"Joe the Lion" is a song written by David Bowie in 1977 for the album "Heroes". It was produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti and features lead guitar by Robert Fripp. Like the album as a whole, the song demonstrates the influence of German Krautrock.
The track is in part a tribute to performance artist Chris Burden, who was famous for having himself nailed to a Volkswagen in 1974 ("Nail me to my car and I'll tell you who you are") and for having an assistant shoot him in the arm at an art gallery in 1971 ("Guess you'll buy a gun / You'll buy it secondhand"). "Joe the Lion" has also been seen as reflecting Bowie's struggle to overcome the emotional numbness that appeared to permeate his previous album Low ("You get up and sleep"). At many points in the song, the opening bassline from Bowie's song "Changes" is re-used.
Bowie played the song live on the 1983 Serious Moonlight and 1995 Outside tours.
Read more about Joe The Lion: Other Releases
Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or lion:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“Roused by the lash of his own stubborn tail
Our lion now will foreign foes assail.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)