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David Bowie

Pin Ups

Virgin | 1999 | Album

Biography

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Preface: This is David Bowie's album of cover songs. Not one among the twelve tracks on this record is an original, and on the heels of a series of bona fide ground breaking and semi-groundbreaking records, the prospect of blues and classic rock standards almost sounds like a trip through a music store on the arm of the lanky iconoclast where he's selecting necessary discs for the unwashed naive. Nothing could have prepared the audience listening public for something quite as ordinary as the idea of Bowie's delving into radio standards for a record. He was Ziggy Stardust. In 1970 he defined the width of a circle. He came close to making rock audiences forget -- if just for a moment -- that the Beatles ceased operations too early.

Then came this: something old, something blue, definitely something borrowed, yet, certainly nothing original from the cusp where he'd drawn so much inspiration.

For all those seemingly middling statements of preface, Pinups is a record you can put on the player -- in whatever format, and let it go round and round. For starters, it has the sensational "Sorrow" going for it (originally by the Merseys) one of the truly affecting songs in the Bowie catalog, bluesy and sadly not a single in its day but a later staple. There is a cover of the Who classic "I Can't Explain" that is slower, more agonizing, and lest we forget the creepy "See Emily Play" a temptingly punky version of the early Pink Floyd staple. Bowie and pal Mick Ronson show off guitar prowess with "I Wish You Would" and the thunderous "Shapes of Things" songs that were made of a different type of rock bravado than fans were used to.

Again, any assessments of Pinups come with the preface that it is a cover record. But David Bowie, even when riffing on rock's greats, does his best to leave his mark.

Erick Mertz