The classic David Bowie song he could barely remember recording: “It was late, I know that”
When it comes to his lyrics, David Bowie never makes anything too literal. He prefers to write about strange characters and odd worlds, weaving narratives through his work for his favourite personas to perform. On rare occasions, his songs deal with his own life. But even then, they remained a mystery to Bowie, with one more personal song slipping from his memory.
Bowie’s personal life rarely came into play, but when he did, he tackled it from a left-field view. Whether to protect the subject at hand, shield his own feelings or guard the personal and therefore vulnerable inspiration, or whether to simply make it all feel less self-indulged, even his more honest tracks had a level of metaphor to them. ‘Aladdin Sane’ is probably the best example. As a play on the phrase “A lad insane”, the song dealt with his feelings surrounding the life and treatment of his half-brother, Terry, who had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic.
Terry Burns proved to be an incredibly influential figure in Bowie’s life. Obviously, they were connected as half-siblings, existing in the same domestic sphere in the times Burns was at home and not in a psychology facility. But beyond that, Burns played a major role in getting Bowie into music. Being ten years older than Bowie, the future musician looked up to him, admiring his interests in jazz, Buddhism, beat poetry and the occult. Simply put, Bowie thought Burns was cool and learned to play music thanks to his influence.
“I was Stone and he was Wax / So he could scream, and still relax, unbelievable,” Bowie sings on ‘The Bewlay Brothers’, a song which is suspected to be about Burns. I say suspected because even the musician himself wasn’t quite sure, as he admitted, “The circumstances of the recording barely exist in my memory. It was late, I know that.”
But in his hazy memory surrounding the song, he had an inkling about its emotional core. “I wouldn’t know how to interpret the lyric of this song other than suggesting that there are layers of ghosts within it,” he said. His brother would die from suicide in 1985, leaving Bowie grieving. But even in 1971, when the track was written, life with his brother was difficult and often devastating as he went in and out of care after episodes of intense mental illness.
In ‘The Bewlay Brothers’, Bowie seems to be trying to find a way to write about this connection but couldn’t land on outright sincerity. “For this song, I used Bewlay as a cognomen – in place of my own. This wasn’t just a song about brotherhood so I didn’t want to misrepresent it by using my true name,” he said, suggesting that perhaps he might have likes to have called it The Burns Brothers or The Bowie Brothers.
But who knows, at least Bowie himself didn’t. The song emerged as a strange beast, made in uncommon circumstances for the star as he said, “Unlike the rest of the Hunky Dory album, which I had written before the studio had been booked, this song was an unwritten piece that I felt had to be recorded instantaneously.” With only foggy memories surrounding the creation of the song, the artist seemed to go into a trace and emerge with the track, calling it a kind of “emotional invasion.”
