Station To Station - Style and Themes

Style and Themes

Station to Station is often cited as a transitional album in Bowie's career. Nicholas Pegg, author of The Complete David Bowie, called it a "precise halfway point on the journey from Young Americans to Low", while for Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray, it "effectively divides the '70's for David Bowie. It ties off the era of Ziggy Stardust and plastic soul, and introduces the first taste of the new music that was to follow with 'Low'."

In terms of Bowie's own output, Station to Station's Euro-centric flavour had its musical antecedents in tracks like "Aladdin Sane 1913-1938-197?" and "Time" (1973), while its funk/disco elements were a development of the soul/R&B sound of Young Americans (1975). More recently Bowie had begun to soak up the influence of German motorik and electronic music by bands like Neu!, Can and Kraftwerk. Thematically the album revisited concepts dealt with in songs such as "The Supermen" from The Man Who Sold the World (1970) and "Quicksand" from Hunky Dory (1971): Nietzsche's 'Overman', the occultism of Aleister Crowley, Nazi fascination with Grail mythology, and the Kabbalah. Pegg considered the album's theme to be a clash of "occultism and Christianity".

The musical style of "Golden Years", the first track recorded for the album, built on the funk and soul of Young Americans but with a harsher, grinding edge. It has been described as carrying with it "an air of regret for missed opportunities and past pleasures". Bowie said that it was written for—and rejected by—Elvis Presley, while Bowie's wife at the time Angie claimed it was penned for her. Though a top ten single on both sides of the Atlantic, it was rarely performed live on the subsequent Station to Station tour. "Stay" was another riff-driven funk piece, "recorded very much in our cocaine frenzy", according to Alomar. Its lyrics have been variously interpreted as reflecting on "the uncertainty of sexual conquest", and as an example of "the Duke's spurious romanticism".

The Christian element of the album was most obvious in the hymn-like "Word on a Wing", though for some commentators religion, like love, was simply another way for the Duke to "test his numbness". Bowie himself has claimed that in this song, at least, "the passion is genuine". When performing it live in 1999, the singer described it as coming from "the darkest days of my life... I'm sure that it was a call for help". The closing ballad, "Wild Is the Wind", was the album's sole cover, and has been praised as one of the finest vocal performances of Bowie's career. Bowie was inspired to record the song after he met singer/pianist/songwriter Nina Simone, who sang it on the album Wild Is the Wind (1966).

The spectre of The Man Who Fell to Earth's Thomas Jerome Newton sprawled in front of dozens of television monitors is said to have partly inspired the album's most upbeat track, "TVC15". Supposedly also about Iggy Pop's girlfriend being eaten by a TV set, it has been called "incongruously jolly" and "the most oblique tribute to The Yardbirds imaginable".

The title track has been described as heralding "a new era of experimentalism" for Bowie. "Station to Station" was in two parts: a slow, portentous piano-driven march, introduced by the sound of an approaching train juxtaposed with Earl Slick's agitated guitar feedback, followed by an up-tempo rock/blues section. In 1999 Bowie told UNCUT magazine, "Since Station To Station the hybridization of R&B and electronics had been a goal of mine". Despite the noise of a train in the opening moments, Bowie claims that the title refers not so much to railway stations as to the Stations of the Cross, while the line "From Kether to Malkuth" relates to mystical places in the Kabbalah, mixing Christian and Jewish allusions. Fixation with the occult was further evident in such phrases as "white stains", the name of a book of poetry by Aleister Crowley. The lyrics also gave notice of Bowie's recent drug use ("It's not the side effects of the cocaine / I'm thinking that it must be love"). With its Krautrock influence, it was the album's clearest foretaste of Bowie's subsequent 'Berlin Trilogy'.

Speaking to Creem magazine in 1977, Bowie proclaimed that Station to Station was "devoid of spirit ... Even the love songs are detached, but I think it's fascinating."