The patriotic frenzy around Brexit and the death of Elizabeth Windsor offers an opportunity to reappraise Blake’s song Jerusalem and the nationalistic impulse so many find in it. Jason Whittaker’s new book on Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ is reviewed.
There's a great scene in Roegs The Man Who Fell to Earth where Bowie's alien Thomas Jerome Newton is taken to a church by his girlfriend Mary Lou. The pastor acknowledging Newton's presence in the congregation, as an English guest, has handed out hymn sheets of Jerusalem so the congregation can sing along to the 'old English Hymn'. Newton being an alien can't sing, so we are treated to the humorous vision of Thin White Duke era Bowie mumbling and struggling to sing. This is of course around the time Bowie allegedly gave a nazi salute from the back of an open top Mercedes. It's always struck me as such a simplistic accusation, especially given that it appears obvious to me that Bowie surely modelled The Thin White Duke on the former King Edward 7th, who was too much of an embarassment and far too much of an an enthusiastic Nazi Sympathiser that he was arguably forced abdicate over a supposed matrimonial misdemeanour and was demoted to being The Duke of Windsor.
Clearly Bowie had more than a passing interest in fascism and fascist leaders, and it seems to me more likely that he was interested in exploring the subject and it's parallels within the rock music industry than actually advocating Right Wing politics, yet no one at the time seemed to notice, or bother to notice. Neither did/do they notice that the famous lightning flash painted across Aladdin Sane's visage some three years earlier is essentially the same lightening flash that was the symbol of Oswald Mosely's British Union of Fascists / Black Shirts. I have long suspected that Bowie was using the imagery in an ironic way. Afterall Ziggy was clearly an ironic swipe at the inherent fascism lurking just under the surface of the idea of the rock star and of course Irony and sarcasm are very English traits.
Bowie wasn't the only one in the rock music field skirting around the imagery of fascism, a year before his old Mercury label mate Peter Hammill and his band Van der Graaf Generator had a gatefold image from the 1972 album Pawn Hearts that depicted the band dressed in matching 'uniforms' of blackshirts and white ties giving what is usually taken to be the nazi salute although to my art historical eyes the image owes more than a nod to the painting The Oath of The Horatii by Jaques Louis David. Given that Hammill wrote lyrics for this album like "there's other ways than screaming in the mob, that make us merely cogs of hatred" I don't think for one moment he was suggesting fascism was anything other than an obscenity. And I don't think Bowie did either.
I agree about VdGG, but not about Bowie. The latter has been on my mind recently, and I want to try and write about Bowie and fascism, or rather, Bowie and violence, in the coming weeks. I think Bowie was much more implicated in violence at this early stage of his career, from Hunky-Dory to Ziggy and Aladdin Sane. In this, he was drawing on Warhol and the Velvet Underground, but giving it a very British twist. I think he approved of fascism in a very uninformed way, coloured by all the nonsense at the time about Vril, Nazis at the north Pole, and so on. As always, his thinking was very confused, but I wouldn’t put it down to anti-fascist irony, the invested much more into it, as he did with magic. One reason the story is not much told, is that later on his main contribution was seen as his gender-bending and outrageous fashion sense. The official histories then turn him into a glam/glamorous icon. As I say, I hope to write about this soon so I don’t want to say much more here as it is still early days for my thinking about it. I gave up on Bowie several decades ago, but after his death started playing again the stuff I loved when I was young (in the Navy I was known, and I’m still known to my former comrades there, as ‘Ziggy’) and remembering just how galvanising and great it was, so I got to thinking why I, a teenage wannabe football hooligan, inner city boot boy, should have fallen in love with Ziggy-era Bowie. It is certainly something to do with the way that he tried to represent an alternative to the collapsing Social Democratic order (“we never got it off on that revolution stuff / what a drag”) - hence the early stylings of Ziggy based on A Clockwork Orange, and opening the early Ziggy gigs with Beethoven’s Ninth, as per the film.
As I say, my interest in this started as a sort of personal archaeology, but then it occurred to me that the reason I had to work this out was because of the way that image was later recalibrated to become a kind of analog of disco flash, and proto-New Romanticism. This all really started to occur to me when I watched the first episode of that Danny Boyle TV biography of the Sex Pistols, which opens with what is supposed to be a scene of grim, post-industrial London in the 70s, and Bowie‘s music is playing. The note that struck with me seemed very real and pertinent. Everyone knows that Bowie and Glam were an influence on the Sex Pistols and punk, but the nature of this influence, I think, has been misunderstood and somewhat sanitised.
My problem with writing about this at the moment is that I’m not sure I have much more to say than what I have said in this comment, but we shall see!!
I agree about VdGG, but not about Bowie. The latter has been on my mind recently, and I want to try and write about Bowie and fascism, or rather, Bowie and violence, in the coming weeks. I think Bowie was much more implicated in violence at this early stage of his career, from hunky-dory to Ziggy and Aladdin Sane. In this, he was drawing on Warhol and the velvet underground, but giving it a very British twist. I think he approved of fascism in a very uninformed way, coloured by all the nonsense at the time about Vril, Nazis at the north Pole, and so on. As always, his thinking was very confused, but I wouldn’t put it down to anti-fascist irony, the invested much more into it, as he did with magic. One reason the story is not much told, is that later on his main contribution was seen as his gender-bending and outrageous fashion sense. The official histories then turn him into a glam/glamorous icon. As I say, I hope to Wright about this very soon so I don’t want to say much more here as it is still early days for my thinking about it. I saw her gave up on Bowie several decades ago, but after his death started playing against the stuff I loved when I was young (in the Navy I was known, and I’m still known to my former comrades there, as ‘Ziggy’) and remembering just how galvanising and great it was, so I got to thinking why I, a wannabe football hooligan, inner city boot boy, should have fallen in love with Ziggy-era Bowie. It is certainly something to do with the way that he tried to represent an alternative to the collapsing Social Democratic order (“we never got it off on that revolution stuff / what a drag”) - hence the early stylings of Ziggy based on A Clockwork Orange, and opening the early Ziggy gigs with Beethoven’s ninth, as per the film.
As I say, my interest in this started as a sort of personal archaeology, but then it occurred to me that the reason I had to work this out was because of the way that image was later recalibrated to become a kind of analog of disco flash, and proto-New Romanticism. This all really started to occur to me when I watched the first episode of that Danny Boyle TV biography of the Sex Pistols, which opens with what is supposed to be a scene of grim, post-industrial London in the 70s, and Bowie‘s music is playing. The note that struck with me seemed very real and pertinent. Everyone knows that Bowie and Glam were an influence on the Sex Pistols and punk, but the nature of this influence, I think, has been misunderstood and somewhat sanitised.
My problem with writing about this at the moment is that I’m not sure I have much more to say than what I have said in this comment, but we shall see!
Interesting. I never factored in the Clockwork Orange angle at all. I didn't realise he'd played the ninth at Ziggy shows either. I'd be intigued to hear more so please do ponder and write. Although it's off on another tangent, for me the long implied Hammill /Bowie nexus is also of interest - parts of Blackstar sounds very like H to He era VdGG to me.
There's a great scene in Roegs The Man Who Fell to Earth where Bowie's alien Thomas Jerome Newton is taken to a church by his girlfriend Mary Lou. The pastor acknowledging Newton's presence in the congregation, as an English guest, has handed out hymn sheets of Jerusalem so the congregation can sing along to the 'old English Hymn'. Newton being an alien can't sing, so we are treated to the humorous vision of Thin White Duke era Bowie mumbling and struggling to sing. This is of course around the time Bowie allegedly gave a nazi salute from the back of an open top Mercedes. It's always struck me as such a simplistic accusation, especially given that it appears obvious to me that Bowie surely modelled The Thin White Duke on the former King Edward 7th, who was too much of an embarassment and far too much of an an enthusiastic Nazi Sympathiser that he was arguably forced abdicate over a supposed matrimonial misdemeanour and was demoted to being The Duke of Windsor.
Clearly Bowie had more than a passing interest in fascism and fascist leaders, and it seems to me more likely that he was interested in exploring the subject and it's parallels within the rock music industry than actually advocating Right Wing politics, yet no one at the time seemed to notice, or bother to notice. Neither did/do they notice that the famous lightning flash painted across Aladdin Sane's visage some three years earlier is essentially the same lightening flash that was the symbol of Oswald Mosely's British Union of Fascists / Black Shirts. I have long suspected that Bowie was using the imagery in an ironic way. Afterall Ziggy was clearly an ironic swipe at the inherent fascism lurking just under the surface of the idea of the rock star and of course Irony and sarcasm are very English traits.
Bowie wasn't the only one in the rock music field skirting around the imagery of fascism, a year before his old Mercury label mate Peter Hammill and his band Van der Graaf Generator had a gatefold image from the 1972 album Pawn Hearts that depicted the band dressed in matching 'uniforms' of blackshirts and white ties giving what is usually taken to be the nazi salute although to my art historical eyes the image owes more than a nod to the painting The Oath of The Horatii by Jaques Louis David. Given that Hammill wrote lyrics for this album like "there's other ways than screaming in the mob, that make us merely cogs of hatred" I don't think for one moment he was suggesting fascism was anything other than an obscenity. And I don't think Bowie did either.
I agree about VdGG, but not about Bowie. The latter has been on my mind recently, and I want to try and write about Bowie and fascism, or rather, Bowie and violence, in the coming weeks. I think Bowie was much more implicated in violence at this early stage of his career, from Hunky-Dory to Ziggy and Aladdin Sane. In this, he was drawing on Warhol and the Velvet Underground, but giving it a very British twist. I think he approved of fascism in a very uninformed way, coloured by all the nonsense at the time about Vril, Nazis at the north Pole, and so on. As always, his thinking was very confused, but I wouldn’t put it down to anti-fascist irony, the invested much more into it, as he did with magic. One reason the story is not much told, is that later on his main contribution was seen as his gender-bending and outrageous fashion sense. The official histories then turn him into a glam/glamorous icon. As I say, I hope to write about this soon so I don’t want to say much more here as it is still early days for my thinking about it. I gave up on Bowie several decades ago, but after his death started playing again the stuff I loved when I was young (in the Navy I was known, and I’m still known to my former comrades there, as ‘Ziggy’) and remembering just how galvanising and great it was, so I got to thinking why I, a teenage wannabe football hooligan, inner city boot boy, should have fallen in love with Ziggy-era Bowie. It is certainly something to do with the way that he tried to represent an alternative to the collapsing Social Democratic order (“we never got it off on that revolution stuff / what a drag”) - hence the early stylings of Ziggy based on A Clockwork Orange, and opening the early Ziggy gigs with Beethoven’s Ninth, as per the film.
As I say, my interest in this started as a sort of personal archaeology, but then it occurred to me that the reason I had to work this out was because of the way that image was later recalibrated to become a kind of analog of disco flash, and proto-New Romanticism. This all really started to occur to me when I watched the first episode of that Danny Boyle TV biography of the Sex Pistols, which opens with what is supposed to be a scene of grim, post-industrial London in the 70s, and Bowie‘s music is playing. The note that struck with me seemed very real and pertinent. Everyone knows that Bowie and Glam were an influence on the Sex Pistols and punk, but the nature of this influence, I think, has been misunderstood and somewhat sanitised.
My problem with writing about this at the moment is that I’m not sure I have much more to say than what I have said in this comment, but we shall see!!
I agree about VdGG, but not about Bowie. The latter has been on my mind recently, and I want to try and write about Bowie and fascism, or rather, Bowie and violence, in the coming weeks. I think Bowie was much more implicated in violence at this early stage of his career, from hunky-dory to Ziggy and Aladdin Sane. In this, he was drawing on Warhol and the velvet underground, but giving it a very British twist. I think he approved of fascism in a very uninformed way, coloured by all the nonsense at the time about Vril, Nazis at the north Pole, and so on. As always, his thinking was very confused, but I wouldn’t put it down to anti-fascist irony, the invested much more into it, as he did with magic. One reason the story is not much told, is that later on his main contribution was seen as his gender-bending and outrageous fashion sense. The official histories then turn him into a glam/glamorous icon. As I say, I hope to Wright about this very soon so I don’t want to say much more here as it is still early days for my thinking about it. I saw her gave up on Bowie several decades ago, but after his death started playing against the stuff I loved when I was young (in the Navy I was known, and I’m still known to my former comrades there, as ‘Ziggy’) and remembering just how galvanising and great it was, so I got to thinking why I, a wannabe football hooligan, inner city boot boy, should have fallen in love with Ziggy-era Bowie. It is certainly something to do with the way that he tried to represent an alternative to the collapsing Social Democratic order (“we never got it off on that revolution stuff / what a drag”) - hence the early stylings of Ziggy based on A Clockwork Orange, and opening the early Ziggy gigs with Beethoven’s ninth, as per the film.
As I say, my interest in this started as a sort of personal archaeology, but then it occurred to me that the reason I had to work this out was because of the way that image was later recalibrated to become a kind of analog of disco flash, and proto-New Romanticism. This all really started to occur to me when I watched the first episode of that Danny Boyle TV biography of the Sex Pistols, which opens with what is supposed to be a scene of grim, post-industrial London in the 70s, and Bowie‘s music is playing. The note that struck with me seemed very real and pertinent. Everyone knows that Bowie and Glam were an influence on the Sex Pistols and punk, but the nature of this influence, I think, has been misunderstood and somewhat sanitised.
My problem with writing about this at the moment is that I’m not sure I have much more to say than what I have said in this comment, but we shall see!
Interesting. I never factored in the Clockwork Orange angle at all. I didn't realise he'd played the ninth at Ziggy shows either. I'd be intigued to hear more so please do ponder and write. Although it's off on another tangent, for me the long implied Hammill /Bowie nexus is also of interest - parts of Blackstar sounds very like H to He era VdGG to me.