‘TVC 15’: The song David Bowie desperately wanted to be “fucked up”
The question of when David Bowie started pouring an undeniable dose of the avant-garde into his work is fascinating. While it’s difficult to pinpoint at what exact moment this occurred, given that he was inspired by the captivating sounds of this realm as a teenager, it’s probably best to posit that it was a gradual process and that releases such as ‘The Berlin Trilogy’ were always bound to happen in some shape or other.
Although there were specks of the avant-garde in Bowie’s early work, including the cult weirdness of ‘The Laughing Gnome’ and the intergalactic, ironic beauty of ‘Space Oddity’, the Londoner got a more concerted and effective grip on it in 1972’s Ziggy Stardust.
The album is smattered with avant-garde elements and a profoundly transgressive essence. It arrived at the perfect time, too. It was perfect for the experimental spirit of the era and listeners who sought much more sonically interesting and thematically substantial music than before. In many ways, the record was the definitive release of the post-counterculture era.
Following that moment when he triumphantly burst into the realm of rockstars that he’d long fought hard to do so, the gloves were off. The follow-up to Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, was darker and even more jazz and avant-garde-oriented than its predecessor. It dispelled any doubts about Bowie’s ability, and as he was now one of the decade’s ultimate heroes, he was free to do whatever he wanted artistically.
In quick time, Pin Ups, Diamond Dogs, and Young Americans arrived, all featuring different sounds. The latter even boasted the presence of former Beatles leader John Lennon. Then, Bowie broke off from the past and refined his work, fusing popular music and the avant-garde closer than ever before. While Ziggy Stardust had done this in part, it was more explicit on 1976’s Station to Station, an art-rock masterpiece signalling the coming ‘Berlin Trilogy’, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and ultimately, his 2016 swansong, Blackstar.
One song that typifies the groundbreaking nature of Station to Station is ‘TVC 15’. Although it contains a strong whiff of the maddening amount of cocaine the songwriter was ingesting at the time, its droning, madcap nature remains unique, regardless of the fact such repetitive numbers were all the rage at the time, as artists sought to undermine the established structure of songwriting in pop music.
In David Buckley’s Bowie biography, Strange Fascination, Station to Station guitarist Carlos Alomar explained how his British boss wanted to play fast and loose on ‘TVC 15’ and desperately wanted it to be “fucked up”. As it was a success, he revealed that this was the same tact they would later take with ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ from 1979’s Lodger.
He explained: “He didn’t want it organised at all, he really wanted it fucked up like when we did ‘Boys Keep Swinging’, kind of loose and stupid. But then, when we got to the end, he really wanted it to drive home. During those times, the drones of music was starting to get a bit vampy. By that, I mean the music would stay in one place and just keep going. So, towards the end of the song, that’s what he wanted – ‘Oh my TVC 15, oh oh, TVC 15’. So we were just playing the rest of the song just to get to the end!”
It might be kooky and repetitious, but Bowie was onto something with ‘TVC 15’; its spirit can be heard throughout the rest of his oeuvre. It was just one way he changed the complexion of popular music.
