Ashes to Ashes

Wow, so few people have made any attempt at looking at the meaning of the song. Jesus, guys, I'd expect this from the Linkin Park pages but this is one song that desperately needs reading closely to find any meaning.

I think saying the song's about drugs is certainly selling it short a little bit, in the same way saying Space Oddity is about a fella in a rocket isn't giving that justice, either. There's a lot of references towards drugs, to be sure, but I think that's intended more as a backdrop for the lyrics than the meaning itself.

Bowie has said this song was primarily about "wrapping up the seventies really for myself... [it] seemed a good enough epitaph for it". So it's a dirge, really, for all of Bowie's career up to 1980, and a look forward to his (then hopeful) career from then on in.

I think to see that meaning, the central parts you need to look at are, well, first the beginning - "do you remember a guy/in such an early song", which from the start sets the meaning as looking back to Bowie's early career. The self-reflexivity of the song from the very beginning mean we're looking at the song as being about Bowie writing about himself. So it's very nostalgic.

This is sharply contrasted with the chorus, "Ashes to ashes, funk to funky". Obviously, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" is part of the Anglican Christian funeral service, and the pun with "funk" means we're attending the funeral of Bowie as a musician, not a person. It's meant to mean that we're waving goodbye to the "action man" of the start of the song.

The most effective way to create a sharp dichotomy between Bowie's pre and post 80s material in one song is to do what was considered the impossible in his old songs. And what is more impossible than to bring back that eternally lost in space character, Major Tom? Bowie could have just as easily brought Ziggy Stardust back to life, or given the Thin White Duke a genuine soul, but there's another layer in making mention of Major Tom: being from Bowie's first ever hit, 11 years before, Major Tom had not only been lost in the story, but forgotten in time itself by Bowie's audience. Bowie even mentions this fact in the first line, making sure to ask "do you remember the guy...?"

And so Bowie has done the impossible and brought his first ever character back from space and back into our minds. Now to finally end the first half of his career for good there is only one thing left to do: destroy major Tom for good, so the "impossible" can not be ever done again. And what better fate for Major Tom to ultimately suffer, than the same that Bowie suffered throughout the 70s himself? And here is where the drugs come in. By presenting Major Tom as a "junkie, strung out on heaven's high, hitting an all time low" (note the title of Low in that line, another bit of self-reflexivity), Bowie also creates an analogue for his old career, as well. In an almost Dorian Gray-esque way, Major Tom is now suffering the addiction and debilitation while Bowie himself can now start again.

So the way I read it, Bowie tries "wrapping up the seventies" by bringing back his most impossibly lost character, and revealing that the intervening 11 years have treated him in the same way as they have Bowie himself. And finally, by concluding Major Tom's story, Bowie is left renewed, without the drugs, musical, and physical baggage of 11 years of musicianship.