Sunday Samples 147

Okay, everybody knows David Bowie. The glitz and glam and all the characters that are no more escapable as an influence anymore than anything the Beatles or the Rolling Stones ever did. And we all know that Ziggy played guitar.

But before Ziggy Stardust, Bowie came up through the same blues and Merseybeat beginnings as a whole generation of British artists. It’s how he departs from that background where things get interesting. The late-’60s psychedelia influenced his still largely-acoustic sound in “Space Oddity”, released to coincide with the moon landing in 1969 and introducing the character of Major Tom, to whom he (and other artists) would return many times. On 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World he started working with the backing band who would eventually become the Spiders, and they pushed into a sound more like then-current British heavy metal artists Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

While that style didn’t stick, the album also saw Bowie incorporating more avant garde artistic influences and references. These did resonate in the developing work, and 1971’s Hunky Dory saw Bowie plunging headlong towards the ignition of his glam rock career in the following year’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Hunky Dory brought back the pop-singer sound from Space Oddity and blended it with everything from Brecht to Dylan to Warhol, and threw in, Buddhism, Lovecraftian themes, references to Nietzsche-infused esoteric and hermetic philosophies, and even some outright, self-proclaimed nonsense.

Smack in the middle of all of this comes “Quicksand”, which survives to this day as a concert staple.

I’m closer to the Golden Dawn
Immersed in Crowley’s uniform
Of imagery
I’m living in a silent film
Portraying Himmler’s sacred realm
Of dream reality
I’m frightened by the total goal
Drawing to the ragged hole
And I ain’t got the power anymore
No I ain’t got the power anymore

I’m the twisted name on Garbo’s eyes
Living proof of Churchill’s lies
I’m destiny
I’m torn between the light and dark
Where others see their targets
Divine symmetry
Should I kiss the viper’s fang
Or herald loud the death of Man
I’m sinking in the quicksand of my thought
And I ain’t got the power anymore

Don’t believe in yourself
Don’t deceive with belief
Knowledge comes with death’s release

I’m not a prophet or a stone age man
Just a mortal with the potential of a superman
I’m living on
I’m tethered to the logic of Homo Sapien
Can’t take my eyes from the great salvation
Of bulls___ faith
If I don’t explain what you ought to know
You can tell me all about it on the next Bardo
I’m sinking in the quicksand of my thought
And I ain’t got the power anymore

Don’t believe in yourself
Don’t deceive with belief
Knowledge comes with death’s release

Don’t believe in yourself
Don’t deceive with belief
Knowledge comes with death’s release