David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes

Melancholic and introspective, 'Ashes to Ashes' released in 1980, featured Bowie's reinterpretation of "a guy that's been in such an early song", namely Major Tom from his first hit in 1969, 'Space Oddity'. Described as "containing more messages per second" than any single released in 1980, the song also included plaintive reflections on the singer's moral and artistic journey:

Instead of a hippie astronaut who casually slips the bonds of a crass and material world to journey beyond the stars, the song describes Major Tom as a "junkie, strung out in heaven's high, hitting an all-time low". This lyric was interpreted as a play on the title of Bowie's 1977 album Low, which charted his withdrawal inwards following his drug excesses in America a short time before, another reversal of Major Tom's original withdrawal 'outwards' or towards space.

The final lines, "My mother said, to get things done, you better not mess with Major Tom", have been compared to the verse from a nursery rhyme.

Bowie himself said in an interview with NME shortly after the single's release, "It really is an ode to childhood, if you like, a popular nursery rhyme. It's about space men becoming junkies (laughs)."

Musically 'Ashes to Ashes' was notable for its delicate synthetic string sound, counterpointed by hard-edged funk bass, and its complex vocal layering. Perhaps Bowie's most sophisticated sonic work to date, its choir-like textures were created by Chuck Hammer with four multi-tracked guitar synthesizers, each playing opposing chord inversions; this was underpinned by Bowie's dead-pan, chanted background voices.

The video clip for 'Ashes to Ashes' was one of the most iconic of the 1980s. Costing £250,000, it was at the time the most expensive music video ever made. It incorporated scenes both in solarised colour (helped by an innovative Quantel Paintbox technique) and in stark black-and-white, featuring Bowie in the gaudy Pierrot costume that became the dominant visual representation of his Scary Monsters phase. Also appearing were Steve Strange and other members of the London Blitz scene, including Judith Franklin and Darla Jane Gilroy, forerunners of (later participants in) the New Romantic movement that was heavily influenced by Bowie's music and image.

Bowie described the shot of himself and the Blitz Kids marching towards the camera in front of a bulldozer as symbolising "oncoming violence". Although it appears that two of the Blitz Kids bow at intervals, they were actually trying to pull their gowns away from the bulldozer in an effort to avoid them getting caught. Scenes of the singer in a space suit - that suggested a hospital life-support system - and others showing him locked in what appeared to be a padded room, made reference to both Major Tom and to Bowie's new, rueful interpretation of him. Contrary to received opinion, the elderly woman lecturing Bowie at the end of the clip was not his real mother, but Wyn Mac, the wife of comedian Jimmy Mac.

Record Mirror readers voted 'Ashes to Ashes' and Bowie's next single, 'Fashion', the best music videos of 1980.

'Ashes to Ashes' hit number 4 in the UK Singles Chart in its first week of release, rising to number 1 a week later, making it Bowie's fastest-selling single to that point in time. It was issued in three different sleeves, the first 100,000 copies including one of four sets of stamps, all featuring Bowie in the Pierrot outfit he wore in the video. The B-side, 'Move On', was a track lifted from his previous album, Lodger (1979). The US release had 'It's No Game (No. 1)' as the B-side, while the flip side of the German release was 'Alabama Song'. The single bubbled under at number 101 in America.

Click the link below to download the following:
Video
Single Version
Move On - B-Side

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=2ccb7d0cd98a6267aaca48175a79d1c3b71455432fddc1ccd6f20ee4ff677d52

David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes - Video