Time (David Bowie song) explained

Time
Cover:Bowie timesingle.jpg
Type:single
Artist:David Bowie
Album:Aladdin Sane
B-Side:The Prettiest Star
Released:[1] (US)
Recorded:January 1973
Studio:Trident, London
Genre:Glam rock
Length:3:38 (7" single edit)
5:31 (album version)
Label:RCA
Prev Title:Drive-In Saturday
Prev Year:1973
Next Title:Let's Spend the Night Together
Next Year:1973

"Time" is a song by the English singer-songwriter David Bowie. Written in New Orleans in November 1972 during the American leg of the Ziggy Stardust Tour, it was recorded in London in January 1973 and released as the opening track on side two of the album Aladdin Sane that April. An edited version of the song supplanted the release of the single "Drive-In Saturday" in the United States, Canada and Japan.[2] It was also released in France and South Africa, while early Spanish copies of David Live included a free copy of the single.[3]

Production and style

The piece has been described as "burlesque vamp",[4] and compared to the cabaret music of Jacques Brel and Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill.[5] Keyboardist Mike Garson said that he employed "the old stride piano style from the 20s and I mixed it up with avant-garde jazz styles plus it had the element of show music, plus it was very European." Co-producer Ken Scott took credit for the idea of mixing the sound of Bowie's breathing right up front when the music paused, just before guitarist Mick Ronson launched into his cacophonous solo.

The song's best-known couplet is "Time – he flexes like a whore / Falls wanking to the floor"; RCA allowed it to remain in the US single edit, being unfamiliar with the British term "wanking". However, when Bowie came to perform the song on the U.S. television special The 1980 Floor Show in August 1973, he slurred the line in such a way as to render it "Falls swanking to the floor."[6] Conversely, RCA cut the line "In quaaludes and red wine" from the single, while Bowie retained it for The 1980 Floor Show. The phrase "Billy Dolls" refers to Billy Murcia, late drummer for the New York Dolls.

Artist Tanja Stark suggests the infamous lyric may be a cryptic allusion to ‘Chronos’, the ancient Greek personification of 'Time' who was associated with 'magical semen', due to Bowie's well known fascination with mythology and esoterica.[7]

David Bowie said of the song "I’ve written a new song on the new album which is just called ‘Time’, and I thought it was about time, and I wrote very heavily about time, and the way I felt about time – at times – and I played it back after we recorded it and my God, it was a gay song! And I’d no intention of writing anything at all gay. When I’d listened to it back I just could not believe it. I thought well, that’s the strangest…" [8]

Reception

Like its parent album, "Time" has divided critical opinion. Biographer David Buckley calls the full-length version "five minutes of wired perfection" and the lyrics "poetic and succinct", while NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have described the words as sounding "strained and incomplete", concluding that "with such a weak lyric, the overly melodramatic music sounds faintly absurd". Record World predicted that it "should be a monster in no time at all."[9]

Mojo magazine listed it as Bowie's 99th best track in 2015.[10]

Track listing

All tracks written by David Bowie.[11]

  1. "Time" – 3:38
  2. "The Prettiest Star" – 3:27

The Japanese release featured "Panic in Detroit" on the B-side.[12]

Personnel

According to Chris O'Leary:

Live versions

Other releases

Cover versions

References

Sources

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Aladdin Sane (1973) . The Ziggy Stardust Companion . 10 July 2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20130724090611/http://5years.com/aladdin.htm . 24 July 2013 . dead .
  2. Web site: Aladdin Sane at The Ziggy Stardust Companion . 28 October 2002 . www.5years.com . 13 April 2007 . https://web.archive.org/web/20130724090611/http://5years.com/aladdin.htm . 24 July 2013 . dead .
  3. Web site: Time.
  4. [Kris Needs]
  5. Gerson. Ben. Aladdin Sane. Rolling Stone. 19 July 1973. 21 March 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20130427032218/http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/aladdin-sane-19730719. 27 April 2013. live.
  6. http://www.5years.com/encyt.htm "Time" at The Ziggy Stardust Companion
  7. Book: Stark, Tanja . "Confronting Bowie's Mysterious Corpses" in Enchanting David Bowie, edited by Toija Cinque, Christopher Moore and Sean Redmond. . Bloomsbury Academic . 2015 . 61–78.
  8. Book: Egan, Sean . Bowie on Bowie : interviews and encounters with David Bowie . Chicago Review Press . 2015 . 9781569769775 . 33.
  9. Record World. June 23, 1973. 2023-03-23. Hits of the Week. 1.
  10. David Bowie – The 100 Greatest Songs. Mojo. February 2015. 255. 54.
  11. "Time". David Bowie. 1973. RCA Victor. US. Single liner notes. APBO-0001.
  12. "Time". David Bowie. 1973. RCA Records. Japan. Single liner notes. SS-2299.

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