In keeping with the 30th anniversary edition of the ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ re-release earlier in the year, EMI again dip their hands into their top-drawer material and pull out another era defining classic. And with sleeve notes by David Buckley, previously unseen photos by Mick Rock, single sleeves and other memorabilia it promises to be a veritable treat for ‘must-have’ retards everywhere. It also comes complete with a second CD featuring some pretty tasty stuff indeed: a sax version of ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’, Bowie’s version of ‘All The Young Dudes’ and a number of previously unreleased live versions of tracks off the album.
Listening to it afresh, it’s difficult to imagine The Rock Horror Picture Show ever coming near to fruition without this definitive sliver of kitsch theatre’s release in ’73. In fact, you’d be hard pressed not to say that Richard O’Brien pilfered much of the camp, lascivious, butt-clenching theatrics right off this record. It’s debased by the same scandalous re-sexing of 50s Americana (‘Drive-In Saturday’ – originally released as a single in 1970) and the same filthy and narcissistic posturing (‘Cracked Actor’ and ‘Time’ featuring the most flagrantly offensive line of any mainstream song to this day). It’s quite possible that it’s the same tunes too, if one was to be unfairly sceptical. Well, let’s say this: if The Rocky Horror Show provided the punter-friendly push of a counter cultural advance, this Visconti produced classic provided the declaration of an actual war.
Whether it transgresses gender boundaries is now pretty much inconsequential, but it’s still a phenomenally tasteful re-working of Absurdist theatre. Inspired in part by playwright Jean Genet (the original Jean Genie) the record similarly rejects traditional narratives and psychology, relying like many of Genet’s plays on ideas of transformation, illusion and interchangeable identities. Sounds easy enough when you say it fast – but make no mistake about it – Mr Bowie is a clever man – and on ‘Aladdin Sane’ he bends us, twists us and spits us out in a tissue.
The homosexuals, prostitutes, actors, thieves and undesirables that characterize much of Genet’s work also characterize ‘Aladdin Sane’. The despair, the loneliness, the defamation, the alienation all here coupled with an almost unimaginable sexual thrust; the agile energy of Mick Ronson’s sleazy, liberating riffs providing a perfectly robust foil to Bowie’s band of tethered outcasts.
In part, ‘Aladdin Sane’ depicts a man caught in a maze of mirrors, trapped by an endless progression of images that are, in reality, merely his own distorted reflection. But with a sweaty leadbelly of weight provided by tracks like ‘Watch That Man’, ‘The Jean Genie’ and ‘Let’s Spend The Night it’s album that also rocks, quite simply.
Punk’s ship sailed in ’76. It left from port right here. Whether you understand it all is another matter.