Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

According to Visconti, after leaving Essex, the
pair went to a revival screening of Knife in the
Water, the 1962 art-house hit by Polish director
Roman Polanski. Though stark and disquieting,
Polanski’s film features a jazz score at turns sultry or
bebop influenced and manic, composed by the cult
Polish jazz artist Krzysztof Komeda, and the two fast
friends set about deconstructing the film and
especially its soundtrack as the theater let out.
Their first recorded collaborations included the
Bowie original “Karma Man,” recorded on the
afternoon of September 1, 1967. The guitar and
strings are strange and thrumming. The verses are
verbose and Dylanesque, reflecting the songwriter
and the producer’s shared affinity for Eastern
spiritual guidance: enlightened souls, “clothed in
saffron robes.” The song’s chorus, “Slow down, slow
down,” among Bowie’s catchiest, was more or less
directly ripped off by Suede for one of their Britpopigniting
singles “The Drowners” in 1992.
“Let Me Sleep Beside You” is fairly selfexplanatory,
with a nifty chorus come-on and a fuzz
guitar riff that nearly achieved what Woody Allen’s
Alvy Singer would have called “heaviosity.” Visconti
was a Beatles obsessive and you can already hear
him connecting with his inner George Martin. On the
records Bowie sounds stronger, clearer and more
alive than he ever did on the Shel Talmy–produced
garage rock or the horn-driven Tony Hatch–
produced pop kitsch. In the cooling weeks following
the summer of love, as everything around him with