One Liners: David Bowie - "Ashes to Ashes"

Sometimes there is a line in a song that really stands out (and I'm talking in a good way, not in a "shape of you" kind of way) and I find myself turning it over in my mind. It may not be the catchiest line, but it has some extra depth which rewards rumination. One such line comes from David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes."

I'm not a huge Bowie fan, but I would say that this is definitely my favorite Bowie song, and there is undoubtedly a lot that could be said about the song as a whole, particularly in terms of how he uses it to reflect upon his own legacy and image. Or you could even just marvel at the angular slap bass line and eerie bleeps and bloops of the synth that open the song, and appreciate how they run through it, giving it a surreal atmosphere. But that is beyond the scope of what I want to address here, I just want to look at this line: “I’m stuck with a valuable friend”

I like this line because of the double meaning. Given the general drugginess of the lyrics, I assume the “valuable friend” is heroine. “Valuable friend” is an interesting substitute for “dear friend,” suggesting both the economic worth of heroine, and also less intimacy and caring than “dear.” Plus, the stuck refers both to being forced to stay with heroine—addicted—as well as the actual delivery method of the drug (stuck with a needle). The punning here reflects the theme of the song as a whole, which is that things can degenerate and become (or perhaps always have been) parodies (or puns) of themselves:

"Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom's a junkie
Strung out in heaven's high,
hitting an all-time low."

The movement from "funk to funky" reminds the listener that just as funk is a kind of music (the song's groove is itself pretty funky) a funk is also a dejected or low mood, a feeling of fear, and a bad smell, the latter also being one of the primary meanings of "funky." Something catchy and full of dynamism can also be something low and foul just underneath. (And to reference the amazing video, a clown can equally be a figure of fun and terror.) The joke, of course, is that the otherworldly highs reached by astronaut Major Tom (from Bowie's early hit "Space Oddity," and already a drug metaphor) have their corresponding lows.

Ok, I thought this would be a quick examination of one line, but I have to mention one other particularly affecting line that comes at the end of the song:

"I've never done good things,
I've never done bad things,
I never did anything out of the blue."

Thinking about the subject of this song, it seems as though this cannot be accurate. Its pretty hard to avoid doing good or bad things in life (perhaps especially the bad things part if you are a junkie). But the last line helps to contextualize what this might mean: what does it mean to do something "out of the blue?" It means to do something unexpected, something not already predicted, planned, or determined. This could be someone who has lived a totally convention life and has never done anything that wasn't expect of them, but it could equally be someone who is unstoppably drawn by their urges, their desires, or their addictions. The issue thus becomes less about whether the actions that make up one's own life are good or bad, but rather, one's own relation to those actions as their cause (or, more accurately in this case, the lack thereof).

Something as simple as putting the "I" in these lines in bold makes this a little clearer:

"I've never done good things,
I've never done bad things,
I never did anything out of the blue."

For all of the things "I've" done, he is saying, it was never really me who did them, you could practically say that it was the drugs, or society, or whatever, that was responsible for these things happening. Whatever good or bad things I did were not things that I could take credit for as an agent, there was always some other thing pushing me. It doesn't have to be about compulsion (although obviously it can be), sometimes it is enough that there never seemed to be another option, that the authority of those influences were always just taken as a given. If everything you do is about the drugs, or if everything you do is because it's expected, then your actions may come to take on an "alien" character and may not seem like they are really your own.

That is why the particular example of doing something "out of the blue" comes up. To do something out of the blue is like doing something for no reason at all, or, at least, not for a reason determined long in advance, or as a foregone conclusion. It is thus one model of living one's life independently of all of these influences, free to act simply (ha!) as oneself as the situation and your own reaction to it demand. Now, as you may suspect from following my discussions of identity and agency in the other posts on this page, I'm not holding this up as a model of some pure, absolute freedom. I take this example to be just that, an example, but I think it helps to illustrate what Bowie is trying to get at here. 

Equi-vocals: Big Star--"The Ballad of El Goodo"

In the spirit of punning as well as the desire to sometimes only focus on a few lines of a song rather than the whole thing, I will be characterizing posts with a narrow focus upon an ambiguous line or two, as "Equi-vocals."

I am starting off with Big Star's "The Ballad of El Goodo" because the sheer insistence of this song's refrain has always drawn my attention to it, and to the question of just what lies behind it.



This line, "And there ain't no one gonna turn me 'round/ Ain't no one gonna turn me 'round," embodies the spirit of opposition and independence that the song is all about. The question that this insistent line prompts, however, is the meaning of this opposition. On the one hand, "Ain't no one gonna turn me 'round'" sounds like a cry of an individual determined not to let anything stop him, which would make this song a kind of celebration about the kind of person who can resist the temptation to just be like one of the crowd, or the masses. But on the other hand, this line could also reflect a kind of insane recognition that one has gone too far, that,consumed by the spirit of opposition one is beyond all help and there is no turning back from the looming abyss.

This song's glorious melodies and overall triumphant sound certainly suggest that the former is the better interpretation, but I still can't shake the sense that the latter lurks beneath the surface. I am reminded of Aristotle's saying early on in Book One of the Politics, that "he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state." Even if this song is about resolute opposition to all of the powers that will "zip you up and dress you down and stand you in a row," there is nevertheless still a point at which that opposition can go too far and become madness, a denial of one's own humanity.