David Bowie Musical

[antonijan]

Syfy's "The Magicians" did a really cute tribute to David Bowie in today's musical episode titled "All That Josh".

With Cher, Gogo's, Donna Summer, Alanis M., Jimmy Buffet and Temptations getting a musical...

David Bowie definitely needs one :)

https://youtu.be/qZEi3kg3-Tk

[thirtythirtyninety]

he wrote one, right before he died

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-david-bowies-new-lazarus-soundtrack-w445615

[darquegk]

As far as a more conventional, mass-appeal jukebox musical? Rights aside, I don't really know how it would work. Duncan Sheik's lyrics for "Spring Awakening" are about the maximum level of impressionist abstraction narrative musical theatre can sustain, and Bowie's best-known lyrics (aside from one or two more narrative hits) were crafted with the "cutup method," in which chance is used to craft a series of nonsensical but evocative phases, which are then riffed on and worked into more polished lyrics.

How does an actor (hell, how does even Bowie) render a character piece like "Sweet Thing/Candidate" an intelligible portion of a narrative? It's part of why his "Hunger City 1984" musical never came to fruition: he couldn't get the rights to tell Orwell's story, and wasn't sure how to harness his own evolving style to narrative.

[Sondheimite]

darquegk said: "As far as a more conventional, mass-appeal jukebox musical? Rights aside, I don't really know how it would work. Duncan Sheik's lyrics for "Spring Awakening" are about the maximum level of impressionist abstraction narrative musical theatre can sustain, and Bowie's best-known lyrics (aside from one or two more narrative hits) were crafted with the "cutup method," in which chance is used to craft a series of nonsensical but evocative phases, which are then riffed on and worked into more polished lyrics.

How does an actor (hell, how does even Bowie) render a character piece like "Sweet Thing/Candidate" an intelligible portion of a narrative? It's part of why his "Hunger City 1984" musical never came to fruition: he couldn't get the rights to tell Orwell's story, and wasn't sure how to harness his own evolving style to narrative."

Love the intersting points you bring up.  Perhaps an actor performs in the same way that one performs in a David Lynch movie, as almost an impressionist paint stroke?  But that would be much harder now that David Bowie is no longer with us to hold the brush.  

[Lot666]

darquegk said: "How does an actor (hell, how does even Bowie) render a character piece like "Sweet Thing/Candidate" an intelligible portion of a narrative? It's part of why his "Hunger City 1984" musical never came to fruition: he couldn't get the rights to tell Orwell's story, and wasn't sure how to harness his own evolving style to narrative."

I have nothing noteworthy to add to this, only an anecdote. "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)" may well be my all-time favorite Bowie piece. I became a fan at a very young age and Diamond Dogs was the first album I ever bought with my own money. When I first listened to this suite of songs in the middle of side one, I felt uncomfortable and even a bit scared. It took me a few years to work out why. I was so disappointed that his 1984 show never became a reality.

[darquegk]

I think that piece is deliberately designed to be scary, more than it is to actually impart any knowledge into who the Candidate is or what he wants. (Bowie's song "Alternative Candidate," which shares a few lines, is a much clearer character piece but less vivid.)

It's certainly a sanity-slippage piece with a predatory point of view, but whether the singer is a politician, a drug dealer, a gigolo or simply delusional is left intentionally vague. The instrumental interlude between Parts 1 and 2 was described as intended to sound like the start of the guillotine at the dawn of a new French Revolution, and from that point, the lyrics become even more obtuse and violent. By the time the sax solo hits, the Candidate is proposing a drug fueled double suicide, before revealing one of Bowie's pet preoccupations: "Do you think that my face looks the same?"

If there's one central theme in Bowie's work- like Roger Waters was preoccupied with his father's death in WWII- it's Bowie's clinging to any identity, to Identity itself, in the face of his brother's descent into mental instability. By the time he was recording "Station to Station," these references had become cryptic and obsessive, but here, the cracks are starting to show: the Candidate worries that he might not be the person he used to be, or the person he believes he is.