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In 1975, during the promotion of his 'Young Americans' album, a new character started to take hold of David Bowie.
Alter egos were nothing new to him with the cosmic psychedelia of Major Tom and the sexual glam of Ziggy Stardust
dominating his early career,
but this was different.
The wild colorful outfits were replaced by a simple waistcoat, the fabulous spaceman had transitioned into
a skeletal pallid figure, clad in black and white. Alongside this new look came a bleak moral outlook
exemplified by fascist leanings.
David Bowie's darkest character had taken hold as he became The Thin White Duke.
Let's take a closer look.
Bowie's transformation into The Thin White Duke began in 1975 when he moved to Los Angeles.
While there he isolated himself and began a downward spiral,
sustaining himself on a diet of peppers, milk and cocaine. He obsessed over the occult,
burning black candles in his apartment and became fascinated with fascist mythology.
This dissent was amplified by Bowie taking on his first role in a feature film 'The Man Who Fell To Earth'.
In that movie Bowie played Thomas Jerome Newton, a detached alien posing in a human body.
Newton quickly becomes corrupted by the sex, liquor and consumption of American society.
This character provided part of the inspiration for The Thin White Duke's look
and clearly hastened Bowie's descent into darkness. The Thin White Duke didn't just come out in Bowie's art,
he also worked his way into his social interactions and interviews.
In one notorious interview, he even praised Adolf Hitler calling him "one of the first rock stars" and saying he was "quite as good as Jagger".
He even said that America needed a good dose of fascism,
saying "You've got to have an extreme right-wing front come up and sweep everything off its feet and tidy everything up."
Understandably, this drew controversy which was amplified when a photo captured Bowie doing what appeared to be a Nazi salute.
It became difficult for everybody -- Bowie included -- to tell what was David Bowie
and what was The Thin White Duke. Years later, Bowie would look back on this and say that it was all performance art,
but it's really hard to tell. But while the fascism drew the headlines,
that's not all there was to The Duke. In addition to the Aryan leanings
Bowie described the character as "a would-be romantic with absolutely no emotion at all
but who spouted a lot of neo-romance". Coming out of 'Young Americans'
which featured Bowie crooning Blue-Eyed Soul, this analysis becomes incredibly relevant.
The title track of that album is equal parts romantic and cynical, singing of the
beauty of being young, followed by the pain of aging and falling out of love.
Alongside 'Young Americans', a song like 'Fame' sings of how the pressures of fame will get to an artist and drive him mad.
In the 'Young Americans' album
you can really see the themes that will dominate the next period of Bowie's life as he approached the threshold of turning thirty.
And where 'Young Americans' laid down the groundwork for The Thin White Duke,
'Station to Station' was the character's opus.
The title track of that album is a ten minute epic, the longest song of Bowie's career, and a parade of sorts
announcing The Thin White Duke.
The song begins with an extended instrumental reflecting another aspect of The Duke, Bowie's shift away from rock music into more
experimental territory. It slowly builds to a climax before exploding into a dark,
mechanical theme that sounds midway between a soul groove and a fascist war march filled with screeching machinery.
When the lyrics open, we get our first clear picture of The Thin White Duke.
The Thin White Duke is bold and ostentatious,
carelessly shattering the illusions of young lovers, throwing darts into their eyes.
Then, in the first verse we get a sardonic take on fantasy.
The beautiful words that Bowie sings are undercut by the Duke's callous demeanor.
This section references Shakespeare's 'The Tempest',
paraphrasing a line spoken by Prospero, a powerful sorcerer who becomes consumed by his magic and
renounces it by the end of the play. This sets the stage for the
mysticism that will follow in the song and also sets up a parallel between
Prospero's magic and Bowie's music. Both Prospero and The Thin White Duke have the power to ensnare the unwitting with their arts.
The next lines of the song tap into the Duke's desire to change music, bend sound and
dredge the ocean to clean the world and bring about his new vision.
The Duke also mentions that he's lost in a circle, something that carries a lot of mystical weight.
Particularly in Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. One of the aspects of Kabbalah is the idea of stations through which God,
wisdom and the infinite may reveal themselves.
Two of these stations are later mentioned in the verse, "Kether" meaning the crown and "Malkuth" meaning the kingdom.
This mysticism permeates the song with a reference to 'White Stains', a book by a cultist
Aleister Crowley at the end of the second chorus.
Then we break into a new verse, this one a hollow facsimile of Bowie's Blue-Eyed Soul.
In this section Bowie sings of the longing for meaning that The Duke can't have.
He wants something to believe in, he wants to find some way to connect to the world, but ultimately he's doomed in this search.
This brings us to one of the most telling lines of the song:
Bowie and The Duke want to fill the void with something other than cocaine,
but it's unclear whether this line is earnest or whether The Duke is just deluding himself into believing
something is love when it really is just the cocaine eating away at his brain.
After this plea the song erupts into its final movement, which pushes through the last four minutes.
The Duke realizes that it's too late for these emotions to sweep him up, that there's no time for any feeling beneath his cold shell.
This section also references the European canon. This could be reference to the European canon of political thought, one molded by
monarchy that birthed the ideals of fascism.
And it could also be talking about how The Thin White Duke is going to shift American music,
introducing aspects of the European musical canon to soul and rock, America's native art forms. These lines repeat with
interjections and solos for the rest of the song, building to a triumphant finish.
The Thin White Duke has taken over Bowie. In the rest of 'Station to Station' we can find
aspects of The Thin White Duke. The romantic facade fits perfectly with 'Golden Years', which was the original
intended title for the album before The Duke took over. In the context of The Thin White Duke,
'Golden Years' goes from a genuine song to something more sardonic with a sinister undertone.
This is exemplified by one line especially: "run for the shadows", there's darkness beneath the golden exterior.
Later in 'Station to Station' we get songs like 'Word on a Wing' and 'Wild as the Wind'. These are cries for help.
Bowie has been consumed by his addiction and his character,
but there's a humanity sticking out from beneath him. Bowie wants to be freed from his self-imposed prison.
With the help of his friend Iggy Pop, Bowie managed to pull out of his descent. He moved away from Los Angeles
and tried to get clean. The Thin White Duke got no dramatic death like Ziggy Stardust however. He had no public retirement.
Instead, the character just faded away and became a demon of sorts, forever lingering in Bowie's past.
Later in life, Bowie would refer to that period as the darkest of his life,
calling The Duke a "nasty character indeed".
And while he brought upon a twisted darkness,
The Thin White Duke is also responsible for some of the best music that David Bowie ever made.
In the end, maybe that's what fascinates me most about The Thin White Duke;
the twist of greatness and darkness and the question that still lingers to this day:
How much of that was David Bowie, and how much of it was The Thin White Duke?
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