BOWIE’S ANGIE

I thoroughly enjoyed your feature honouring David Bowie’s 60th birthday in issue 332 and the opportunity you took to remind readers what a great album Young Americans is, even though at age 16 I did wonder what the hell he was up to!

But I’d like to challenge an oftenrepeated myth perpetuated in your track-by-track analysis – that Can You Hear Me was written for Ava Cherry. I might have bought into that theory too, if it were not for one undeniable giveaway in the lyric – as sung, not as written. When it was first pointed out to me in 1981, I rubbished the suggestion – Bowie would never give himself away so easily in a song. But I had to concede, there it was, plain as day. At the end of the second verse, after the dramatic, building lines “It’s harder to fall/Can you hear me call?”, with one word, Bowie delivers the most personal, confessional, naked and vulnerable line he has ever committed to a record. Instead of leading into the chorus with “Can you...”, he clearly intones “Angie...” Gives me goosebumps every time.

by Andy Bassett
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