'Station To Station' is regarded by many fans as his finest album. Every song on it is a favourite and all have been regular features in his live set - right up to the 'Sound And Vision' tour in 1990. For the 1983 'Serious Moonlight' tour five of the six songs were in the original set so it seems certain that they are some of Bowie's favourites as well. Particularly the title track which has been a mainstay of his live set - being featured as an opening number (1976), a closing number (1978) and a visual centrepiece (1983). 'Stay' is another song that has stood up well as a popular encore and forming a showpiece for his current guitarist - most notably Adrian Belew in 1978 and 1990. 'Golden Years' was a top ten single in both Britain and America and has been released twice as a single in Britain as well as appearing on numerous compilation albums.
The album was recorded in two months at a small studio called Cherokee Studios in Hollywood and was produced by Bowie and Harry Maslin who had previously worked with him on the 'Young Americans' album in Philadelphia. Of the album Bowie has said "It was like a plea to come back to Europe to me. It was a terribly traumatic time. I was in a terrible state." Bowie had been living in Los Angeles for six months after moving there in the spring of 1975 to record with Iggy Pop and was surrounded by a clique of hangers-on, groupies and music business types : "I was surrounded by people who indulged my ego, who treated me as Ziggy Stardust or one of my other characters." Wherever he went the American press referred to him as some sort of weird bisexual orange-haired freak and his American popularity was at it's peak after his number one hit with 'Fame' (ironically, a song about the perils of notoriety). He was doing the rounds of celebrity parties and using cocaine in increasing quantities : "I was skeletal . I was destroying my body." "I was absolutely infuriated that I was still in rock'n'roll ... there I was in Los Angeles right in the middle of it." A few close friends had stayed with him and let it be known that he was getting out of control so "I physically opened a wardrobe door one day and mentally put all my characters into the wardrobe and closed the door ... and left Los Angeles."
Initially his destination was to Jamaica to rehearse for his forthcoming tour but the end result of his period in Los Angeles was to be a character who was later to be known as 'The Thin White Duke' about and by whom all but one of the songs on 'Station To Station' could have been written. This idea can be felt in other Bowie projects - for example the 'Ziggy Stardust' album was composed of songs written about or by the Ziggy character and the bulk of 'Diamond Dogs' was a vehicle for the character of Halloween Jack - himself an alter-ego for the character of Winston Smith who the album is based around. It is a frequent theme through Bowie's work in the seventies that he used the idea of a character to express whatever his own thoughts and feelings were. Probably the first album to be completely his 'own' work (for the first time since the 'Space Oddity' album) was the 'Low' album of 1977. Perhaps Bowie didn't feel strong enough to voice his own feelings and had to put the words into the mouth of a third-party character. It could be argued that the first time Bowie produced an album that was entirely his own personal work , it was to be his finest - the 'Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)' album in 1980.
Bowie had spent the summer of 1975 in New Mexico making his first full-length film - 'The Man Who fell To Earth' and the effects the film had on him were far-reaching. He had spent so long playing the part of someone else that all the traits of that character had become interwoven with his own personality : "Nicholas Roeg told me after we had finished that it would take me a long time to get out of the role and he was dead right. After four months playing the role I was Newton for six months afterwards." For many fans 'The Man Who Fell To Earth' is the Bowie film because the character he plays in it - Thomas Jerome Newton - is the closest both in looks and character to Bowie himself, or as he was at the time that the film was made. In the film Newton is a lonely alien imprisoned on a hostile planet who, while waiting to return home, spends hours watching dozens of TV sets simultaneously churning out images of contemporary America. To Bowie the role must have seemed tailor-made except that his isolation was fuelled by more than just gin and television - to the extent of what he called 'hard drugs' - namely cocaine. The character that he used on the subsequent LP - the Thin White Duke - was an extension of Bowie himself and parts of Newton's character. Without detracting from the rest of the album, three songs in particular are of particular interest due to their personal nature - the title track, 'Word On A Wing' and 'Stay'.
The title track is effectively three songs joined together - the first is a speeded-up tape of the sound of a train moving at great speed and phased so as to sound as if it is moving great distances in a short time. Due to his then fear of flying Bowie had spent a lot of time travelling the great distances of the States by train and this was doubtless a familiar theme to him at the time. The second part effectively begins when Earl Slick's guitar fades in over the train and the rythmn builds to a peak and Bowie sings the first line 'The return of the thin white duke... throwing darts in lovers' eyes'. During his stay in Los Angeles and the time spent making 'The Man Who Fell To Earth', Bowie had gone through periods of extreme depression enlivened by his use of cocaine and his dabbling in mythology and obscure religions. Several of these themes can be found on the LP - the Thin White Duke is a man who has been through a period of happiness - 'once I could never be down' - but is now waiting for a release and is not certain where it will come from - 'got to keep searching and searching but oh ! what will I be believing and who will connect me with love ? The same theme crops up again in 'Stay' when 'you can never really tell when somebody wants something you want too' but in addition to this the problem of drugs crops up again 'this week dragged past me so slowly, the days fell on their knees, maybe I'll take something to help me'.
The single 'Golden Years' is the second track providing some light relief after the title track and introducing a spirit of optimism which is echoed in 'Word On A Wing'. 'I'll stick with you baby for a thousand years, nothings going to touch you in these golden years'. The feel of the song is a throwback to the previous album 'Young Americans' but with a much harder edge.
The third song 'Word On A Wing' is a "song about my new optimism that has lacked since 'Hunky Dory'. I'm back in the scheme of things." It has a very religious feel with a choral effect on the backing vocals and a church-like organ sound. the idea seems to be that Bowie is holding a conversation with God and tells him that he is trying hard to fit among his 'scheme of things' although there are aspects of religious belief that he is not impressed with - 'I don't stand in my own light' but 'as long as I can I'll walk beside you, I'm alive in you'. This is one of the oddest songs he has recorded but is the first indication of some of the ideas that were to surface on the 'Lodger' and 'Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)' albums years later. Of this song, Bowie has said "I wrote the thing as a hymn. What better way can a man give thanks for something that he has dreamed of achieving, than doing it in a hymn ? I wrote it when I felt very much at peace with the world."
'TVC15' is one of his favoutrite songs and is explained thus : "That one is about a television set. This chap buys a television set with a holgrammic picture. It throws out a sort of three-dimensional picture on the carpet. The bloke brings over his girlfriend and the television eats her, or rather the girl just jumps into the picture. The song is a eulogy to the television set, asking it to throw her back out again."
'Stay' is one of his two or three finest songs and in common with other most popular Bowie songs finds him at his most personal and realistic, such as 'Fame', 'China Girl', 'Sound And Vision' and 'Ashes To Ashes'. Bowie is often at his best when writing personally as on 'Hunky Dory', 'Low' and 'Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)' .The lyrics of 'Stay' - 'This time I know we could get it together, if I did casually mention tonight, that would be crazy tonight... stay this time, I really want you so badly this time' refer to some personal crisis that he was undergoing at the time. Indeed the song is still a personal favourite of his. One of the themes of the song is loneliness - echoing themes from 'Space Oddity', 'Fame' and 'Ashes To Ashes'.
The last song is 'Wild Is The Wind', written by Dimitri Tiomkin (who also provided music for several of the James Dean films) and the theme song for a film of the same name starring Anthony Quinn and sung by Johnny Mathis. Bowie said : "I've always loved that one. Its the only one on the album done live. It sounded so good that we left it like that." It was also the fourth single to be released from the album in late 1981 as part of the promotion for the 'ChangesTwoBowie' album with a black and white mimed video shot in a studio with session musicians and Tony Visconti playing the bass guitar. 'Station To Station' is an album of technical and artistic merit and fully deserved the praise given to it on release when it went to number 1 in Britain and number 3 in America. It is significant for two reasons - firstly it was the last of his 'character' albums and secondly it was the first time for five years (since 'Hunky Dory') to see him return to a personal style of writing which was to produce such strong work as 'Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)' and 'Lodger'.
