“At the centre of it all, at the centre of it all”
The new issue of Classic Rock magazine (#251, Summer 2018), has fifty pages of Bowie-related content, including the cover, a full-page advert for next week’s Welcome To The Blackout release, thirteen pages dedicated to "BOWIE: His Greatest Songs" and a separate 24-page Bowie photo supplement, confusingly called "BOWIE BACKSTAGE", containing 26 classic Bowie photographs, of which, just 5 are actually backstage.
The magazine also has a 4-page article on the criminally underrated Pin Ups album with recollections of the recording sessions from Mike Garson, not to mention a 6-page Mott The Hoople retrospective, though we just did.
The "BOWIE: His Greatest Songs" feature has a chronologically listed 58 songs chosen by a similar number of rock luminaries. The selections inspired us to create a Spotify playlist of over four and a half hours.
Binge listen here.
The songs start at The London Boys and end with Lazarus, with some wonderful contributions from various rock persons. Here’s a bit of what Dave Matthews had to say regarding Blackstar:
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“The song and the album are both unbelievable. I find it almost infuriating that somebody could be such an unrelenting artist. Staring at one’s own mortality and calmly producing something of that magnitude – also doing it in secret! – is barely conceivable. I mean, put yourself in the place of his band. When they find out that he was there singing and making that music, knowing his time was dwindling…Good grief, what kind of a human being could do that?”
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We'll leave you with the list of songs, including our minor tweaks:
01 - The London Boys
02 - When I’m Five
03 - Space Oddity
04 - The Width Of A Circle
05 - Saviour Machine
06 - All The Madmen
07 - The Bewlay Brothers
08 - Life On Mars?
09 - Changes
10 - Queen Bitch
11 - Starman
12 - Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide
13 - Ziggy Stardust
14 - Moonage Daydream
15 - Hang On To Yourself
16 - Five Years
17 - Suffragette City
18 - All The Young Dudes (We’ve selected the Bowie/Mott hybrid for those who have never heard it)
19 - The Jean Genie
20 - John, I’m Only Dancing (Aladdin Sane session version as it’s sandwiched between two Aladdin Sane tracks)
21 - Drive-In Saturday
22 - Rebel Rebel
23 - Diamond Dogs
24 - 1984
25 - Fame
26 - Young Americans
27 - Stay
28 - Sound And Vision
29 - Breaking Glass
30 - Lust For Life (Iggy Pop)
31 - "Heroes"
32 - V-2 Schneider
33 - Boys Keep Swinging
34 - DJ
35 - Fashion
36 - Ashes To Ashes
37 - Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
38 - Under Pressure (with Queen)
39 - Modern Love
40 - Let’s Dance
41 - China Girl
42 - Loving The Alien
43 - Absolute Beginners
44 - Under The God (Tin Machine)
45 - Some Are
46 - You Belong in Rock ‘N’ Roll (Not on Spotify. We have selected another Tin Machine track instead. I Can’t Read. A song Bowie liked enough to revisit for the soundtrack of The Ice Storm in 1997)
47 - The Buddha Of Suburbia
48 - The Hearts Filthy Lesson
49 - No Control
50 - Hallo Spaceboy
51 - I’m Afraid Of Americans
52 - The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell
53 - Thursday’s Child
54 - Slip Away
55 - New Killer Star
56 - Where Are We Now?
57 - Blackstar
58 - Lazarus
#BestOfBowie #ClassicRockMagazine