Time flies when you're having fun... Art Decade: 1969-1979

Okay no more gifs after this, I promise! But this one was just so appropriate to this post.

Well. Here am I, six months and 13 studio albums deep into The Bowie Project, and suddenly I'm feeling a bit like I need to stop and smell the roses. I'm experiencing that mindfucking feeling that time seems to move at two different speeds simultaneously -- the speed of the present moment (will this week ever end?), and the speed of life (holy shit, I'm 38 years old?!). And I'm asking myself how have I gotten to the halfway point of this project already?

To quote Ferris Bueller (and I will, because I was a kid in the 80's), "life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it". Before I dive head first into the 1980's according to David Bowie, I feel that I should recognize some of the many other contributions that he made to the 1970's. I hate to gloss over them, but that is exactly what is about to happen.

Mott the Hoople

What the Whoople? Oh please tell me I'm the first person to come up with that. I'm not even going to google it to see if someone said it before me. I'm claiming it. Anyway, without going into too much history because you have access to Wikipedia too, Mott the Hoople was a British glam rock band from the 70's whom Bowie supported by trying to revive their dying career by writing a song for them to record. In 1972, All the Young Dudes happened, and it was a hit, and now it's like the only thing Mott the Hoople is known for. Hey, dudes! Where are ya?! Heh heh, nice one, Bowie.

Iggy Pop

I'm not gonna lie, Iggy Pop kind of frightens me. Until now, the only Iggy Pop song I thought I was familiar with was Lust for Life - probably because it had a resurgence in 1996 when it was featured in the film Trainspotting. Sigh, I know... lame, right? And I got into Queen as a result of Wayne's World, I admit it. But is that so wrong? I'm pretty sure hipsters as we know them today were birthed by Bohemian Rhapsody's presence in that film... "I liked that song before it was in Wayne's World" and all of that. But at least I'm not a hipster! Anyway I digress. It turns out I had no idea that not only do I know some of Iggy Pop's other songs, but David Bowie actually worked with him on a couple of albums in 1977: The Idiot, and oh would you look at that, Lust for Life.

(Well this is familiar! Sister Midnight is Red Money from Lodger's fraternal twin!)

(Aha! We haven't gotten to the 80's just yet, but we know another version this song.)

Lou Reed

Andy Warhol, who was a recurring character in Bowie's life, managed a band in the 60's and early 70's called the Velvet Underground, of which Lou Reed was a member. Bowie apparently got into the Warholian scene and met Lou Reed during that time. When Reed went solo, Bowie produced his 1972 album Transformer, which spawned the hit Walk on the Wild Side, which of course I already knew when Marky Mark sampled it for his own take on that song. So there.

Cracked Actor

Shot in 1974 and aired on BBC television 1975, Bowie was the subject of Alan Yentob's documentary Cracked Actor. The film depicts him during an extremely hectic time - during the American Diamond Dogs concert tour and in the midst of writing and recording the album Young Americans, right before he was about to begin filming The Man Who Fell To Earth.

Cracked Actor is uncomfortable to watch... at least for me, it was. Immediately you get this horrid, sinking feeling when you see that Bowie was clearly 100% NOT OKAY during that time, and you kind of want to hug him, except you'd be worried about breaking him. While I suppose watching the doc in '75 might have caused one to feel rather alarmed at the state of him, at least today we have the relief of knowing that Bowie emerges from that period much healthier, with new passion and creativity, and goes on to make some of most amazing music and eventually marry a supermodel. Being armed with that knowledge definitely helps to get through the more sad and wince-inducing moments of the film.

Live Albums: David Live and Stage

Lodger is Bowie's 13th studio album, but in the 70's he also released a couple of live albums. Admittedly, I've skipped listening to these for the time being, though I do intend to go back to them. David Live was recorded during the American Diamond Dogs tour (see Cracked Actor, above). It spawned the single Knock on Wood, a cover of the Eddie Floyd hit from 1966.

 Stage was recorded in 1978 during the Isolar II tour, featuring performances of songs from Station to Station, Low, and "Heroes".  The live version of Breaking Glass from Low was released as a single.

Just a Gigolo

1976 marked Bowie's first feature film role, Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell To Earth. He took to the silver screen again in 1978 with Just a Gigolo, a film about a Prussian soldier who returns to Berlin after World War I but can't find work, so he goes to work in a brothel. Yeah. Reviews of the film are horrible and I've decided to skip it, probably forever. My curiosity is outweighed by my desire to not see a shitty film starring someone I admire.

(I chose this clip at random and watched a little over the first half of it, until the part where he drops the giant beer bottle costume down the stairs. I don't know what happens after that, and I'm fine with that, lol.)

So shall we call it a decade, then? I'm sure I've missed some of Bowie's other contributions to the 70's, and I've enjoyed every single everloving moment of this journey over the past six months, but I'm starting to get a bit antsy to get out of the 70's and get the 80's and the second half of this project underway. So without further adieu, I shall take a page from the book of Bowie and give the 70's a stiff middle finger and look back no longer. Onward to 1980!

UPDATE: I watched Just a Gigolo *hangs head in shame*. I wrote about it here. You'll need to scroll down after The Man Who Fell to Earth (or read that one, too) to find it.