JUst to clue in some American posters to the lyric
Marks and Sparks - a retail shop ( its actually called Marks and Spencer ) and is a little like a department store.
Boat race - Rythming slang for 'face'
I was in the same crowd as Ian Hunter from this period ( and Bowie for that matter ) its really a pastiche of street life.
Billy talking all night about suicide while being on 'speed'.
They dont need TV because they have T-Rex - I'm never sure if thats ironic or fandom there.
Jimmy looks sweet because he's probably male prostitute or effiminate gay but he can fight hard - not all gays have limp wrists and I used to know a few like that in London in the 70s.
The late 70s turned their backs on stuff like Lennon and the Beatles and talk of revolution and settled down to get stoned and just have fun being weird.
Concrete all around - its a townpersons view of England in the 70s when there were vast construction projects turning our inner cities into concrete blocks - or it in in my head - because it was ghastly it was hard to believe it was real.
Bowie supposedly just wrote this on the spot. Not one of his "deeper" lyrical explorations, although it's very good. If you compare this to some of his other "glam" work, for example Lou Reed's Transformer, it fits perfectly in context. It's nearly identical in content. Hunky Dory has some other explorations of the same territory (drugs, prostitution, sleeping on the street, transvestitism, etc.). The music is all beautiful and the lyrics bohemian - where the mind-space was in that era/clique Reed/Bowie/T Rex/etc. Hunky Dory still my favorite Bowie album.
Bowie supposedly just wrote this on the spot. Not one of his "deeper" lyrical explorations, although it's very good. If you compare this to some of his other "glam" work, for example Lou Reed's Transformer, it fits perfectly in context. It's nearly identical in content. Hunky Dory has some other explorations of the same territory (drugs, prostitution, sleeping on the street, transvestitism, etc.). The music is all beautiful and the lyrics bohemian - where the mind-space was in that era/clique Reed/Bowie/T Rex/etc. Hunky Dory still my favorite Bowie album.
JUst to clue in some American posters to the lyric
Marks and Sparks - a retail shop ( its actually called Marks and Spencer ) and is a little like a department store.
Boat race - Rythming slang for 'face'
I was in the same crowd as Ian Hunter from this period ( and Bowie for that matter ) its really a pastiche of street life.
Billy talking all night about suicide while being on 'speed'. They dont need TV because they have T-Rex - I'm never sure if thats ironic or fandom there.
Jimmy looks sweet because he's probably male prostitute or effiminate gay but he can fight hard - not all gays have limp wrists and I used to know a few like that in London in the 70s.
The late 70s turned their backs on stuff like Lennon and the Beatles and talk of revolution and settled down to get stoned and just have fun being weird.
Concrete all around - its a townpersons view of England in the 70s when there were vast construction projects turning our inner cities into concrete blocks - or it in in my head - because it was ghastly it was hard to believe it was real.
Bowie supposedly just wrote this on the spot. Not one of his "deeper" lyrical explorations, although it's very good. If you compare this to some of his other "glam" work, for example Lou Reed's Transformer, it fits perfectly in context. It's nearly identical in content. Hunky Dory has some other explorations of the same territory (drugs, prostitution, sleeping on the street, transvestitism, etc.). The music is all beautiful and the lyrics bohemian - where the mind-space was in that era/clique Reed/Bowie/T Rex/etc. Hunky Dory still my favorite Bowie album.
Bowie supposedly just wrote this on the spot. Not one of his "deeper" lyrical explorations, although it's very good. If you compare this to some of his other "glam" work, for example Lou Reed's Transformer, it fits perfectly in context. It's nearly identical in content. Hunky Dory has some other explorations of the same territory (drugs, prostitution, sleeping on the street, transvestitism, etc.). The music is all beautiful and the lyrics bohemian - where the mind-space was in that era/clique Reed/Bowie/T Rex/etc. Hunky Dory still my favorite Bowie album.