Lyrically Speaking: What was David Bowie’s ‘The Jean Genie’ all about?
David Bowie‘s ‘The Jean Genie’ was released in 1972, acting as the lead single from his revered sixth studio album Aladdin Sane. Describing the track as “a smorgasbord of imagined Americana,” the song came to fruition via a jam on Bowie’s tour bus with Mick Ronson coming up with the iconic riff. Bowie finished recording the track in New York whilst spending time with Andy Warhol associate Cyrinda Foxe, stating, “I wrote it for her amusement in her apartment. Sexy girl.”
Referring to the track as his “first New York song”, it has since become one of Bowie’s most well-known. However, the origins of the mysterious figure described within the lyrics are lesser known. Bowie was influenced by multiple people, including Foxe and punk icon Iggy Pop, using “a clumsy pun upon [French writer] Jean Genet” to create the title.
In the first verse, Bowie introduces us to “a small Jean Genie” who “snuck off to the city,” referring to what the musician called an “Iggy-type persona.” The following lines, “Strung out on lasers and slash back blazers”, hints at The Stooges’ frontman’s crazy on-stage antics, such as rolling on broken glass and cutting himself. “Talking ’bout Monroe” cements us in a distinctly American atmosphere and most likely refers to Foxe, whose style was influenced by Marilyn Monroe.
In the chorus, Bowie alludes to Genet and Pop, blending them into one mythical figure you could expect to find in the New York underground scene. The lines “lives on his back” and “loves chimney stacks” allude to Genet, known for being homosexual. After the writer was discharged from the French Foreign Legion due to engaging in sexual acts with men, Genet took up prostitution and thievery. “Chimney stacks” is most likely Bowie’s attempt at creating subtle phallic imagery. The following two lines are unmistakably about Pop as they describe more of his on-stage habits, “he’s outrageous, he screams, and he bawls.”
The Pop allusions continue into the second verse, where Bowie describes Jean Genie as someone who “sits like a man, but he smiles like a reptile.” This is a reference to Pop’s early band pre-Stooges, The Iguanas, which helped to launch him into a musical career. “She loves him, she loves him, but just for a short while”, harks back to Foxe, who had a short relationship with Bowie in New York. Foxe starred in the music video for ‘The Jean Genie’. Bowie wanted the video to include “Ziggy as a kind of Hollywood street-rat” with a “consort of the Marilyn brand” by his side. The musician also alludes to English occultist Aleister Crowley in the lines “keeps all your dead hair for making up underwear”, which is a reference to Satanic spells – suggesting that Jean Genie is a somewhat controversial and bold character.
‘The Jean Genie’ encapsulates the type of myth-like figures embodied by musicians such as Iggy Pop, who had no trouble indulging in sex, drugs (“walking on Snow White”) and rock and roll in the 1970s. Jean Genie is a little naive (“Poor little Greenie”) and open to anything (“He’s so simple-minded”). In a 2000 interview, Bowie revealed that Jean Genie is an “Iggy-type character…a white-trash, kind of trailer-park kid thing—the closet intellectual who wouldn’t want the world to know that he reads.”
A character who “loves to be loved”, he sums up a bygone era that Bowie witnessed firsthand. Visiting New York in the early 1970s, Bowie met the likes of Pop and other reckless musicians, as well as Warhol’s associates, who freely experimented with their identities. The musician took inspiration from the memorable characters he met and crafted the legendary track.
