The 1973 song that “scared the living ones” out of David Bowie
While David Bowie often appeared to be fearless in his approach to creating music, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he was without fears in his life altogether.
While many people might have certain specific phobias relating to superstitions or generally terrifying experiences, such as heights, spiders, or not walking underneath a ladder for the fear that it will bring bad luck, developing a phobia as a result of hearing a piece of music is considerably more unusual, although not precisely unheard of.
It isn’t a case of melophobia, which is an outright fear of music itself, or even an instance of misophonia where a fight or flight response is triggered through sound, but Bowie managed to develop a fear that is ostensibly unrelated to music as a result of hearing the song ‘It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City’ by Bruce Springsteen, taken from his 1973 debut, Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ.
Terrified by one particular portion of the song’s lyrics, Bowie proclaimed during a guest DJ slot on BBC Radio 1 in 1979 that after hearing the song for the first time, he became so scared to use any form of metropolitan underground rail service.
“After I heard this track, I never rode the subway again,” Bowie unusually proclaimed, as though it were an ordinary reaction to have to the song. “That really scared the living ones out of me.”
Now, ‘It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City’ is hardly a menacing or threatening song, and the primary theme of it is to do with Springsteen’s personal aspirations of hitting the big time with his band despite coming from humble beginnings. However, while going into the finer details of what it’s like to hail from Asbury Park, Springsteen ventures below the surface into the city’s network of tunnels and delivers a sequence of lines that were ultimately the catalyst for Bowie’s fear.
Springsteen’s description of the subway is so vivid that it evokes a strong sensory response, with all of its screeching sounds, repugnant odours and eyesores clearly making an impression on Bowie.
There are a number of lines that describe the unpleasant environment, but the ones that may have had the most visceral effect, are: “As the tracks clack out the rhythm their eyes fixed straight ahead / They ride the line of balance and hold on by just a thread / But it’s too hot in these tunnels you can get hit up by the heat / You get up to get out at your next stop but they push you back down in your seat.”
It’s a fine early example of Springsteen’s storytelling qualities, something he’d only get better at as time went on, and it’s evident from Bowie’s reaction and eventual cover of the song that he was hugely appreciative of it as a work of art. However, was Bowie really afraid of trains? Considering that Station to Station came out only two years later, and the title track is very much about using public transport, he must have gotten over his fear pretty quickly.
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