Freak Out in a Moonage Daydream

How I got Bowie-d

Remembering songs and how it felt to be transported out of safe space and into other, more dangerous avenues seems almost like a full-time occupation for me these days. I suppose that loving rock and roll, soul, and even certain pop sounds wasn’t easy for many of us back in the 60’s and 70’s, especially in the deep south where many of us earned badges of honor simply by going barefoot in our local mall.

Things happen quickly when you’re fifteen, though not so much if you’re waiting for the day you’ll get your driver’s license. It’s funny that that day is now some forty-nine years ago for me. As for the music of my life, by fifteen I had traversed the skies of Neil Young, Santana, Jethro Tull, Uriah Heep, and those old standbys, The Beatles, Stones, Temptations and Supremes, and maybe just a little Neil Diamond.

I also started listening to the “sophisticated” folk rock of Carole King, Carly Simon, James Taylor, and the older shores of Simon and Garfunkel.

Looking at this list now, one might wonder what all the fuss was about regarding these “classic” artists. What indeed, though some have forgotten, surely, that the Stones were once considered so dangerous, you wouldn’t want your sister around them. And though the long hair on these guys paralyzed many in the older generation, anyone seriously questioning the aim of their sexual desire needed some special guidance — more than someone like me could ever counsel, though God knows I tried to assure anyone in my immediate vicinity that as a long-haired guy, I thought my locks gave me the best chance with girls.

But even in Bessemer, Alabama, no one seemed overly worried when Alice Cooper hit the scene. Maybe the androgyny of Alice and his band didn’t send shivers down anyone’s spine because the music was “hard rock,” or at least trying to be. Maybe everyone understood that this was an act, theater, stemming from a long line of troupers. Or at least my mother wasn’t dismayed by Alice’s antics with his boa and the gallows.

David Bowie, on the other hand, caused as much distress in my world, and perhaps even more than the Birmingham church bombers, and I only wish I were being facetious. You really had to be careful about whom you mentioned Bowie to back in 1972.

So, when my friend Jimbo gave me The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars for Christmas that year, I had to wonder: was he trying to tell me something? Were all bets off? Should I be expanding my horizons, at least musically? Should I listen before I leap?

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Our many friendships over a life course can also transport us to places we never imagined going. Jimbo was the friend who pushed me hardest, especially culturally. He introduced me to foreign film; try screening Wertmuller’s Seven Beauties when you’re seventeen. He had me reading pulp novels about Doc Savage and The Shadow even earlier, and then he gave me my first Ray Bradbury collection: The October Country. And when we were in that fifteenth year, I saw him reading Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange.

“You won’t believe this,” he said. “It’s fabulous, and I’ll lend it to you when I’m done.”

He did, and when I read it, I wondered about the future and the present, and if one day we might call each other “droogie” and listen more heavily to Beethoven. There were other things I wondered, too, but I chose to keep those quiet, because lobotomies and shock therapy tended to be flags. I had known one woman who suffered “a nervous breakdown,” and when she returned from wherever they sent her, she had a certain subdued look about her.

So when Jimbo gave me “Ziggy Stardust” on that cold December Sunday night, I immediately put it on my turntable and sat back against my bed frame, listening.

As I listened to “Five Years” segue into “Soul Love,” I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. Of course, this was rock and roll, but what could I compare it to? I just didn’t know, and given that my other favorite album of that time was After the Gold Rush, I felt unmoored.

But if you know the record and its song order, you understand that there isn’t much of a segue from “Soul Love” to the next song, just a ticking fade that goes to a half-second’s silence before:

DA DA DAT

“I’m an alligator, I’m a mama-papa coming for you/ I’m a space invader, I’ll be a rockin/rollin bitch for you….”

Uh-oh.

And that’s how it felt, hard, and yet, Bowie’s voice didn’t shriek like the other vocalists of that genre, and I wasn’t certain what a moonage daydream even was. Who would have known?

What I did know was that someone was keeping an “electric eye” on the singer, and I wanted to be the singer as the song keeps soaring through the space speakers.

I called Jimbo,

“Have YOU listened to this?”

He laughed a bit, and even now I don’t remember whether he had or hadn’t, but please remember that this is the guy who, a year or two later, bought something by Patti Smith called Horses, when I was trying to decide if I was brave enough to bring Lou Reed into my parents’ home.

I didn’t know anyone else who listened to, much less admitted to liking Bowie. What I did know was that the one or two guys I mentioned him to immediately called him a “fag,” and so there you go: let on that you like Bowie and his music if you want, but be prepared to defend your youth and young manhood if you do.

So I kept quiet afterward, talking about the connections between Bowie and “Clockwork” only to Jimbo, and wondering about other secrets, other rooms and worlds.

Then, on another Sunday night soon after, my favorite AM radio station — WSGN, “The Big 610” — inaugurated a two-hour night shift of harder sounds called “Spaceship Earth,” and when the disc jockey, Amaysa Kincaid, started the show with “Moonage Daydream,” I went from loser to winner in a ray gun’s flash.

I suppose that many of my friends trashed AM radio, too, but on that night, the planets shifted a bit, and Bessemer/Birmingham opened up, at least for me.

I listened to the entire Ziggy album, found other virtues, and began a serious love affair with all of Bowie’s music — an affair that’s thriving even today, though much time and freaked-out love have passed.

These moments we cherish: friendship, gifts, stranger sounds and deeper secrets, all found on soon-to-be-broken turntables.

Far out.

Thank you for reading, and thanks to Christopher Robin and Samantha Drobac at Songstories for publishing. Where are my Bowie pals: If Ever You’re Listening, MDSHall, Rob Janicke, Keith R. Higgons, David Acaster, Paul Combs, Alex Markham, Alexander Briseño, S.W. Lauden, Frank Mastropolo, Nicole Brown, Harry Male, Jessica Lee McMillan, Kathryn Dillon, Steven Hale, JP Timko, Noah Levy, Kevin Alexander, Sarah Paris, TheWellSeasonedLibrarian?

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