Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

around ’78, and the older brother of a grade school
friend had learned it on guitar. He was sixteen and
a high school student. I was nine and still wet the
bed. My friend’s brother strummed a six-string
acoustic guitar with butterfly appliqués along the
body like Peter Frampton’s had. It was a Saturday
afternoon and he was attempting an English
accent, poorly: “ a-round cant-rowl to Moy-ja Tum
…”
When he was finished with “Space Oddity,” he
began “Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon,
also sung in an English accent. I later found out
that Warren Zevon was born in Chicago and was
widely associated with the Los Angeles singersongwriter
movement of the early to mid-seventies,
but by then, I was already a rock journalist.
“Werewolves of London” was sick humor, like the
Mad, Cracked and National Lampoon magazines I
read with great excitement every few weeks. The
lines “You better stay away from him / He’ll rip your
lungs out, Jim / I’d like to meet his tailor” fit my
rapidly blackening sense of humor. “Space Oddity”
was not as witty (“And the papers want to know
whose shirts you wear” is actually a nod to British
football team loyalty and not a sly critique of
sartorial trends à la the Kinks’ “Dedicated Follower
of Fashion”) but it stuck with me longer. At night, I
would look up at the sky and wonder what it would
be like to be Major Tom, trapped way up there in
outer space, floating in a tin can forever. Was it