“Nothing is simple”: The David Bowie song inspired by Tchaikovsky
A truly great artist can soak up inspiration from anywhere. Over the course of his long and illustrious career, David Bowie drew upon a seemingly endless pool of influences, ranging from The Velvet Underground to the world of ballet dancing. Despite his position as one of the 20th century’s defining songwriters, Bowie was not afraid to draw from the antique inspirations of classical music composers. In typical Bowie fashion, though, he was able to channel these influences into something distinctly modern and trailblazing.
During the early period of Bowie’s career, before he had truly found his footing in the music industry, the songwriter tried just about everything to be heard by the masses. From writing bizarre comedy songs about gnomes to hopping on board the counterculture folk revival, Bowie did not let repeated knocks-back deter him from his desire to become a successful songwriter and musician. As it turns out, it was the folk-adjacent acoustic style that earned the songwriter his first taste of mainstream success, with the timeless classic ‘Space Oddity’ becoming a top-five single in 1969.
As we now know, Bowie was never an artist to stay in one place for too long. So, after the success of his acoustic-orientated work in the late 1960s, he began to move more into the world of blues and hard rock when creating the album that would eventually become The Man Who Sold The World. Of course, folk influence was still present on that record, but the songwriter also drew from some pretty unexpected avenues. For instance, one song on the album is partly inspired by none other than Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Tchaikovsky needs no introduction, given his position as one of history’s most notable classical composers, yet he forms a pretty unlikely influence on the hard rock leanings of The Man Who Sold The World. His influence becomes even more unbelievable upon finding out that the song he inspired was Bowie’s stunning anti-war anthem, ‘Running Gun Blues’, which was written in response to US involvement in Vietnam.
The war in Vietnam and the growing protest movement acting in opposition to the conflict became repeated sources of inspiration for folk and rock artists during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and Bowie was keen to throw his two-pence into the conversation. ‘Running Gun Blues’ was written following revelations about the My Lai massacre, during which American troops brutally murdered unarmed civilians and torched houses in the village of My Lai in South Vietnam.
In order to bolster the feeling of resistance and anger inherent in the song’s lyrics, Bowie and producer Tony Visconti took inspiration from Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’, a composition created to commemorate Russia’s successful resistance against French invasion in 1812. Confirming this, Visconti later shared, “A simple song in three keys, but nothing is simple about a Bowie song. Basically, it’s a protest song. […] The buzzy Moog is all over the place here.”
He added, “The ending is a sort of a play on the Overture of ‘1812’ with cannon fire generated by the Moog. It was lots of fun to play.”
The cannon fire on the ‘1812 Overture’ is among the most iconic and recognisable moments in classical music, creating a sense of nationalism and proud resistance. Bowie, in his infinite genius, manages to use that sense of nationalism to subvert ideas of patriotism and US supremacy that allowed war crimes in Vietnam to occur.
While ‘Running Gun Blues’ did not inspire the same kind of reputation as some of the other efforts included in The Man Who Sold The World, its political nature and diverse composition reflected the kind of music Bowie would go on to create later in the decade, at his creative peak on albums like Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane.
