heroes".
now this gets tricky. whereas it is impossible to separate an artist from their art, in all instances of my writing of Bowie i have tried as far as realistically possible to steer away from the gossip and personal, the rumours and lies and stories they made up. this is something which i have often quoted, but when asked about an autobiography, Bowie advised people to just look at the many biographies others had churned out about him, find the one that seems most interesting, take that as being what you want it to be and get on with it. and yet he seemed very keen, eager in fact, for as many people as possible to hear Strangers When We Meet.
how keen and eager? well, it has been released at least (that i know of) three times - originally on The Buddha Of Suburbia, re-recorded (in a more subdued but no less effective way) for 1. Outside and then released as a single.
with regards to the latter, a single he pushed and promoted the heck (or hell) out of, in a way that he had not really done before and in all honesty had absolutely no need to. it felt as though Bowie sought out to appear on every television show he possibly could to perform the song, giving some shows a feeling they had a remarkable scoop, for it was not every day the stature of Bowie mentioned he would be interested in dropping by. the single itself was remarkably generous, giving the fans two extras. one was a re-recording of The Man Who Sold The World, still much in the minds of many due to the devastating association of the song with Nirvana's Unplugged performance, the other was Get Real, which was an at the time Japanese release only track on 1. Outside, or just Outside if you will.
for those of you who do not know, usually artists are encourage to include at least one extra song on any Japanese release, one not available anywhere else. this is so as to encourage Japanese fans to buy the Japanese release of the album, rather than considerably cheaper imported versions. no, i don't know why they don't just make the domestic releases cheaper. for fans this was immensely frustrating, as pre and early days of internet meant no practical way of obtaining the elusive one track, unless one had somewhere north of £40 or thereabouts to get HMV (or similar) to import it for you.
reasons for The Man Who Sold The World are unclear. it was always known that Bowie was never particularly happy with how any of his attempts to record the song came out. some speculated that Nirvana not only got it, but performed and played it as it should always have been, and took custody of it, maybe like the incident later with Johnny Cash and Nine Inch Nails' Hurt. if you accept this, then no doubt you go along with the idea that Bowie "clocked" that this was the way to do the song, re-embraced it in his sets and included it is as some sort of thanks or tribute to Kurt Cobain. or you can consider that maybe Bowie was having none of it, and simply decided to reclaim the song as very much his own, which of course it was and is. evidence for this rather being the case more or less rests on the fact that Bowie, once, told Dave Grohl, usually considered as "the nicest guy in rock", to f*** off when Grohl approached him about doing a song. oh.
but, back to Strangers When We Meet itself. why was he, as in David Bowie, so keen and eager for this song to be heard? of the few articles i have found which concern the song, many simply lean towards an overtly economic reason. speculation is that Bowie was quite aware of the dynamic "hook" this song had, one which suggested potential commercial success. make no mistake, this is entirely plausible. there is little sense in being a rock star, especially one as iconic as Bowie became, if you are not going to make awfully high piles of cash. let us not forget scenes in Ziggy Stardust The Motion Picture and the Ricochet documentary which saw Bowie concerned with receipts. nor should we overlook ventures such as the "Bowie bonds", where effectively his art became a stock market concern.
just maybe, though, throwing back to my variations of interpretation of the song, it was all down to how this was a story, an episode or an incident from his life which Bowie wished to speak of, be it directly towards one very specific person as an elaborate, played in public private not joke but secret confession or as he wanted to express his feelings at that moment. or moments, since recording the song again and again became a bit of an ad hoc staple for him for at least three years.
i really can't accept the idea that Strangers When We Meet was something which came to exist purely for financial reasons, though. all of it feels far too personal, and he persevered with finding an audience for it, or perfecting the sound, for such a prolonged amount of time he must have known that the commercial returns would never meet or exceed all which he had invested in it.
who, exactly, might feature in the song if we accept David Bowie is just himself as the narrator? that's kind of the sort of speculation i steer clear of. sure, there are some very obvious candidates as who he might have had a somewhat secret reunion or meeting with at the time, but then again this song could have been harking back to an incident 10, 20 or more years before it was written. maybe it is not quite a matter of guessing "who" to the scale of, say, the subject of Carly Simon's You're So Vain, but still, i can see why trying to work it out has appeal.
except for when i remember the line "slinky secrets, hotter than the sun" from Strangers When We Meet. and that time when he did VH1 Storytellers, started with "oh, the stories i could tell you" before proceeding to tell stories which he was present in were ultimately about others. his subversion in suggestion was forever tantalising.
anyway, yes, no, maybe is the answer to whether i feel as though i have at any point coherently said something close to what i wished to about this song. in some instances i have, even if it is quite accidental. resoundingly, i suppose, all that really matters is that Strangers When We Meet is a brilliant and interesting song off of David Bowie, and i would encourage you to buy a copy of it. or, you know, "stream" it, or "you tube" it, or access it however one does in this peculiar new world.
my many thanks to you for reading just any aspect of all of this. hopefully some of it made some kind of sense at some stage. or, you know, i managed to put some really good pictures of David Bowie up to be (quite rightly) admired.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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