and in the death….

"you'll catch your death in the fog"

a masterclass in production, all the more remarkable since Ronno, sadly, was no longer on board.

Thanks to the genius of Visconti at mixdown and post and the effortless brilliance of its creator, this has to be the zenith of the futurist clutch of Bowie albums. What Bolan threatened Bowie went out and did, astonishingly. 

My dad had cut a disc – Begin the Beguine – in the days when you rehearsed till you were sore and then, when you’d gone past it, they cut it! The results are not happy. On the flipside of Begin the Beguine was a strange piece, haunting, weird for an oldie, but it stuck with me for years.

And then I heard it again…. “and in the death as the last few corpses lay rotting in the slimy thoroughfare….” There! The odd first notes of Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered come crashing in on a funny guitar…fuck!….Bowie’s playing my dad’s song! Impossible!

So, on one of my favourite Bowie albums I get the first of many major coincidences which seem to have haunted my existence over very many years. 

“family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald….any day now….” 

I call such synchronous stigmes “sapphire moments.”