Bowie Covers

The man who said ‘I’ve always had this terrible need to be something more than a human being’ has got his wish, surviving his own death by becoming a legend. Even more than that, Bowie has embodied so many characters anchored in the collective unconscious that he’s managed to condense several mythologies into one. Major Tom, the junkie spaceman, and Ziggy Stardust, the alien with red hair and plucked eyebrows, come to mind first. Then there’s the Soul Man, whose emaciated face smacked of cocaine addiction, and the Thin White Duke, as cold as death and tempted by a Nazi aesthetic. In the cinema we find Thomas Jerome Newton, (another extraterrestrial) in The Man Who Fell to Earth, Major Jack ‘Strafer’ Celliers, a blond who falls for a Japanese soldier in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, John Blaylock, a vampire in love with Deneuve in The Predators, and the very mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

If Bowie seems to be speaking to us from the realm of the dead in his last video for “Lazarus”, perhaps it’s because the whole world has been trying to bring him back to life, seeing as his passing was experienced as a tragic moment of collective loss. David Lynch even resurrected Phillip Jeffries in the third season of Twin Peaks in the form of a gigantic talking teapot. But the risk is that, as we’ve seen happen with the Stones’ tongue, a younger generation will proudly adorn their t-shirts with the lightning bolt of Aladdin Sane without ever having really heard the album. As Bowie himself said, ‘the minute you know you’re on safe ground, you’re dead.’

Beyond these characters, Bowie left chameleon-like, capricious, brilliant music, constantly infused with new phases, much like Picasso’s painting to which he Bowie paid homage (phases like folk at the start, then London glam, blue eyed soul during the American years, his experiments during the Berlin period, 1980s peroxide pop, etc.) While slipping into Ziggy’s skin isn’t always very easy (the flop Velvet Goldmine is proof enough of this), the moments of audacity and intelligence that protect his music from sterile canonisation are most welcome. Isn’t that what his constant optimism wanted after all, David the thief who could smell trends a mile away?

His classics are so versatile that they can support anything from interpretations as piano-dominated jazz pieces (The Bad Plus, Bojan Z, Wocjciech Majewski), to interpretations that take a slightly buffoonish approach to electro (The Moog Cookbook, Atom TM). The melancholy of “Lady Grinning Soul” persists even when it’s given a surf-guitar treatment with mariachi orchestration. Even the slightly embarrassing “Let's Dance” is transformed when it becomes a country cover, thanks to the talent of Kevin Johansen. Enduring this kind of manipulation is a trait of great works with extra soul.

Covers can of course rely on a form of orthodoxy and remain in a more rock and roll vein. Although I find this to be a tedious exercise it does sometimes (though rarely) hit the mark. Nirvana managed it of course, but also Xiu Xiu who, accompanied by the leader of the Swans Michael Gira, reveals hidden suffering in a smooth yet raucous version of “Under Pressure”. Finally, it is possible to create a refined, even abstract version of a classic like “Heroes”, a tour de force accomplished by the Delta Saxophone Quartet.