The sound-picture Moroder created for Bowie gave him the license to go gloriously over the top. Bowie’s sepulchral croon in the opening verses (it seems like a near-parody of Jim Morrison at times) plays against Moroder’s minimalist percussive tracks—a repeating cymbal pattern, clattered sticks—and droning, yearning synth lines. And the sudden octave-leaping explosion of “putting out fire….WITH GAS-OH-LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!” that triggers the “full band” entrance is a magnificent moment, giving Bowie such presence that everything that follows, everything stupid and campy about the song (and there’s lots), is just burned away—Bowie rips into lines like “it’s been so long” or “you wouldn’t believe what I’ve BEEN THROUGH” as in a fever. The track goes on far too long, the backing singers eventually try to defuse Bowie, but there’s a lurid, pulp power to the track—the film it’s scored for seems unworthy of it. Nearly two decades later, “Cat People” found its true role, used by Quentin Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds for a sequence that reveals the plans of the Jewish avenger Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) to condemn and massacre a cinema full of Nazis. Used here, lines like “it’s been so long” or “judgement made can never bend” suddenly sharpened, gained bloody, righteous purpose. “Cat People” now seems written for Laurent, who was born two years after it was recorded; in her, the song finally found its muse. ~ From the David Bowie blog, PUSHING AHEAD OF THE DAME: bowiesongs.wordpress/
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 07:25:54 +0000
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