Where Queen led a year before hand in their release of Hot Space, David Bowie was probably bound to go for the 1983 album Let’s Dance. However where Queen went arguably and disastrously wrong, The Thin White Duke, the master musical chameleon could only do right and Let’s Dance stands out as, up until the release this year of his album The Next Day, the last great and most adventurous album of a long and prestigious career.
The Blues-Rock, dance infused album thankfully retained so much of David Bowie’s past ambition, enough of the classic lyrics and defined retrospection to make it a classic upon release and carry his name forward into a decade that could have easily turned away from him as it did with many of the groups and solo artists that was along the same amazing ride as he was in the 1970s. That has always been part of David’s charm though, he was able to go to places, tap into the upcoming next big movement and spearhead it, fashion it in his own way and for that reason alone become one of the most important musicians the U.K. has had the pleasure to call its own.
Surprisingly the album doesn’t feature Mr. Bowie performing on any type of instrument what so ever, the grace and movement of the horns, trumpets and percussion are down to the huge array of musicians David has playing magnificently throughout the album. The power of the lyrics, the dramatic use of his voice is enough to send this album into orbit and rightly give him his second successive number one album and his fifth since the release a decade earlier of the phenomenal Aladdin Sane.
The music is certainly infectious, as with 99 per cent of most of the artist’s work before it but it also offers something new, something exciting, something rare. Ignoring his debut album in 1967, his subsequent albums had been in a Progressive mode and mood. Whilst never actually out rightly stating it, the themes behind Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold The World, the incredible Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust for example had at their epicentre a narrative, a story which you could frame David Bowie’s life around. The lyrics of the Hunky Dory album for example show a man coming to terms with fatherhood and what that meant he felt he could or couldn’t change about himself, the sweeping changes of sexuality, the use of philosophy and above all high art…the musician as the story teller and high priest of British sexual 70s ambiguity, Bowie at his blinding and dazzling best. In Let’ Dance David Bowie moved away from the stylisation of the past, the art presentation of his music, perhaps down to the emergence of newer artists such as Gary Numan and Steve Strange and Ultravox into his domain, and instead looked to a different way of expression. The story was still there, the class of songs such as China Girl and Criminal World pay respectful homage to this, but it was beefed up, given a fresh new face and a clean pair of heels in which to enjoy the 80s with.
Where the art never left was in the use of video, David Bowie remained a man who would embrace the art and influence of pop video in selling a single or album. China Girl was powerful; it pulled no punches and framed the song perfectly. It alludes to the listener the feeling of the unknown and the exotic, the dangerous and the downright evil. The lyrics suggest something evocative and personal as David Bowie sings that he “Feels a-tragic, like I’m Marlon Brando” This use of a Hollywood icon is interesting as it gives the idea of a man who has let himself go from the all American actor of the films On The Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Godfather and who became more known as a highly paid actor contributing a few minutes of film time to films such as Superman and Apocalypse Now, he was still undoubtedly a star but the magic he displayed had become tarnished. This association seems odd in comparison to David Bowie as this was still a musician with something scintillating about him, something very creative. Perhaps the thought that Brando himself for Superman, a film released just a couple of years before Let’s Dance came out, didn’t read the scripted lines before going into filming and wanted the words displayed off camera, therefore saving the trouble of learning them. It may have been this thought that kept David Bowie going, not to become a caricature of himself and the timely reinvention of the musician.
The tragic figure of Brando is one that has gone down in American film history, a man so brilliant in his ability that he was able to correct film maker Elia Kazan in a scene in On The Waterfront and who in the end, despite his brilliance, was not the man he was, the legend seemingly having drifted away. David Bowie on the other hand kept his brilliance and despite the misgivings he may have had after the album, it remains a work of pure and simple art, Bowie being Bowie and perhaps not the tragic figure of Brando but of a man who still encourages and is quoted as being an inspiration to many musicians and music lovers.
Let’s Dance remains one of the great David Bowie albums of his career, on a par with the likes of Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane and a cracking listen to rival almost anything from the time.
Ian D. Hall