Sometimes that meant that central riffs or progressions might have actually been the work of Mick Ronson (probably deserved a co-write credit or 2).īut with the relative failure of that album and the defection of Visconti to work full time with the more succcessful T. Around the time of Man Who Sold the World he tried to take a more band approach to his songwriting and let jams develop into things before he finished them off. He would write complete songs in sort of a folky way and then record them. In his earliest days it wasn't like that.
But Bowie would actually start with nothing and record it then add lyrics and melody later. It's probably true that most songwriters start with the music and then come up with words. Then they would record things and he would build songs around that. He'd come in with maybe one idea or 2 but never finished songs. If anyone wants to comment on the later period, go for it.Ĭlick to expand.Tony Visconti claims that he did this for nearly every album he recorded with Bowie. It's not 'Beatlesque': it's just the chorus of 'Changes' with an Out-Of-Key turnaround, which makes it even more Bowie. Check out the chorus of 'Sowing The Seeds Of Love' sometime. The main problem with this kind of thing is, he inspired most of the 80's, so any fakery has been well-mined.
I just removed one from an album tracklist because I figured, as fun as it was to write, it was more him than me. Or (Fm7 / F Bass) as an indi- (Ebmaj7 / Eb bass) cation (Dm-5 / D bass) change the dedi- (Cm / C Bass) cation from (Bb11 / Bb bass) revolution.Ĭombine those hallmarks and it's easy to write fake early Bowie songs this way. Let's look at 'My October Symphony' again. You'll hear the same bass descent happening under the chorus of 'Changes' and 'Oh! You Pretty Things', giving away the fact they were most likely composed on piano. It's basically the sound of 'Hunky Dory'. (F / F bass) It's a (F / E bass) god awful small af- (Cm / Eb bass) fair to the (D / D bass) girl with the mousy hair. If you turn that progression from Major to minor, you have both 'Life On Mars?' and 'My Way'. The classic stepwise descent is 'Chim-Chimney' song from Mary Poppins - the bass steps down with each chord. The bass descends stepwise under the chord progression in a smooth line, so if you sound a F chord followed by a C you'd play a F, then an E on the bass, and keep going down. It was a favourite of mid-period Beatles McCartney and Cole Porter. Incidentally, that song also uses the third early Bowie hallmark. Take for example, the Pet Shop Boys song 'My October Symphony.' You'll see it turn up frequently in the writing of what I think of as Bowie's children: 80's English pop stars. (F Minor) It's the freakiest (Cm7) show.Ĭygnet Committee: (G Major) Sadly as (G Minor) I tie my shoes. Life On Mars: look at those cavemen (F Major) go. Space Oddity: You've really made the (F Major) Grade, and the (F Minor) Papers want to (C) know. With Bowie, you get transitions like this: It's rare to hear this transition in current music. If Bowie doesn't do it immediately, he might sound a minor version of the chord later in the verse, such as using both C and Cm in the verses of 'Quicksand'.
This turns up frequently in mid-period beatles songs, where you sound a major version of the chord, the immediately follow it with the minor version eg. (E) The clouds are for ya (Bb) Nothing stands in your way when you're a (D) boy. 'Boys Keep Swinging' is in D major, yet throws in two bizarre out of key chords, the E and Bb chords. Oh (C) no, not (F) me, I (Bbm) never lost control. So what's that Bbm doing in the chorus, flattening the D? (C) This is ground control to Major (E7) Tom. This E7 pulls towards A Major, but he instead follows it with an F Major. So you have 'Space Oddity' in the Key of C, and then he throws in a E7 chord out of nowhere. He grasped their use of Out-Of-Key chords, (chords you traditionally wouldn't find used within that home key), but he ignores the natural pull of chords - where they would normally resolve in traditional composing. Click to expand.I think Bowie is a combination of having a solid grounding in what you're supposed to do, and getting it wrong at the same time.Ī lot of his earlier writing strikes me as Beatle-based but here's three 'early style' hallmarks.
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