Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)

The Bowie Project #14 – Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)

David Bowie’s 14^th studio album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) was released on September 12 1980 and would be his final album for RCA Records, the label who had released all of his albums since Hunky Dory in 1971. Over the last number of years Bowie had achieved major artistic success with the release of his Berlin Trilogy, however those albums were less successful commercially and by 1980 Bowie had found himself in the precarious position where bands and artists who were inspired by that trilogy were actually out selling him. Low and “Heroes”, both released in 1977, were seen as precursors to post-punk and influenced artists like Joy Division and the Human League, while 1979’s Lodger’s use of world music is credited for inspiring artists like Paul Simon and the Talking Heads. Those albums were made in collaboration with self-described “non-musician” ambient pioneer Brian Eno and were incredibly experimental and based on improvisational techniques. This album however was different, Bowie spent time writing lyrics and music and was created with the idea of commercial success in mind. At this point in time a number of Bowie copycats, such as Gary Numan, were beginning to emerge and receive great acclaim. Biographer David Buckley claims that the success of Numan indirectly led to Bowie’s decision to take a more commercial direction for this release, to show everyone that he is still a rock n’ roll superstar. 

Now free from the drug addiction and despair that had plagued him over the last number of years, Bowie left Europe in 1980 and travelled to New York to begin work on his next album. The sessions began one week after his divorce from Angela Barnett was finalised, he was granted full custody of their son Duncan and she received a settlement of £500,000 to be paid over 10 years. He later said:

“There was a certain degree of optimism making Scary Monsters because I'd worked through some of my problems, I felt very positive about the future, and I think I just got down to writing a really comprehensive and well-crafted album.”

The sound of the album was the culmination of all the work Bowie had done throughout the 1970s; it had an art rock, new-wave, post-punk aesthetic that Bowie had pioneered and coming into the 80s was becoming increasingly popular. Bowie himself described the record as “the epitome of the new wave sound at the time”. The recording sessions featured a number of guest musicians from Television’s Tom Verlaine to Pete Townshend from the Who. It deals with many of the same themes Bowie had been exploring throughout his entire career; madness, alienation and the redeeming power of love but by this point Bowie in a more self-reflective position, having come out the other side of real turmoil and drug addiction he was beginning to look back on his own legacy and how it relates to his own personal sense of identity.  The promotion of the album also coincides with the launch of MTV and the era of 24 hour-a-day music on television. The visual element of Bowie’s artistry was something that had always been held back within the confines of the expectations of 70s rock stars and this album was accompanied with two highly regarded and innovative music videos that allowed him to showcase the more theatrical and visual aspects of his aesthetic.

The album opens with “It’s No Game (No.1)” a song which is split into two parts that opens and closes with record. The lyrics are spoken in Japanese by actress Michi Hirota which Bowie screaming the English translation “as if he’s literally tearing out his intestines” according to NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murphy. Bowie stated the female vocal is intended to break down “a particular kind of sexist attitude” regarding Japanese girls and woman in general. The song was partly inspired by an earlier some called “Tired of My Life” and Bowie said his vocal performance owes a lot to John Lennon’s vocals his Plastic Ono Band album. These frantic vocals of the song are in sharp contrast the second part at the end of the record which is delivered in a much calmer controlled manner.

“Up the Hill Backwards” is a song concerned with the struggles of facing a personal crisis and was influenced by Bowie’s divorce. The songs opening lines ““The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom/And the possibilities it seems to offer/It’s got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it” are an almost direct quotation from Dada: Art and Anti-Art by Hans Richter which in a way showcase the correlation between coming out of a crisis and the endless possibilities available to you as well as the breathe and range of creativity available to an artist. The lyric “I’m OK, you’re so-so” is a reference to Thomas Anthony Harris’s 1967 self-help book I’m OK – You’re OK, which is a practical guide to transactional analysis, a psychological method for solving problems in life. To me the power in the backup vocals gives the song an almost anthem like feel, it’s a deeply layered song that is complex in its musicality and is one of my favourite moments on the record.

The title track “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)” charts a woman’s descent into madness and has been compared to Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control”. Bowie has said the song is from the perspective of a man, and his conflicted feelings about the influence he has on his shy girlfriend, he compared the uncertainty of his upcoming career in the 1980s to the anxiety that you feel when you are entering a new relationship. The track is a build-up of tension and is filled with overwhelming sense of claustrophobia along with heavy distorted guitar. It was released as a single but failed to make much of an impact.

The big hit from the album and the lead single was “Ashes to Ashes” which would become Bowie’s second UK number 1 single. The lyrics see Bowie looking back on his career and revisiting his first significant character, Major Tom from “Space Oddity''. In the original song Major Tom was an astronaut estranged in space. In this song Bowie reinterprets the character as an oblique autobiographical symbol for himself in the midst of his drug addiction as a “junkie, strung out in heaven's high, hitting an all-time low". The song is incredibly reflective, and Bowie said was “very much a 1980s nursery rhyme” that was him wrapping up his experiences of the 1970s. The music video for the song is one of the most iconic of the 80s and at a cost £250,000 is still one of the most expensive of all time. The New Romantic movement heavily influenced the music and image and featured Bowie in a Pierrot pantomime costume that would become associated with this era of his career. The spoken word backups and ethereal otherworldly synth sounds of the song always gives me goosebumps; the whole thing is a really incredible artistic achievement.

The second single, “Fashion”, took its melody and bassline from the earlier song “Golden Years''. A funky groovy song that initially may seem quite surface level and one-dimensional, but upon further inspection actually has a lot more going on underneath the surface. With lyrics like “we are the goon squad and we’re coming to town” seeming to correlate the idea of fashion with fascism and the way that an ingroup/outgroup, us versus them, mentally is created in modern society amongst different groups and subcultures. Biographer David Buckley said the song “poked fun at the banality of the dance-floor and the style fascists” of the New Romantic movement. Like “Ashes to Ashes” before it, the single featured an elaborate music video. Bowie has said he considered the track to be a sequel to the Kinks “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” which satirised the image-conscious style police of the 60s and he was doing the same for the 80s.

At 33 years old at the time this album was released Bowie was now in position to observe the pop-culture around him from a more detached perspective. “Teenage Wildlife” is a reaction to the New Romantic movement that was developing around him with acts like Gary Numan, the Human League, and Duran Duran becoming popular. With lines like “same old thing in brand new drag comes sweeping into view” show Bowie’s realisation that pop-culture while pop culture can be quite cyclical, he has also had a huge effect on the current zeitgeist. At almost seven minutes it is Bowie's longest song since the title track of Station to Station, the guitar Robert Fripp’s guitar work and Chuck Hammer’s guitar synthesizer sound on the song owes a lot to “Heroes”. Of the song Bowie said:

“I guess it would be addressed to a mythical teenage brother if I had one. Or maybe it’s addressed to my latter-day adolescent self, I’m not sure. Trying to correct all those things that one thinks one’s done wrong, you know. And trying to approach a young mind that is not forearmed to the hypocrisies that he will encounter and the stubbornness to change that people have, and to accept change and to flow with it, rather than become reactionary and fight against it, which produces the terrible conflicts that we find around us.”

“Scream Like a Baby'' is a return to familiar thematic territory for Bowie: A futuristic dystopia. The lyrics concern a man named Sam, imprisoned for unknown crimes, and it recalls aspects of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as well as Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, two books that have had a huge influence on him during his glam era. Bowie’s vocals are distorted, and pitch shifted as the song warps as the character starts to become brainwashed and forced to live up to society's expectations. The song’s setting of a police state in a homophobic society feels like a comment on the public backlash against a freer more diverse culture in the wake of the New Romantic movement, gender barriers were beginning to break down and some were reacting negatively to it.

The only cover on the album is “Kingdom Come” a track from Television’s Tom Verlaine debut album released the year before, demonstrating Bowie’s affection for the emerging post-punk styles and a hope to bring that sound to a larger audience. Bowie said of Verlaine, “I think he’s one of the finest new writers in New York. He’s really terrific. I think he’s got a… I wish he had a much bigger audience.” Verlaine was actually invited to play guitar on the recording and he came to the studio but he spent so much time testing different guitar amps that the whole day passed, everyone went to lunch and left him to it, when they came out he was still fiddling with the amps. Producer Tony Visconti said in the end they didn’t use any of his playing on the recording, and they never saw him again after that. Bowie said the backup vocals were inspired by the Ronettes to give it slightly doo-wop 1960s sound along with a punk rock energy.

“Because You’re Young '' was dedicated to Bowie’s son Duncan who would have been nine years old at this point. Continuing a theme that pervades throughout the record the song is Bowie reflecting and advising the young generation. Bowie said, “I guess I’ve adopted the role of a sort of an old roué in that one, looking down on these two young mad things, and knowing that it’s all going to sort of fizzle out. God, I’m a depressive person, aren’t I?” Pete Townshend from the Who was brought in as a guest guitarist for the track, at this point he was at a low point in his life, the Who’s drummer Keith Moon had died of an accidental overdose the year before and Townshend was drinking heavily. While his guitar was used on the track it is buried low in the mix. Overall, it’s a great track and I would say quite underrated in Bowie’s catalogue.

The album ends where it began with “It’s No Game (No.2)” although this time Bowie is much more subdued and less frantic. The change in style could be interpreted as reframing a situation, the passing of time changes your opinion, you have time to think through, calm down, lose your anger. The entire album is full of doubt and question, looking at the society around you and questioning it, examining generational differences, and the legacy you leave in life.

When the album was released, it received universal praise from critics and audiences alike. Bowie was entering the 1980s with a long legacy behind him but also demonstrating that he was just as capable a mainstream pop act as any of the New Romantics. “Ashes to Ashes'' was a number one hit single and “Fashion” was voted one of the top tracks of 1980 by NME. However, in the wake of his friend and collaborator John Lennon’s death in December 1980 Bowie cancelled plans to promote the album on a concert tour. It was around this time as well that Bowie was playing the lead role in a theatrical performance of The Elephant Man, and after Lennon’s murderer Mark David Chapman was arrested it was revealed that he had attended a performance of the play and at one point considered Bowie a potential target. Bowie became paranoid that he too would be assassinated and for a while became somewhat of a reclusive living in Switzerland.

This album would be referred to throughout Bowie’s career as his last great album and future releases would always be compared to it, with reviews commonly stating things like “his best work since Scary Monsters”. It’s a great record, and while some might lament the move away from the more experimental works in the Berlin trilogy in a way it is good to see him embracing a more mainstream sound, his legacy is long and his influence is far-reaching, there are many bands and artists on the scene imitating sounds that he developed to great success, so he may as well take a piece of the cake too.

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ [8/10]