Station to Station

"It's not the side effects of the cocaine

I'm thinking that it must be love..."

'Station to Station'. It's so good, I almost don't want to talk about it. Like a dark but pleasurable secret that you strain to keep, or a slowly spreading bruise that you can't stop pressing, it's hard to resist the ominous plod of those opening seconds. The distant whistle of a train, the sound of Earl Slick torturing his guitar with an E-bow. This is how The Thin White Duke is introduced. And when he finally does sing, the words just leak out of him. Malevolent, exhausted, horny. I am often reminded of an Angie Bowie quote I read years ago: "The guy could poke a hole in a wall".

'Station to Station', at 10:14, is the longest track in the Bowie catalogue, but it's too artfully structured to ever get boring or indulgent. The band, Dennis Davis (Roy Ayers' drummer), George Murray (bass) and Carlos Alomar (rhythm guitar), are masterful at bringing order, movement and punctuation to Bowie's flights of fancy. So, at 5:17, just as our heartbeats are beginning to slow, a typically delicious tom fill announces the second, more uptempo section of the song. I love that refrain, 'It's too late to be hateful! It's too late to be late again!' and the edge of hysteria that creeps into Bowie's voice when he sings it. So much going on. The post-'Young Americans' locked-in funk, Roy Bittan's E-Street-style bar room piano, Earl and Carlos: fretboards at dawn. And poor Dave, losing his grip on reality, surviving on 'red peppers, cocaine and milk', frightened of his own stage creation - 'a hollow man who sings songs of romance with an agonised intensity while feeling nothing'. Quite a melting pot.

There have been a few Bowie covers flying around recently that have pricked up my ears. First there was the Mascara version of 'Golden Years' from 1979, dug out and re-issued on a seven by Homophono. Next there was the slightly pointless David Bowie vs KCRW 12" of 'Golden Years' remixes, and then, more recently, there was the Tobor Experiment cover of 'Station To Station'. None hold a candle to the Duke himself, of course, but I like the way Giorgio Sancristoforo has reworked 'Station to Station'. You can feel his love for the song. It's a pretty rendition, wistful and vibey and sung in a strong Italian accent.

But maybe you're best sticking with the 3xLP, 5xCD box set re-issue of the 'Station to Station' album itself - a 'fantastic voyage' of bootlegs and remasters, all yours for the price of two grams of Peruvian flake, and no nosebleed in the morning.