Cygnet Committee
| Cygnet Committee | |
|---|---|
| David Bowie | |
| publication | 4th November 1969 |
| length | 9:33 |
| Genre (s) | Folk rock , psychedelic rock |
| Author (s) | David Bowie |
| Publisher (s) | Philips Records |
| album | David Bowie (Space Oddity) |
Cygnet Committee is a title of David Bowie in 1969. The song appeared on David Bowie (Space Oddity) . The album was released on November 4, 1969 on Philips Records and concludes its A-side. In the US , the song appeared on Mercury Records on an album called Man of Words, Man of Music , before it was re- released in 1972 as Space Oddity . The song was produced by Tony Visconti .
Until the opening title of his album of the same name Station to Station in 1976, the nine and a half minute folk rock song Cygnet Committee was Bowie's longest studio composition.
history
Bowie developed Cygnet Committee from an earlier composition, which stylistically was reminiscent of the musical designs by Simon & Garfunkel . The demo version of the original version, completed in 1968, included a vocal duet with John Hutchinson; it had the working title "Lover to the Dawn". This version was planned for his folk combo Feathers , which soon broke up and performed with David Bowie's friend Hermione Farthingale.
Textual conception
In this song Bowie takes the place of a spiritual teacher who shows his listeners "the right way of life" with an apodictic style ("I opened doors that would have blocked their way"). Here echoes of Thus Spoke Zarathustra are awakened. Bowie, who a short time later was to create a mystical, Nietzschean cult figure with Ziggy Stardust , already tested his alter ego as a messianic preaching ambassador with this piece. At the end of the song the repeating, Christian "believe" changes into a Nietzschean "live". At the same time, however, Bowie is disappointed in the song that he is not noticed by his own fan base as expected ("I gave them [my] life ... They drained my very soul"). As is often the case in Bowie's oeuvre, this song is based on an anti-utopia, a fictional story set in the future that has the negative outcome of a dystopian story. This is continued in the final track of Ziggy Stardust , Rock 'n' Roll Suicide .
reception
Cygnet Committee was perceived as Bowie's first masterpiece. The title laid the foundation for the future direction of the artist Bowie - in the change from an aesthetic songwriter to a leader with a messianic sense of mission, who clears stones out of the way of his followers, but then has to find out that he is despised and defeated with his own means . Bowie himself recognized in this the endeavors of a disaffected hippie society to want to submit to a charismatic leader, but not be able to.
Live versions
- Bowie played the song live on The Sunday Show on February 5, 1970; The legendary English radio presenter and DJ , John Peel , led the show, which was broadcast three days later .
- In 2000 the song was released on the album Bowie at the Beeb .
more publishments
- An alleged release as the B-side of the single The Width of a Circle was not an official RCA single, but a fan pressing.
- The song appeared on the Japanese compilation The Best of David Bowie in 1974 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ James E. Perone, The Words and Music of David Bowie
- ↑ The Girl With the Mousy Hair: Hermione Farthingale
- ↑ Andreas Jacket, David Bowie - Station to Station / The Philosophy of the Split Image of God , page 101 ff.
- ↑ Chris Welch, We Could be Heroes (1999)
- ^ A b Nicholas Pegg, The Complete David Bowie , p. 257
- ^ Roy Carr & Charles Shaar Murray, Bowie: An Illustrated Record , pp. 28 f.
- ↑ 1970 - The Sunday Show: Introduced by John Peel