Someone I follow on Facebook shared a post by John Foxx’s page (actually officially labelled as “John Foxx and The Maths”) in which he posted this image of a letter from David Bowie to Tony Visconti. Foxx added – “Interesting to read this note from David Bowie to Tony Visconti from the 1970s – sending him on a mission for a copy of ‘any Ultravox album’.”
I’m taking by the things he’s asking for and esp. from the time of release on the singles that it is probably this time of year in 1977 this letter was written.
He’d be ramping up for the release of Heroes. The single comes out the same week as The Clash’s Complete Control – September 23rd, 1977. The album is released (“Heroes”) three weeks later. Episode one of the second series of So It Goes airs on October 9th.
As a “magpie” – he was always pretty quick on the uptake. It’s actually kind of intriguing to see him just…buying stuff like us normal plebs. You’d think he’d have extra know-how or would already be somehow exposed to these things and have “insider knowledge”.
There had already been one series of So It Goes by this point…but I guess it was regional and only airing on Granada in the Manchester area so…why would he know?
I love the off-handed almost disdain and disregard of punk – by his faffing about with it. Lol. But then maybe it was more his annoyance at yet another pigeonhole label for yet another genre of music that never seemed fitting? And well, I guess, for him, “punk” would be old. It had been a word used in the U.S. and New York in particular as a style of music for a few years by this point.
“Swizzleland”. Lol. He just sounds so…ordinary.
But he never was. Never ever.
It’s also brought home to me how very little I have listened to him in recent years. So caught up in all things Simple Minds and my….fixation with a certain Glaswegian fae Toryglen, that I have hardly given David’s music any of my time at all.
But I have still been avidly tuning in to the MainMan podcast every week and will be devouring the latest episode this evening. Perhaps even partaking in a listen of a Bowie album afterwards.
“Heroes” seems apt somehow.
Most appropriate tune off the album right now? Sense Of Doubt. For me. For the world. All of it.