"Five Years," which my friend Ken Kurson once described as the kickoff song to one of the most important albums of our time (on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of Worth magazine), has probably become my favorite track on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, but I still get pulled up short by one of the lines:
A girl my age went off her head
Hit some tiny children
If the black hadn't of pulled her off
I think she would have killed them
I guess people really talked like that, but it's jarring to hear a person defined solely by skin color - the child-saving hero doesn't even get the dignity of a gender. The color is the noun.
So that's in 1972. Then, in 1975, Bowie let loose with this:
Sit on your hands on a bus of survivors
Blushing at all the Afro-Sheeners
So now they've graduated from being identified by their skin color to being identified by their hair-care products. I suppose that's progress.
I assume Nile Rodgers slapped some sense into Bowie around the time he was producing Let's Dance, toward the end of 1982. Since 1992, he's been married - apparently happily - to Somali supermodel Iman. (She had previously been married to onetime Seattle SuperSonics star Spencer Haywood.)
That's why I was careful to title this post in the past tense. I love Bowie's music, and I hate to make accusations about people, but those lyrics really punch me in the face every time I hear them.
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And then there's "Running Gun Blues," off the "The Man Who Sold The World" album, with its lines about, "I'll break the gooks / I'll crack their heads."
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know it's some sort of Vietnam commentary; it still doesn't cut it.
The line about Afro-Sheeners never bothered me because, in several decades of hearing the song, I'd never been able to figure it out.
I always thought it was "apple stealers"!
ReplyDeleteusing "black" as a noun was probably Bowie trying to sound American. "Five Years" is notable for self-consciously American vernacular, like "news guy" and "cop." According to Nicholas Pegg's "The Complete David Bowie," "The adoption of the American abbreviation 'TV' (rather than 'telly') allows a submerged pun on 'transvestite' to accompany the song's other outsiders: 'the black,' 'the priest,' and 'the queer.'"
On the first one, "If the black hadn't of pulled her off," I always thought he was referring to a black maria as in a police van. I dunno.
ReplyDeleteI really don't think stating a colour is racism, If he were to say stuff along the lines of 'Black/White/Olive men shouldn't have rights or they should all be killed'. Then yes, I would agree. This song, along with many of his others was written in the 70's, it was released in 1972 (Refering to 'Five Years'. Not many people would like to admit it but the 70's society was fairly racist considering racism had just been called upon within the 60's because of the whole Human rights thing, so many people were still fairly racist because it was 'the norm' at that paticular time, do not forget he was born in 1947 and he had obviosly grown up during the 50's and 60's..back then it wasn't 'the norm' to see a 'black' walking in the street, so whether people like to admit it,
ReplyDeleteYeah, I gotta say the Five Years line isn't racist at all considering the time it was written in.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's "hadn't've", like "hadn't have". You can't use "of" in that context, it doesn't make any sense.
I dunno. He married an African Woman
ReplyDeleteIs making shanty eyes gesture on the China Girl video racist? I would argue that yes it is.
ReplyDeleteI thought he was referring to the police, I am sure I've heard the force referred to as "the black"
ReplyDeleteOf course, he is. He has always been. He married a black but this doesn't change him from not being a racist. Nobody can ever say what he is at this point or were during 80s/90s or the reason got married without knowing him personally, media would never reveal.
ReplyDeleteHahahaha you're all a bunch of pussies
ReplyDelete"So now they've graduated from being"
ReplyDeleteAre you not separating race using the word "They"
well said
ReplyDeleteFunny how selectively sensitive people can be. Bet no-one here has a problem with comments like the South African vice-president talking about the money "the WHITES stole". Guess it's ok for one race to be defined by their colour and branded a race of thieves. Provided that race is white of course.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAlso the things he treasures about his mother are "Your face, your race"... It always jars for me.
ReplyDeleteTo suggest that Mr Jones is in any way racist seems a ridiculous notion. Suggest anyone with such concerns research, the man, the artist.
ReplyDeleteCommonly known as black bastards, the police in Northern Ireland
ReplyDeletehttps://books.google.ca/books?id=KrDYBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT75&lpg=PT75&dq=slang+police+black+bastards&source=bl&ots=zUM92SqrtZ&sig=SGHRmhtW2Zjeni8-s97UFdK-lHE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiClrOwi-rZAhUBXWMKHUdXBgYQ6AEIQDAC#v=onepage&q=slang%20police%20black%20bastards&f=false
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=black%20bastards
https://www.boards.ie/b/thread/2056343850
Signed SDT
If you're concerned about whether David Bowie was a racist why don't you ask some of the many people of African decent that worked with him over the years? It seems everyone has Twitter these days, so this wouldn't be a daunting task. Don't base your opinion on 2 words from a song he wrote 40 years ago, you may not get the context.
ReplyDeleteBlack in this lyric surely refers to Moroccan Black hashish - a downer which pulls you off a speed induced high. Its drug talk.
ReplyDeleteTo conclude: now we know Bowie was apparently a racist AND a masochist, as I haven't seen many men surrounding themselves whole their lives with colored people (I guess writing colored was also racist, but I'll take the risk).
ReplyDeleteWhat about the song young American " blacks got respect"?
ReplyDeleteI just heard the lyric from 5 years, and searched for it, so here I am.
ReplyDeleteIt does really stand out as out of sync in 2020, I guess we need to think of it the context of 1972, don't we. I think Bowie wasn't prescient enough to understand how this lyric would sound 50 years in the future. I don't think I've ever run across anybody with that skill.
Does raise questions in my mind about how we judge artists, looking for insight and behavior from them that is difficult to achieve, if even possible. We are all fallible. Definitely worth thinking about, but in the end, David Bowie is who he is ... the product of his time and upbringing. I can live with that and learn from it.
The song is about several impressions of America and 'The Amercan Dream' from an observerational position. It is cynical in nature as it critiques, gender, culture, racism, misogyny, and other sociological aspects of society in often gilded in the polite, and slick modernity of the 1970s culture. So he speaks of these things in a way that calls out what he sees as hyprocrisy and how all of those things obfuscate that desire to reach that idyllic picture perfect image. "
ReplyDeleteThey pulled in just behind the bridge
He lays her down, he frowns
"Gee, my life's a funny thing, am I still too young?"
He kissed her then and there
She took his ring, took his babies
It took him minutes, took her nowhere
Heaven knows, she'd have taken anything, but
She wants a young American
(Young American, young American, she wants the young American)
(All right)
But she wants the young American
Scanning life through the picture window
She finds the slinky vagabond
He coughs as he passes her Ford Mustang
But Heaven forbid, she'll take anything
But the freak, and his type, all for nothing
Misses a step and cuts his hand, but
Showing nothing, he swoops like a song
She cries, "Where have all Papa's heroes gone?"
She wants a young American
(Young American, young American, she wants the young American)
(All right)
Well she wants the young American
All the way from Washington
Her bread-winner begs off the bathroom floor
"We live for just these twenty years
Do we have to die for the fifty more?"
He wants the young American
(Young American, young American, he wants the young American)
(All right) all right
Well he wants the young American
Do you remember, your President Nixon?
Do you remember, the bills you have to pay?
Or even yesterday?
Have you been the un-American?
Just you and your idol sing falsetto
'Bout leather, leather everywhere, and
Not a myth left from the ghetto
Well, well, well, would you carry a razor
In case, just in case of depression?
Sit on your hands on a bus of survivors
Blushing at all the Afro-Sheeners
Ain't that close to love?
Well, ain't that poster love?
Well, it ain't that Barbie doll
Her heart's have been broken just like you and.."
It also speaks to what today would be referred to as cultural appropriation, as it highlights the cherry picking of art forms of those who created the form, by those who perhaps were attracted by the beauty of the art forms, but only in parts, and without acknowledgement of how and why they were created. He speaks about the forming of the relationship in the microcosm of the couple and te macrocosm of cultural exchanges and interactions.
Likewise, ain't there a woman I can sock on the jaw' harkens to how the both the movement towards the Women's rights existed alongside the desire to maintain the prior status quo of patriarchal dominance and physical coercion. Bowie called out a lot of things in this work in a cynical and critical tone.That is just my humble opinion.