Outside (1995)

  The Bowie Project #24 – 1.Outside (1995)

In 1995, David Bowie reunited with his old collaborator Brian Eno for the experimental art rock album Outside. The two hadn’t worked together officially since the late 70s when Eno contributed to the critically acclaimed series of albums now called the Berlin trilogy. The story goes that at Bowie’s wedding in 1992 he gave Eno a tape showcasing the styles he would explore on his then upcoming album Black Tie White Noise and they discussed the idea of collaborating once again. However, it was only after the release of Bowie’s following album The Buddha of Suburbia that Eno fully committed to coming on board for a new project. Over the next couple of years the two would exchange ideas, writing mini-manifestos to each other about what was missing in music and what they thought they should be doing.

Outside was the final result, or to give its proper title, 1. Outside (The Nathan Adler Diaries or the Art Ritual Murder of Baby Grace Blue: A Non-Linear Gothic Drama Hyper-Cycle), a concept album that was inspired by concepts outside the mainstream like outsider and performance artists. Originally Bowie conceived a world where “art crimes”, such as murder, pervade society, resulting in the Leon project. Bowie faced huge resistance from record labels to this highly experimental piece of work who refused to release it due to its uncommercial nature. After that project was bootlegged Bowie went back into the studio for additional recording sessions with some more commercial material. The fragmented nature of the recording of this album means that the concept was a little all over the place, and with the subtitle a non-linear gothic drama, to try to listen to it as a straightforward narrative story would be a mistake.

The narrative is essentially a murder mystery inspired by the television show Twin Peaks, the story of Outside concerns the residents of the fictional Oxford Town in New Jersey. It follows detective Nathan Adler as he investigates the murder of a 14 year old girl. Individual tracks are from the perspectives of different characters and there are spoken word pieces between songs that convey more ideals from the characters. The story and Nathan Adler’s diary entries can be found in the CD booklet for the album.

The record displays a wide array of styles including art rock, industrial rock, jazz, electronica and ambient and is some of the most innovative and exciting work he had made in years. After the creative lull of the late 1980s and his reawakening with Tin Machine and segwaying into electronic experimental jazz territory on his last two albums it seems Bowie has now reached a point of full creative renewal and produced an album that most Bowie fans these days admit is an underappreciated masterpiece. In fact, Bowie was so excited about the project that he stated it was to be the first in a series of five concept albums, this is why it was originally titled 1. Outside, and he wanted to make a record for each year leading up to the millennium with the story of Outside ending on a cliffhanger and the CD booklet stating “to be continued…” The follow up album was to be called 2.Contamination and had even sketched out some characters for the project. However, like so many of Bowie’s over ambitious ideas it never came to fruition as he would become interested in new styles and start to explore drum and bass, techno, and jungle on his next studio album.

The record opens with a pure brooding atmosphere and a countdown of dates leading into the year 2000. An otherworldly piece “Leon Takes Us Outside” expertly sets us up for the world that we’re about to inhabit for the next 75 minutes before we enter the first true song on the record with the title track “Outside”. This song began life as a Tin Machine track called “Now”. In terms of a representation of what Bowie is trying to achieve with this record “the music is Outside” we are being transported into a concept, the music that we are hearing is not of the world as we know it, it’s full of atmosphere, imagery, mythology, and energy. Bowie is taking us on a journey and we can choose now if we want to go along with it.

The lead single from the album was “The Hearts Filthy Lesson” showcasing Bowie’s new style: dense, industrial sonic landscapes, heavy beats, samples, and stream-of-consciousness improvisations. This song is being sung from the perspective of Detective Nathan Adler and presents fragments from newspapers and magazines in a non-linear order. Much in the way the concept and idea of this album harks back to the theatricality and world building of the Diamond Dogs era Bowie is also back to using the William Burroughs influence cut-up technique to inspire the lyrics to these songs, for this reason a lot of what’s going on is quite cryptic and difficult to decipher. The song was not a commercial success but was given a boost by its inclusion in the closing credits of the David Fincher movie Se7en in 1995. The lyrics call out to Ramona A. Stone, a jeweller who appears throughout the record. However, other characters in the song including Miranda who appears to have no relevance to the rest of the record.

Starting off with a piano jazz excursion from frequent Bowie collaborator Mike Garson “A Small Plot of Land” is a song from the perspective of the residents of Oxford Town, New Jersey. The track owes a lot to the work of avant-pop experimental artist Scott Walker and wouldn’t sound out of place on his 1995 record Tilt. The lyrics here are coming from the cut-up technique but not as its most commonly imagined with pieces of paper scattered throughout the floor and put together to create something new, instead here Bowie is using a computer-generated programme called the “Verbasizer” to create the lyrics. The song builds over long brooding vocals and banging percussion. During the Outside tour Bowie would perform this track in the dead-middle of his set and would preface it with Beckettian monologue about a poor dunce who wasted his life, deserved to die, and is now dead. He would sing with his back to the audience symbolising an alienation from the crowd.

If things weren’t weird already, we enter our first Segue with “Baby Grace – A Horrid Cassette” the first of five spoken word pieces on the album. In this piece we are hearing directly from Baby Grace the murdered 14-year-old girl that the concept of this record is based around. For her murder there are three main suspects: Leon Blank, a former convict and outsider. Ramona A. Stone, a jeweller and Blank’s former lover. Algeria Touchshriek, a septuagenarian man who portrays himself – perhaps falsely – as lonely and frail. However, spoiler alter, the murderer is in fact a mysterious figure now as The Minotaur. Bowie has become fascinated in recent years about the Greek mythological figure of the Minotaur, with the body of a man and the head of a bull and had been painting the figure for some time. The voice of Baby Grace is Bowie himself with a lot of editing.

The third single from the record is “Hallo Spaceboy” which Bowie described as Jim Morrison meets industrial, like a heavy metal version of the Doors. This track is from the perspective of Paddy whose name we previously heard being called out towards in “The Hearts Filthy Lesson” but besides that allusion that can only be found in the liner notes for the record it has no relevance to the rest of the concept of the album. The single version was remixed by the Pet Shop Boys in a much more dance and club friendly version of the song that features direct allusions to “Space Oddity” and the character of Major Tom connecting it with one of Bowie’s earliest examples of character creation and theatricality in his career.

“The Motel” is from the perspective of former convict Leon Blank and was one of the earliest songs created for the record. At nearly seven minutes, it is the longest song on the album and took inspiration from the Scott Walker song “The Electrician” from the final Walker Brothers album released in 1978. “The Motel” has been described as the centrepiece of a centreless album and is a moment to breathe amid experimental chaos. The hook “there is no hell” keeps the songs moving and it’s quite beautiful and powerful as it builds towards a grand conclusion. Reminds me of other grand moments previous Bowie records like “Rock n Roll Suicide” on Ziggy Stardust, “Lady Grinning Soul” on Aladdin Sane, or even “Sweet Things” from Diamond Dogs.

One of the most conventional moments is “I Have Not Been to Oxford Town” from the perspective of Leon Blank who is awaiting trial for the murder of Baby Grace. It’s an attempt at an alibi and again we’re getting references to Ramona. This feels like Bowie is giving us the pieces to unlock the mystery and true narrative of this album, but I fear he might just be toying with us. An upbeat, strong moment for the record, it’s catchy.

Things get back to the dark brooding atmosphere for “No Control” from the perspective of Detective Nathan Adler who appears to be having some sort of mental breakdown, a sense that everything is running away from him. The song was later adapted with new lyrics for the SpongeBob Musical on Broadway which is a nice little allusion considering Bowie guest starred as the Atlantean King, Lord Royal Highness 2007 musical special of the show.

The second spoken word Segue is “Algeria Touchshriek” about the broken man who is suspected of the crime. With a slow and dreamy soundscape it is uplifted with Mike Garson's piano work.

In “The Voyeur Of Utter Destruction (As Beauty)” we are hearing from the Artist/Minotaur for the first time and highlights themes around body modification, sacrifice, and erotic torture. The song is filled with allusion to poetry (T.S. Elliot) and works of musicians like Adrian Belew and Laurie Anderson. The bones of this song were written by Tin Machine’s Reeves Gabrels and it was given threeway written credit to Eno, Bowie and Gabrels.

The third spoken word Segue is from “Ramona A. Stone” and while the vocal inflection or over the top nature of it all might make things seem a little ridiculous when you listen to what Bowie is actually saying he’s talking about himself and what he’s gone through creatively over the past number of years. When you hear lines like “I was an artiste in a tunnel, but I’ve been having a MIDI-life crisis and I’ve been dreaming in a sleep” you can read between the lines and characterisation to hear Bowie saying he’s been having a mid-life crisis but he feels like making this strange conceptual art has helped refuel him creatively. That track then leads directly into “I Am with Name” again from Ramona and creates almost entirely electronically altered sounds with the only things untreated being Garson’s piano, stripping the track as much as possible from humanity and adding to the otherworldly nature of the record.

We are back with the Minotaur on “Wishful Beginnings” which I would say is the most Lynchian moment on the whole record and the “ah ah ah” inflection even reminds of the “got a light?” Woodsman from Twin Peaks: The Return. The song gives us a glimpse into the mind of the villain of this story as the lyrics “you’re a sorry little girl” shifts into “I’m sorry little girl”. The world of Outside is a bloody and violent one there is very little hope or positivity to be found here and the most direct correlation I think of for this song actually comes from Bowie himself and “Please Mr. Gravedigger” from his 1967 debut which similarly intoned an unforgiven world as presented by deranged narrator. Bowie himself would agree because during a web-chat conversation with fans in 1998 he was asked if he would ever think of re-recording “Please Mr. Gravedigger” and he said I already did, it was called Outside.

“We Prick You” is my favourite song on the album and is sung from the perspective of the members of the court of justice and could be viewed as the three suspects being questioned on trial and being pushed to confess to a crime they had not committed. On this track you can feel the early influence of drum and bass seeping through and it’s probably the most direct link to the type style he would explore on his next album Earthling.

The fourth spoken word segue comes from Nathan Adler, the detective from Art Crimes Inc, Bowie ad libbed the vocals here and for me it’s a strange mix of Tom Waits along with the Mighty Boosh style absurdist comedy.

That leads directly into the last song from the perspective of the Minotaur “I’m Deranged”. Musically and lyrically this song shares many themes with “Look Back in Anger” from Lodger in 1979 including the appearance of an angel figure before an artist. The phrase “it’s all deranged” appears throughout the record notably to described Detective Nathan Adler but here it is to represent the Manotaur, the murderer of Baby Grace Blue. In line with the Lynchian feeling of much of the record David Lynch used this track as part of the soundtrack to his movie Lost Highway in 1997.

“Thru These Architects Eyes” is said to be sung from the perspective of Nathan Adler although I have trouble linking it to the concept. It’s a walk through an unidentified city, seeing how the buildings have taken over, how capitalism has created the world around us, there is beauty in a city's landscape, the concrete dream, but still so filled with pain and poverty, homelessness and crime. An ode and a critique of culture simultaneously.

The final segue comes again from Nathan Adler at 30 seconds long; it serves as an epilogue before the final track that appropriately resolves absolutely nothing. Finally, the record closes on a track that originally appeared on the Buddha of Suburbia “Strangers When we Meet”. A straightforward pop song it feels like it shouldn’t be on this album at all. Much in the way “The Secret Life of Ababria” strayed away from the ambient nature on the second side of the “Heroes” album, this is a complete departure from everything before it. I don’t mind that one bit, it’s a great song and no one heard Buddha of Suburbia so maybe Bowie thought he’d give people another chance. The liner notes try to tell us that it’s from the perspective of Leon and if we take the content from the previous spoken word piece into account we can infer that Ramona has died, so at a stretch we can say Leon is tyring to reminisce around all that came before the death of Baby Grace Blue, back when they were just strangers, back before things went so goddamn wrong.

Outside received mixed reviews when it was first released. Some praised the music as innovative and challenging, while others found it pretentious and difficult to follow and at almost 75 minutes in length, far too long. However, over the years the record's reputation has grown and it has been re-evaluated by many as one of Bowie’s finest works. It’s definitely not for everybody, but whatever you think about you have to admit that it is challenging, innovative, and unlike anything Bowie had previously produced up until this point. While the concept that it would be part of a five albums leading up the millennium is an interesting one I think it’s also good that Bowie decided to go on and explore other avenues, he never dealt too well with restrictions and having the next five albums mapped out would leave little room for real exploration.

Outside is grand and difficult album, it had take a while to break through the surface and really get to grips with what’s been going on, musically it’s some of the strongest stuff that made in the 1990s, the spoken word aspects might throw some people off but that’s part of the overall experience as well. The whole thing is slightly ridiculous and I think Bowie was aware of that as well, try viewing everything here through a slightly tongue-in-cheek lens and it all becomes more apparent, this point in the 90s was a dark time within the cultural zeitgeist and this was being reflected in the art with TV shows like Twin Peaks reflecting the types of brutal murders that were being committed, cases like the recent murder of Jamie Bulger also meant that people had horrid atrocities on their mind, when you consider the time this record was released it all makes more sense.

Bonus:

The bonus track for Outside is in fact the bonus track for the record’s Japanese CD release. “Get Real” is a bouncy upbeat song that recalls the kind of work Bowie was making in the 1980s. A leftover song that didn’t quite make the cut it reflects his transition out of his mid-life crisis with lyrics like “you can’t stop meaningful teenage cries, from deep behind fifty-year-old eyes”