But what was “rock n’ roll” here? In 1990 it meant Guns ‘n’ Roses and Warrant-it was no place for some crackpot dandy like Bolan, let alone Bowie entering his high Dorian Gray period. Bowie’s phrasing of the last words, a slight aspiring push upward, suggests that he knows it’s a dubious claim. The big hook, triggered to the song’s one chord change, is “ you belong in rock n’ roll… well, so do I,” a weakly Bolanesque line. Bowie in “Rock n’ Roll” has to really work the sale, and seems to vaguely despise himself for it. Bolan had known he was the prize-the come-ons were just for show, he was just peacocking for his own delight, as he’d already closed the deal.
Bowie’s come-ons in “Rock n’ Roll” are shopworn and banal by comparison: the girl (or rock itself) reminds him of “cheap streets,” she says “cheap things,” she’s got a “bad look.” It’s third-rate seduction. The guiding spirit is Marc Bolan in his prime, comparing girls to cars and mountain kings: I love the velvet hat–you know the one that caused a revolution…you got the blues in your shoes and your stockings…I’ll call you Jaguar if I may be so bold. Thankfully that’s not the case here-Bowie’s “Rock n’ Roll” is too slight, too moody, too crass, although he is chasing after ghosts in it. An old friend once said that it was never a good sign when an aging band wrote a song with “rock and roll” in the title (he was thinking of Kiss, who had just put out “God Gave Rock and Roll to You”), as it usually was a cue for gross nostalgia or base pandering. The title suggested some kind of reckoning with the past: after the bridge-burning of Tin Machine, it seemed to be Bowie trying to align himself for a fresh decade. But compared to U2’s brooding religious erotica, “Rock n’ Roll” is camp trash, with Reeves Gabrels playing his guitar solos with a vibrator.* Possibly inspired by U2’s “With or Without You,” it shared with the latter a bass-driven, deep-crooned verse, a sudden dynamic shift in the chorus (triggered by the title phrase) and a simple, repeating chord progression-“Rock n’ Roll” just uses the first two chords, C and G, of “With or Without You”‘s cycling C-G-Am-F.
The lead-off single of Tin Machine II, “You Belong in Rock n’ Roll” was Bowie’s most overt attempt at pop since “Never Let Me Down,” and it tanked, charting only (and poorly) in the UK, ignored by the rest of the world. But abandon from what?Īlan di Perna, “Ballad of the Tin Men,” Creem, 1991. With a band like Guns ‘n’ Roses, lyrically there’s a kind of abandon there. The whole weight of having gone through the apocalyptic vision of the Seventies, the greed and vanity of the Eighties: these are things that none of the younger bands knew about or experienced. I think the whole idea of talking about the feelings that you have between your mid-30s and mid-40s…there are endless experiences there. But in what you can give rock and roll, yes. You Belong In Rock n’ Roll (live, Oy Vey Baby, 1991).Īre there any new ideas left to be discovered in rock and roll?īowie: In rock and roll, no.
You Belong In Rock n’ Roll ( Eleva2ren, 1991). You Belong In Rock n’ Roll ( Sacrée Soirée, 1991). You Belong In Rock n’ Roll ( Top of the Pops, 1991). You Belong In Rock n’ Roll ( Wogan, 1991). You Belong In Rock n’ Roll ( Paramount City, 1991). You Belong In Rock n’ Roll (single mix, video).
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