This song was so easy. Being young was easy. A really beautiful day in the park, sitting on the steps of the bandstand. ‘Sailors bap-bap-bap-bap-baaa-bap.’ An anomic (not a ‘gnomic’) heroine. Middle-class ecstasy.
I took a walk to Beckenham High Street to catch a bus to Lewisham to buy shoes and shirts but couldn’t get the riff out of my head. Jumped off two stops into the ride and more or less loped back to the house up on Southend Road.
Workspace was a big empty room with a chaise longue; a bargain-price art nouveau screen (‘William Morris,’ so I told anyone who asked); a huge overflowing freestanding ashtray and a grand piano. Little else.
I started working it out on the piano and had the whole lyric and melody finished by late afternoon. Nice.
Rick Wakeman came over a couple of weeks later and embellished the piano part and guitarist Mick Ronson created one of his first and best string parts for this song which now has become something of a fixture in my live shows.
By David Bowie for Daily Mail (MailOnline UPDATED: 21:53, 28 June 2008)
Bowie Bandstand photo by Wendy Woo
Questa canzone \u00e8 venuta facilmente. Essere giovani era facile. Una giornata veramente bella al parco, seduto sui gradini del palco. \u2018Sailors bap-bap-bap-bap-baaa-bap.’ Un\u2019eroina an\u00f2mica (non \u2018gnomica\u2019). L\u2019estasi della media borghesia.
Feci una passeggiata in Beckenham High Street a prendere un autobus per Lewisham per comprare delle scarpe e delle camicie ma non riuscivo a togliermi quel ritornello dalla testa. Saltai gi\u00f9 dopo due fermate e pi\u00f9 o meno galoppai fino a casa su in Southend Road.
Lo spazio in cui lavoravo era una grande stanza vuota con una chaise longue, un paravento a buon mercato (‘William Morris,’ cos\u00ec dicevo a chiunque me lo chiedesse), un enorme posacenere autoportante stracolmo di mozziconi e un pianoforte a coda. Poco altro.
Cominciai a lavorarci su al piano e completai l\u2019intero testo e la melodia per il tardo pomeriggio. Bello.
Rick Wakeman capit\u00f2 dalle mie parti un paio di settimane dopo e riprese la parte per pianoforte arricchendola e Mick Ronson cre\u00f2 una delle sue prime e migliori parti per chitarra per questa canzone che ora \u00e8 diventata qualcosa come un punto fermo nei miei spettacoli dal vivo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This song was so easy. Being young was easy. A really beautiful day in the park, sitting on the steps of the bandstand. ‘Sailors bap-bap-bap-bap-baaa-bap.’ An anomic (not a ‘gnomic’) heroine. Middle-class ecstasy.I took a walk to Beckenham High Street to catch a bus to Lewisham to buy shoes and shirts but couldn’t get the … Continua a leggere DAVID BOWIE: I went to buy some shoes – and I came back with Life On Mars<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[148,150,149,46],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","tag-bowie","tag-david-bowie","tag-life-on-mars","tag-memories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":684,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions\/684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cloudeating.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}