The song name-checks (to use a term decades in its future) the Robert Heinlein story <i>The Man Who Sold the Moon</i> about a business man, one Harriman, who puts together the financing for the first lunar expedition. In a subsequent story, the old Harriman has never got to the Moon, and bribes a barnstorming rocket jockey who flies people to orbit and back (this is by analogy with '20s- and '30s-era pilots who would do something similar at county fairs and the like) to bring him there---he's too old and in too bad shape to be allowed an official trip. I think of this when I hear 'I thought you died alone, a long long time ago'---Harriman is never depicted as a particularly nice or warm man, just one who got things done and didn't crave the limelight, and so I can easily image the pilot's believing that he (Harriman) had died alone awhile back.
I'm a bit sceptical about all the heaven and hell stuff, for the simple reason that Bowie never seemed to care about that sort of thing that much...you need remember that back a few decades, when Bowie was coming up, the more rationalist among us, of whom D.B. is one, really believed that we had superstition on the run. Growing up, if you had told me that in the U.S. people would be fighting over teaching standard biology in our classrooms unto this day, I would have thought you were crazy. Admittedly, Heinlein might have bought that, as he grew up around Bible-thumpers even though he never was one, and understood the deep American need to be conned....we'll fall for anyone who claims he can sell us a ticket to heaven, or the Moon, or the World.
@GeraldFnord I agree and I detest the religious overtones in the song. Although D.B. did get involved in the religious argument by playing Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).\r\nI do think that D.B. is talking vaguely when he speaks of spirituality when he probably just means drug dependence and the "creatures of habit"
@GeraldFnord I agree and I detest the religious overtones in the song. Although D.B. did get involved in the religious argument by playing Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).\r\nI do think that D.B. is talking vaguely when he speaks of spirituality when he probably just means drug dependence and the "creatures of habit"
The song name-checks (to use a term decades in its future) the Robert Heinlein story <i>The Man Who Sold the Moon</i> about a business man, one Harriman, who puts together the financing for the first lunar expedition. In a subsequent story, the old Harriman has never got to the Moon, and bribes a barnstorming rocket jockey who flies people to orbit and back (this is by analogy with '20s- and '30s-era pilots who would do something similar at county fairs and the like) to bring him there---he's too old and in too bad shape to be allowed an official trip. I think of this when I hear 'I thought you died alone, a long long time ago'---Harriman is never depicted as a particularly nice or warm man, just one who got things done and didn't crave the limelight, and so I can easily image the pilot's believing that he (Harriman) had died alone awhile back.
I'm a bit sceptical about all the heaven and hell stuff, for the simple reason that Bowie never seemed to care about that sort of thing that much...you need remember that back a few decades, when Bowie was coming up, the more rationalist among us, of whom D.B. is one, really believed that we had superstition on the run. Growing up, if you had told me that in the U.S. people would be fighting over teaching standard biology in our classrooms unto this day, I would have thought you were crazy. Admittedly, Heinlein might have bought that, as he grew up around Bible-thumpers even though he never was one, and understood the deep American need to be conned....we'll fall for anyone who claims he can sell us a ticket to heaven, or the Moon, or the World.
@GeraldFnord I agree and I detest the religious overtones in the song. Although D.B. did get involved in the religious argument by playing Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).\r\nI do think that D.B. is talking vaguely when he speaks of spirituality when he probably just means drug dependence and the "creatures of habit"
@GeraldFnord I agree and I detest the religious overtones in the song. Although D.B. did get involved in the religious argument by playing Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).\r\nI do think that D.B. is talking vaguely when he speaks of spirituality when he probably just means drug dependence and the "creatures of habit"