Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

could stage an emotional onslaught that David had
never attempted – the desperation in ‘Five Years’,
the urgency in ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’, which
completed Ziggy’s dramatic arc. The ending,
‘Gimme your hands … you’re not alone’, is pure
show-business artifice, an act of audience
manipulation worthy of Leni Riefenstahl, but Bowie’s
sympathy for Iggy, Vince and all the other doomed
rock ‘n’ rollers is absolutely sincere.
Some figures, notably Angie Bowie, dispute that
David Bowie ever truly loved anyone; yet there is no
doubt of his deep and enduring love for rock ‘n’ roll.
‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’ is all the more poignant given
that, just a couple of years later, Iggy Pop,
abandoned by Bowie, would stab himself on-stage,
in an event publicised as a rock ‘n’ roll suicide that,
his manager informed the press, ‘will only happen
once’.
‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’, along with ‘Suffragette
City’, was among the last songs recorded in the
album’s main sessions, demonstrating that the
album’s central concept – Ziggy’s rise and fall –
arrived late in the day, with Chuck Berry’s ‘Around
and Around’ still on the track listing. But in that
whirlwind winter, events were moving fast. Hunky
Dory was released on 17 December, with the single
‘Changes’ following it on 7 January and immediately
picking up radio play. A gorgeous song, based
around one of the piano runs painstakingly worked
out at Haddon Hall, with a stammered chorus that
echoed ‘My Generation’ and hence emphasised its
status as an anthem for a new youth movement,