‘Ashes To Ashes’: How did David Bowie create the best sequel song in rock history?
David Bowie was never one to stand still. In fact, he’s continually been used as the reference point for an artistic chameleon; any artist who shapeshifts between records often utters the great man’s name when justifying to media outlets and fans.
It didn’t take him long to embark on this journey either. It was only on his second album that he introduced us to the inner workings of his sprawling narrative mind with Space Oddity. Mixing celestial imagery with socio-political commentary, it became an unlikely breakout hit, much to the dismay of label executives, cementing him as one of the most intriguing and abstract minds of the late 1960s.
To many, it’s a catchy hit that draws upon playful sci-fi imagery. But at the kernel of its narrative is a wider critique on the space race in 1969, a monumental moon-landing moment that epitomised the explorative greatness of the human race and by proxy America. Space provides a handy viewpoint to overlook the core issues of a society in decay.
Succinct commentary accomplished and a timeless classic written, Bowie gave himself a fitting launch pad to jump from. As his rivals joined him in space, just about making contact with the moon’s dusty surface, he left to move onto his next genre-bending mission. Would he return? Safe money was on never, for it wasn’t his style to revisit already explored territory.
But as the 1970s drew to a close and the great American space expedition did little to solve the crippling societal issues of America, Bowie defied all expectation and returned to old ground. His 1980 epic ‘Ashes To Ashes’ brought enlightenment to those who had wondered what had happened to Major Tom, and despite that, Hollywood movies of the new burgeoning decade would seek to tell them, it wasn’t good.
“Here we had the great blast of American technological know-how shoving this guy up into space, and once he gets there, he’s not quite sure why he’s there,” Bowie explained, when asked about the subject of his second space set epic. He added: “And that’s where I left him. Now we’ve found out that he’s under some kind of realisation that the whole process that got him up there had decayed, was born out of decay; it has decayed him, and he’s in the process of decay.”
False promises and shattered illusions take centre stage in Bowie’s epic, as we find a broken space hero, left soulless on the dusty terrain of his new found planet, crippled by drug abuse. Bowie elaborated on the scene, explaining, “It was an ego, a technological ego which got him up there, for no specific reason, and just added more disaster because it was a potpourri of technical ideas. So the most disastrous thing I could think of is that he finds solace only in some kind of heroin-type drug, actually being that the cosmic space itself was feeding him with an addiction. And he wants now to return to the womb from whence he came.”
But beneath that initial theme lies something deeper and darker altogether. By 1980, Bowie had become something of a Major Tom figure himself. While his space-gliding counterpart was buoyed by a nation’s false hopes before crashing back to Earth with the aid of substances, Bowie’s own ascent in the 1970s was running on fumes. His struggle with substance abuse was now the only thing separating him from the bleakness of reality.
For all of Bowie’s genius, this track doesn’t seek to exercise it with any elusiveness. Instead, he shows how brazen vulnerability can be just as inspiring. As he sings “Time and again I tell myself/I’ll stay clean tonight/ But the little green wheels are following me”, we don’t see a master of the universe, lost in the muddled description of a hopeless humanity but instead an openly struggling artist crippled by the temptations of universal stardom.
