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Bowie, David - 1976 Station to station
Identifier
019613
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Wikipedia
Station to Station is the tenth studio album by English musician David Bowie, released by RCA Records in 1976. Station to Station was the vehicle for his last great "character", the Thin White Duke. The album was recorded after he completed shooting Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, and the cover artwork featured a still from the movie. During the sessions Bowie was heavily dependent on drugs, especially cocaine, and has claimed he recalls almost nothing of the production.
Musically, Station to Station was a transitional album for Bowie, developing the funk and soul music of his previous release, Young Americans, while presenting a new direction towards synthesisers and motorik rhythms that was influenced by German electronic bands such as Neu! and Kraftwerk. This trend culminated in some of his most acclaimed work, the so-called 'Berlin Trilogy', recorded with Brian Eno in 1977–79. Bowie himself has said that Station to Station was "a plea to come back to Europe for me". The album's lyrics reflected his preoccupations with Nietzsche, Aleister Crowley, mythology and religion.
Blending funk and krautrock, romantic balladry and occultism, Station to Station has been described as "simultaneously one of Bowie's most accessible albums and his most impenetrable"
A description of the experience
Station To Station - David Bowie
The Secret Jewish History of David Bowie - Seth Rogovoy
Madonna had nothing on David Bowie when she came out as a devotee of Kabbalah in 1998. British rock star Bowie, …. beat Madonna by 20 years or so when he sang about the sefirot, the mystical vessels of divine energy, in the title track of his 1976 album, “Station to Station.”
Really? Yes. Sure enough, Bowie sings, “Here are we, one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth” in “Station to Station,” perhaps the only usage of kabbalistic terminology in Hebrew ever by a major international pop singer. The lyrics refer to the divine emanations of the infinite: Kether, or “the crown,” said to be the divine will or pure light, and Malkhuth, or kingship, the nurturing receptacle of that light. Bowie was pictured on the back of the album, drawing a diagram of the 10 Sefirot, an activity he purportedly engaged in with some frequency while recording the album in Los Angeles — a time during which he was supposedly bombed out of his mind on cocaine.
Station To Station"
The return of the Thin White Duke
throwing darts
in lovers' eyes
Here are we one magical moment
Such is the stuff from
where dreams are woven
Bending sound
Dredging the ocean lost in my circle
Here am I
Flashing no colour tall in this room
overlooking the ocean
Here are we
One magical movement
from Kether to Malkuth
There are you
You drive like a demon
from station to station
The return of the Thin White Duke
throwing darts
in lovers' eyes [x2]
The return of the Thin White Duke,
making sure white stains
Once there were mountains on mountains
And once there were sunbirds
to soar with
And once I could
never be down
Got to keep searching
and searching
Oh what will I be believing
and who will connect me with love?
Wonder who wonder who
wonder when
Have you sought fortune evasive and shy?
Drink to the men who protect you and I
Drink drink drain your glass
raise your glass high
[CHORUS 1]
It's not the side-effects of the cocaine
I'm thinking that it must be love
It's too late
- to be grateful
It's too late
- to be late again
It's too late
- to be hateful
The european cannon is here
[CHORUS 2]
I must be only one in a million
I won't let the day pass
without her
It's too late
- to be grateful
It's too late
- to be late again
It's too late
- to be hateful
The European cannon is here
[CHORUS 3]
Should I believe that I've been stricken?
Does my face show
some kind of glow?
It's too late
- to be grateful
It's too late
- to be late again
It's too late
- to be hateful
The european cannon is here, yes it's here
It's too late [5 times]
The European cannon is here
[CHORUS 1]
[CHORUS 2]
[CHORUS 3]
It's too late [repeat ab inf]