David Bowie

David Bowie – Life On Mars?

(Rca, 1971 on the album “Hunky Dory” – Rca, June 22, 1973 – 7-inch single)

A really beautiful day in the park, sitting on the steps of the bandstand.

“Sailors bap-bap-bap-bap-baaa-bap”. An anomic (not a “gnomic”) heroine.

Middle-class ecstasy. (…)

I started working it out on the piano and had the whole lyric and melody finished by late afternoon.

Nice. Rick Wakeman came over a couple of weeks later and embellished the piano part

and guitarist Mick Ronson created one of his first and best string parts for this song.

(David Bowie on “Life On Mars?”)

The story is well known: having abandoned the folk-psychedelic experiments of his previous two records, David Bowie embraces glam, that romantic, brazen and voluptuous hybrid that Marc Bolan had forged a year earlier with T. Rex and that John Lennon would later dub “rock'n'roll with lipstick on”.

What we'll never know, though, is the secret behind a sonic alchemy that still enchants today just as it did forty years ago, without ever losing an ounce of its charm. An elixir called “Life On Mars?”, whose widely misunderstood title would itself become one of the many facets of its success.

Dropping a coin into our jukebox and pressing the fateful button for this 1971 hit, then, is like opening one of those magical music boxes that conceals a timeless spell within. And being astonished all over again.

But in the presence of Bowie the illusionist, the man who turned astonishment into a permanent state of being, perhaps it all makes sense. Starting with that fatal Greta Garbo-esque pose on the cover of the LP “Hunky Dory”, which would be practically cloned three years later by Brian Eno on “Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)”. Not a coincidence, but a strategy. Having buried forever the myth of the rocker's authenticity, Bowie ushers in the era of the “young dudes”, a musical springtime in which cross-dressing and sexual ambiguity would triumph, amid a profusion of glitter and sequins, mascara and space-age jumpsuits.

If it would fall to the carrot-topped alien Ziggy Stardust to launch the myth into orbit, the still heavily made-up David Robert Jones of "Life On Mars?" needed nothing more than a melody set against a white background and a jarring turquoise suit (courtesy of the ineffable stylist Freddi Buretti) to burn through the screen: a surreal video, shot by Mick Rock in 1973, almost unsettling in its stillness, to the point of resembling a floating pop-art painting. It's also one of Bowie's first one-man shows, perfectly at ease in that grotesque make-up and that spine-tingling F sharp, which would have tripped up plenty of far more celebrated vocalists.

The magic of this sumptuous orchestral ballad, opened by the enchanted piano chords of Rick Wakeman (Yes), does away with the tired notion of Bowie as "all image and no substance" (a claim that would go on to plague rock history books for years). A start that's slow and tense at once, with that dreamlike vocal narrating the tale of the notorious "girl with the mousy hair" (who, contrary to what some claim, is not Bowie's ex-girlfriend Hermione Farthingale, if only because she had red hair) caught up in "a small, saddening story" of family misunderstandings and celluloid dreams, where even the movies soon become "a saddening bore," a deadly tedium, having been watched at least a dozen times. "It's the reaction of a sensitive girl to the world of media," Bowie explained in 1971, adding 25 years later: "I think she feels betrayed, that she's disappointed by reality. I think that, even though she's living a depressing reality, she's convinced that somewhere out there is a life worth living, and she's bitterly frustrated at not having access to it."

Against the protagonist's dull isolation stands the sonic apotheosis that erupts in the chorus. Guitar and rhythm instruments surface, but it's above all the breath of the strings (cellos especially) that gradually push forward, amplifying the drama and melodic grandeur. A theatrical, almost operatic staging, yet everything unfolds with perfect calibration thanks to the arranging genius of Mick Ronson, guitarist and future Spider From Mars, with Wakeman's piano still holding the reins, right up to the grandiloquent timpani crescendo before the finale, echoing Richard Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra." In the control room, we can picture the good Ken Scott smirking with satisfaction: after the glories of George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass", he was scoring another bullseye, much to the chagrin of the faithful Tony Visconti, who had momentarily defected to the court of Bolan and was destined to make up for it later at the side of the future Thin White Duke.

If the framing is a masterpiece, the vocal performance is no less so: a display of romantic, brazen crooning, almost a parody of Frank Sinatra with a cockney twist, as confirmed by the handwritten note "inspired by Frankie" in the album's liner notes. And for its first eight bars, the song was built precisely on the chord sequence of "My Way."

What's entirely missing, however, is exactly what everyone expects: Mars and the visionary space scenarios inaugurated by the ever-enduring "Space Oddity" and later sublimated in the following "Ziggy Stardust". "Life On Mars?", in fact, is merely the title of an English TV show popular in the 60s, and the lyrics are a surreal cut-up of characters and eras, images and places, metaphors and evocative prompts. With consumer society as the common denominator, and flashes of sharp social critique.

So the depiction of sailors brawling in the dance hall ("Sailors fighting in the dance hall") and the lawyer taking it out on the wrong man ("beating up the wrong guy") are the bleak snapshot of the "best selling show" of a commercial TV that would soon turn into an Orwellian nightmare (from the "Tvc 15" of "Station To Station" to the "fierce jaws" of the "1984" from "Diamond Dogs"). And between the lines, one could read more or less explicit political references, such as a denunciation of American imperialism in the guise of an unsettling Mickey Mouse-cow ("Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow"), or of the instrumental use of politics, with workers striking "for fame," a John Lennon - pronounced as if it were "Lenin" - once again "on sale again," and the old national anthem "Rule Britannia" now banned. The music-obsessed Bowie manages to slip in yet another reference: "Look at those cavemen go" in fact revives the chorus of "Alley Oop," a 1960 hit by the Hollywood Argyles, later covered in 1966 by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

And who are those rats crawling in their millions, from vacuous Ibiza to the placid English ponds of the Norfolk Broads? Perhaps they're precisely blind, obtuse humanity, soon to be subjugated by the Big Brother of "Diamond Dogs." And those clowns lumped together with mother and dog in the most outlandish "dedication" in rock history? ("To my mother, my dog and clowns"). Almost ten years later, we'll see one lurking with a sinister air on the beach of "Ashes To Ashes." But that's an entirely different story.

The story of "Life On Mars?", on the other hand, would quickly take on the glow of glory. Included among the grooves of the masterpiece "Hunky Dory" (1971) and released as his second single on June 22, 1973, at the height of Ziggymania (with "The Man Who Sold The World" on the B-side), it shot straight into the charts at No. 3 and would go on to become one of the London dandy's greatest hits, even being crowned his "greatest song of all time" by BBC Radio 2. It would be plundered in countless covers - from the striking ones by Belgian artist Jasper Steverlink and the duo Yann Tiersen & Neil Hannon (Divine Comedy) to the "terribly awful" one (in Bowie's own words) by Barbra Streisand - and exploited in every possible way, including ads for the French postal service: the happiest pairing of music and image will likely remain the stirring "Epilogue" of "Breaking the Waves," the film that launched Lars Von Trier.

New fame would also come from the equally brilliant British TV series of the same name, in which Manchester police Detective Chief Inspector Sam Tyler, hit by a car in 2006, is catapulted back to the year 1973, and, waking up to the very strains of "Life On Mars?", finds himself working under the gruff Detective Inspector Gene Hunt. Riding the wave of the show's success, the song would climb back up the British charts (reaching No. 55) more than thirty years later, seemingly immune to the wear of time. Perhaps because - as Fred Frith and Howard Howe once described Bowie himself - it remains a mysterious "black canvas on which to write one's dreams."

It's a god-awful small affair

To the girl with the mousy hair

But her mummy is yelling "No"

And her daddy has told her to go

But her friend is nowhere to be seen

Now she walks

through her sunken dream

To the seat with the clearest view

And she’s hooked to the silver screen

But the film is a saddening bore

For she's lived it

ten times or more

She could spit in the eyes of fools

As they ask her to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall

Oh man!

Look at those cavemen go

It’s the freakiest show

Take a look at the Lawman

Beating up the wrong guy

Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know

He’s in the best selling show

Is there life on Mars?

It’s on Amerika’s tortured brow

That Mickey Mouse

has grown up a cow

Now the workers

have struck for fame

‘Cause Lennon’s on sale again

See the mice in their million hordes

From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads

Rule Britannia is out of bounds

To my mother, my dog, and clowns

But the film is a saddening bore

‘Cause I wrote it

ten times or more

It’s about to be writ again

As I ask you to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall

Oh man!

Look at those cavemen go

It’s the freakiest show

Take a look at the Lawman

Beating up the wrong guy

Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know

He’s in the best selling show

Is there life on Mars?

Dring-dring-dring…

(Mind the phone)

Ride the wave of great music

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25/04/2026