My older kid continues to be deep into Bowie, and has been learning “Ashes to Ashes” on piano. This tune has not been a favorite of mine historically; as a young person, I found it hard to connect to its carsick decadence. However, the kid adores it, so I’m giving it more of a chance. It’s certainly easier to relate to as a middle-aged guy with a lot of regrets. The song is surprisingly complicated and weird for a number one UK hit! Also, the music video was the most expensive ever made to that point:
The most distinctive aspect of “Ashes to Ashes” is right in its first second, that freaky piano sound. Producer Tony Visconti wanted a Wurlitzer, but there wasn’t one in the building, so as a substitute, he ran an acoustic piano through an Eventide Instant Flanger. The part is played by Roy Bittan from the E Street Band, who was recording The River with Bruce Springsteen in the studio next door at the Power Station. The fake strings are played by Chuck Hammer on a Roland GR-500 guitar synth. Carlos Alomar plays regular guitar, George Murray plays the funky slap bass, Dennis Davis plays the herky-jerky drum part, and Tony Visconti plays assorted hand percussion. Andy Clark added synth textures on a Minimoog and a Yamaha CS-80 later in the recording process.
Here’s a live version from the Tonight Show in 1980. Check out Carlos Alomar’s double necked guitar and Bowie’s awful Elvis hair!
My kid’s preferred version is this live performance from 2000, which ends with a dazzling synth solo by Mike Garson.
When people cover “Ashes to Ashes”, they usually go for faithful recreation. One major exception is this performance by Michael Stipe and Karen Elson, where they essentially whisper the song.
I also appreciate this vocoder-heavy version by Lassigue Bendthaus. Bowie and vocoder go together like peanut butter and jelly.
There are a lot of remixes out there, none of which are particularly memorable. However, I do enjoy Samantha Mumba’s “Body II Body“, a UK pop hit that samples “Ashes to Ashes” extensively.
The tune takes you down a long and meandering harmonic path that doesn’t feel very planned out to me. I wonder if Bowie stitched it together from already-existing fragments, or if he just kept putting his fingers down on the guitar without worrying too much about the larger structure.
The intro is in B-flat minor. The verse begins in A-flat major. The second part of the verse (“They got a message from the action man”) switches to D-flat major. The prechorus (“The shrieking of nothing is killing”) moves to B-flat major rather than the expected B-flat minor. I hear it going to E-flat major on the line “And I ain’t got no money”, then back to D-flat major on “But I’m hoping to kick.” It stays in D-flat through the chorus before returning to B-flat minor for the repeat of the intro. The ending chant is similar to the intro, but it omits the last bar, so it’s a three-bar loop. Bowie’s nursery rhyme chant (“My mother said…”) is a four-bar phrase that goes in and out of phase with the chords. Cool! In live versions, the ending chant goes into a synth solo that ends, not on the Bbm chord you’re expecting, but Bb major instead.
The song’s title is a phrase from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.
In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother [name]; and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
But of course, the real lyrical hook is the reference to “Space Oddity.” Poor Major Tom! Bowie said in an NME interview in 1980:
When I originally wrote about Major Tom, I was a very pragmatic and self-opinionated lad that thought he knew all about the great American dream and where it started and where it should stop. Here we had the great blast of American technological know-how shoving this guy up into space, but once he gets there he’s not quite sure why he’s there. And that’s where I left him.
Tom Ewing quips: “So Major Tom thought he was starring in an Arthur C. Clarke story and found himself in a Philip K. Dick one by mistake, and the result is oddly magnificent.”
In Q Magazine in 2003, Bowie said that “Ashes to Ashes” takes melodic inspiration from “Inchworm” by Danny Kaye, though it isn’t obvious to me how.
Bowie has also said that the song was one of the first he learned on guitar. It does share some chord changes in common with “Ashes to Ashes.”
The reference in the lyrics to “Jap girls” has not aged well. I get a similarly gross feeling from “China Girl“, which was about Iggy Pop’s brief relationship with a Vietnamese woman. Bowie claimed that the song and video were ironic and were meant to be a statement against racism, but, come on, guys. Listen to that opening riff. No.
Anyway, more positively, I do love the line about the planet glowing, glowing, glowing, glowing. It makes no obvious sense, but maybe it isn’t supposed to, it’s just an attractive image set to a cool and unexpected rhythm. What more could you want from a rock song, really?
The slowed, spare, carefully enunciated cover version is an ott-used trope, but I found the Stipe-Elson cover moving. Like you the collaged nature of the Bowie original recording didn’t work all that well for me when it came out.
One of my absolute favorite Bowie songs. As a kid watching MTV in the early 80s, I was mesmerized when this would show up amidst all the bright rock songs of the era – a dour funky dirge where any given bar sounded like normal pop music but the musical narrative just kept on meandering in circles, refusing to provide closure, even at the end where the vocals and harmony keep phasing in and out as the music fades out. What confidence to make this your lead single.