She’s with him, he’s turning down the lights and he’s holding her the way
I used to do
I can see her closing her eyes and telling him lies exactly like she
told me too.
I wonder why he called it Pin Ups? My concept is that since it was cover songs from second wave Brit Beat bands of the early 1960s, and since these bands, the Who, the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things, Pink Floyd…, since these were all boy bands attractive in post- Beatle sense to a girl fanbase with pictures from “Fabulous” pasted on their walls, well, they were Pins Up, weren’t they?
Meanwhile back to the future it is 1973 and David Bowie is the most Queen Of King of glam of all time, a Pin Up to beat to all pin ups, the rock and roll soul kiss, transvestite lipstick and kisses in the dark hard drugged a lad insane. So what Bowie did, as a breather, between his ultimate rock and roll album and first taste of post-apocalyptic rock opera,was connect the dots from where he was to where he was. He didn’t retreat, he didn’t back pedal, he took the immediate past and showed where he came from.
Let me teach you something about time, it changes as you get older.
Look see:
1946 – WW2 is history
1956 – I am born
1966 – I am ten years old.
So as a self aware ten year old, WWII which much like ancient history, as though it was just history books, that it barely happened at all it was so far gone
2013 – Today
1993 – 20 years ago and grunge was happening and Puff Daddy was birthing hip hop, and it felt like a blink away. Certainly not remotely historic. That’s age, when things happened before you were born, when you were really young, they feel miles and miles away.
Now look here:
1973 – Pin Ups released
1967 – “See Emily Play” released.
That’s six year, Pin Ups feels like a roots and retaliation show when it was first released and, listening to Bowie cover “See Emily Play” in a coked up wreck of delusion, and, perhaps more, the sexually perverse and twisted voyeur in “Here Comes The Night” are not what we think they are. It isn’t McCartney’s Kisses On The Bottom, it isn’t even Lennon’s Rock And Roll (which at least had 15 years between them) but rather a heart beat and listening to Pin Ups now, it becomes less archival and more evolutionary. When Ziggy Stardust hit, parts of Bowie’s musical evolution were hidden and, besides making money for some people who could use it (and some who didn’t need it) it is also showed where Bowie, this theatrical rock and roll dramatic roleplayer heard it first. “Friday On My Mind” with its weary yet speeding to the weekend is genuinely a shakeup. “Tonight you might be mad” seems to fit into a different type of panic and a different type of place.
Using the Spiders from Mars as yobs from outer space, Bowie pinned himself up to those he wanted to be and then made it his own, he sang everything like a manic depressive bitch but remained to a concept of guitars and drums from just the immediate pass.
Grade: A