The Story of a Song
I was born
in May 1970 from the pen of musical legend, David Bowie, and made my first
public appearance in November of the same year. Although some classify me as
‘glam rock’, I have always considered myself adaptable and perhaps difficult to
pin down. Like Mr. Bowie himself, I have adopted at least four guises in my
time – that is, so far; who knows what I’ll become in the future. I started
life as a track on an album which, I’m proud to say, had my name, and I then
had the honour of becoming the B-side of David Bowie’s massive hit ‘Space
Oddity’, in the USA. This, it turned out, was only my first incarnation, sung
with David’s distinctive London accent.
Shortly
afterwards, he lent me to his Scottish friend Lulu, a tiny, Eurovision-song-singing
lady with great popularity at the time, although hardly alternative! She turned me into a sleazy, almost cabaret-style
number 3 hit in 1974, and vastly increased her street cred in the process.
However, I was still keen to try new images, having learned from my creator,
who has taken on various personae including Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White
Duke, a clown, and others, both male and female. So, after resting for a few
years, in 1993 I worked with grunge group Nirvana, one of rock history’s greatest
groups, I’m told, on their album MTV
Unplugged in New York. We went to number one in several countries,
including the USA, the UK and Spain.
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| Own photo but also available at eltpics in Music set. |
Despite
being part of Nirvana’s Unplugged set, I sounded remarkably similar to my
original version, with, perhaps, a slightly rougher, less ‘British pop’ edge.
This meant that I had now expressed myself in a London accent, a Scottish twang
and the tones of the USA’s Pacific West coast, as Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain
was from up in Washington, near the Canadian border with the States.
Unintentionally, I had travelled extensively, as well as changing face and
gender…. More recently, I changed origin, face and gender again. In 2005, a
young woman called Jordis Unga, from Massachusetts in the North East of the USA
performed me with great success on a TV show and then issued me in a format
that was completely new to me – as a digital download. This makes my
experimentation with multiple identities even more satisfactory, as I started
on a vinyl album, became a vinyl single or two, later experienced life as a
cassette and a CD, and finally as a download – and of course a YouTube video.
This is, of
course, in line with my main interest in multiple personalities, as I sing
about having ‘passed (him) upon the
stair, we spoke of what and when although I wasn't there’. Nowadays, I
could do that on the mobile, but back in the seventies, only a schizophrenic or
split personality could talk to someone while not being there, don’t you agree?
I admit, though, that I’m not totally original and have been inspired by Kafka,
HP Lovecraft and a poem by William Hughes Mearns about someone who talked to a
ghost he’d met on the stairs. But I’m happy with the way I am, and I seem to
bring success to those who sing me and happiness to those who listen to me.
Will you be one of them?
