The best art often frightens me. When I was five, Kate Bush doing ‘Wuthering Heights’ made me think she was a witch. Now I love witches. Two years later, David Bowie freaked me out in ‘Ashes to Ashes’.
It wasn’t him, per se, in his little Pierrot clown outfit, It was the strange space age synth sounds and David Mallett’s hallucinogenic video. It was the most expensive video of all time at that point, with the solarising colour FX and blacking of the sky. I’d never seen or heard anything like it, and in spite of- or possibly because of – that, it’s become an all-time favourite.
It still stands the test of time, as does the track, Bowie referencing both Major Tom and old nursery rhymes. It was a convergence of past and present, with kids from the Blitz club cameoing (notably Visage’s Steve Strange) and harkening back to his first official hit, ‘Space Oddity’.
Hit The North 