David Bowie: This Is Not America (1985)

 |   |  <1 min read

David Bowie: This Is Not America (1985)

Accidentally catching David Bowie in Labyrinth on television recently reminded just how much he put himself about for a while there.

Recording Peter and the Wolf, singing the Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby, strutting with Mick Jagger for Dancing in the Street, the Absolute Beginners and When the Wind Blows soundtracks, knocking off stuff for Labyrinth which allowed him to dance in very tight pants wearing That Hair . . .

And around the same time he teamed up with jazz guitarist Pat Metheny for this hypnotic if rather anodyne tonal piece of obscure sentiment for the soundtrack to John Schlesinger's "bland and boring" (according Australia's Bulletin) espionage film The Falcon and the Snowman.

Metheny spoke about it to Elsewhere in this interview

Suitably mysterious perhaps and the title at least parallels something in the film.

But really, Bowie seemed a bit lost for direction after the success of Let's Dance in '83.

Fortunately Tin Machine was just over the horizon.

Ho ho ho!

For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   From the Vaults articles index

Tiny Tim: We Love It/When I Walk With You (1968)

Tiny Tim: We Love It/When I Walk With You (1968)

If you were there at the time, Tiny Tim was novelty act: the long-haired eccentric with a ukulele singing Tiptoe Through the Tulips in an impossibly high falsetto. But that was the late Sixties... > Read more

Jan Berry: The Universal Coward (1965)

Jan Berry: The Universal Coward (1965)

Jan Berry was half of the surf pop group Jan and Dean, and he co-wrote this song with Jill Gibson as an answer to Buffy Sainte-Marie's Universal Soldier of the same year which had been covered... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

Derek shares Beatty Zimmerman's Banana Chocolate Chip Loaf bread

Derek shares Beatty Zimmerman's Banana Chocolate Chip Loaf bread

Derek Jacombs from the Bay of Plenty is someone whose name has appeared at Elsewhere a few times: he led the band Kokomo Blues -- subsequently -- just Kokomo -- for many years and after their... > Read more

WIRED FOR SOUND: Electronic music for the mind and body

WIRED FOR SOUND: Electronic music for the mind and body

When composer Douglas Lilburn left New Zealand at the dawn of the Sixties, it was because he felt he had been isolated from developments in contemporary music, and he was curious about electronic... > Read more