‘Word on a Wing’: The song David Bowie called a “cry for help”
Some of the best David Bowie songs are about offering a helping hand to those who don’t fit into society. ‘The Starman’ never claimed to be normal by any stretch of the imagination, but by having the bravery to walk out onstage as rock’s resident alien, everyone that followed him got the courage to accept who they were and make whatever art suited them at the time. That didn’t mean that Bowie didn’t have his off moments, and he admitted that the song ‘Word on a Wing’ was the moment he let all of his insecurities out in song.
Looking through Bowie’s discography, though, many of his personal problems were normally draped around an art piece or some conceptual work. There was zero chance that anyone was going to see happy-go-lucky Davey Jones at the bottom of his songs, and even when he passed on, what he left for us on Blackstar is still one of the densest looks into mortality any musician has ever faced.
However, those were the final days, and the darkest days came when Bowie decided to venture to Los Angeles to work on the album Station to Station. The last few years had seen him shed his glam rock god skin for the smooth soul of Young Americans, but after starring in The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bowie barely looked recognisable.
Now christening himself as ‘The Thin White Duke’, the title track of his next record was one of the most abrupt switches that he had ever done. The results may have been fantastic, but the fact that he was hardly eating and was ingesting cocaine by the bucketload made him look downright skeletal compared to the already small presence that he had onstage.
While his performances of tracks like ‘Wild Is the Wind’ and ‘Golden Years’ are certainly great for what they are, ‘Word on a Wing’ is a different beast. This is by far the most gentle song you’ll hear on the record, but for all of the posturing he did in this striking new persona, Bowie might give the most accurate portrayal of his state of mind on this tune.
When looking back on the song for VH1 Storytellers, Bowie remembered that he channelled all of his emotional pain from this era into his songs, saying, “1975 and 1976 and the first few weeks of 1977 were singularly the darkest days of my life. It was so steeped in awfulness that to recall is near impossible and certainly painful. Unwittingly, this song was, therefore, a signal of distress. I’m sure it was a call for help.”
And considering that Bowie would move to Berlin shortly afterward to kick his habits however he could, ‘Word on a Wing’ remains a one-off on Station to Station. This was a man knee-deep in the filthiest emotional state that anyone can be in, and yet somewhere in the mess, he found a way to ask for someone to help him.
Considering he had helped so many people get over their problems before, the fact that he knew enough to know he wasn’t doing well was comforting in its own way. Even Bowie wasn’t really a god, and the fact that he was human enough to show people who he was is still sobering to look back on.
