The 1952 song that stayed with David Bowie forever: “I loved it”
David Bowie didn’t ever feel comfortable being in one place for too long.
Throughout his career, it was almost as if he was in a race with himself to see what he could do on every single record and by the time that everyone else had caught up to him, he was already starting to move on to whatever new thrill struck his fancy every single time he played. There was a lot to explore other than traditional rock and roll, but ‘The Starman’ knew that he wouldn’t have been able to get there without having some kind of foundation behind him.
That said, Bowie will always be remembered for having certain pieces of his career before anything else. Everyone who was around in the 1970s will remember how omnipresent Ziggy Stardust was when he first landed on Earth, and even though Bowie would go miles away from his creation on Let’s Dance, there’s no way to discount the theatricality that he brought to the stage whenever he performed. He wanted the chance to turn rock and roll into a theatre show, but his eye for visuals was practically made for MTV.
Whereas some artists didn’t really have the benefit of music videos back in the day, Bowie was the one who was on the cutting edge of the medium before the TV station even started. He wanted the chance to have his audience see him from a few different angles, and when he did eventually adapt to proper music videos, it’s no surprise that he was among the most interesting. It would get entertainingly bad when collaborating with Mick Jagger, but ‘Ashes to Ashes’ is still one of the best visual companions that he ever made for his music.
Because compared to the massive stage show, this video is like looking into another world for a few seconds. Bowie was always looking to make his music sound otherworldly, but this was the first time that people were questioning whether he was legitimately an alien. No one could think of this kind of stuff, but a lot of the fantastical elements had already come from Bowie diving into the pages of fairy tales.
Ziggy already feels like a rock and roll fable about a rock and roll saviour that sacrifices himself for the good of the world, but Bowie had already been searching for something extravagant ever since watching the movie Hans Christian Anderson. The film about the famous storyteller had been around for over a decade when he started making music, but the song ‘Inchworm’ was what really opened Bowie’s eyes back in the day.
It wasn’t meant to be the most extravagant song of all time, but its strange twists and turns left a huge impression on Bowie when he began writing, saying, “I loved it as a kid and it’s stayed with me forever. I keep going back to it. You wouldn’t believe the amount of my songs that have sort of spun off that one song. Not that you’d really recognize it. Something like ‘Ashes to Ashes’ wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t have been for ‘Inchworm.’ There’s a child’s nursery rhyme element in it, and there’s something so sad and mournful and poignant about it.”
Granted, there are pieces of the song that we also have to thank for giving us Bowie’s first official album as well. His proper debut doesn’t really hold a good place in everyone’s heart, but the strange vaudeville-style tales that he weaves throughout the record is charming enough for someone that no one knew would become one of the biggest names in the world.
In fact, ‘Inchworm’ is probably one of the best places that Bowie could have started if he wanted a calling in the arts. It wasn’t meant to be a popular song by any means, but it did teach Bowie one important lesson about what rock and roll was supposed to be. He was never meant to follow the rules, and as long as he had that song as his guide, he could take his music in whatever style he wanted to.
