Rock and Roll Salvation

Rock and Roll Suicide – David Bowie, from the Ziggy Stardust Album, 1972.© EMI Music Publishing

“Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth
You pull on your finger, then another finger, then your cigarette
The wall-to-wall is calling, it lingers, then you forget
Ohhh how how how, you're a rock n roll suicide”

Inspired from memories of seeing the scene from the excellent Cracked Actor Documentary, made by Alen Yentob, © BBC 1975 in which David Bowie describes the cut-up technique he used for writing some of his lyrics.

 

He sits crossed legged, gaunt and drawn as thin as a Belsen survivor, his clothes draped over clothes hanger wire shoulders. Scissors in hand, he cuts up the phrases and sentences. Surrounding, on the wall to wall, the paper birds shout and cry out to his spirit waiting in the wings. He scrambles them and listens for that newly created, free based, wellspring of juxtapositions. Some linger, some are forgotten. His hands holds his cigarette; he breathes in its smoke and exhales the poetry of his cracked mind, perhaps saving himself from being another rock and roll suicide.