Now, when looking at interesting lyrics, a couple songs stick out and BEG for some type of translation. None of which could possibly be more confusing than The Bewlay Brothers. The Bewlay Brothers was recorded for Hunky Dory, one of his premier lyrical albums. Without further ado, here are the lyrics :
And so the story goes they wore the clothes They said the things to make it seem improbable
The whale of a lie like they hope it was
And the good men of tomorrow had their feet in the wallow and their heads of brawn were nicer shorn and how they bought their positions with saccharin and trust
And the world was asleep to our latent fuss
Sighing, the swirl through the streets like the crust of the sun The Bewlay Brothers
In our Wings that Bark
Flashing teeth of Brass
Standing tall in the dark
Oh, And we were Gone
Hanging out with your Dwarf Men
We were so turned on
By your lack of conclusions I was Stone and he was Wax So he could scream, and still relax, unbelievable
And we frightened the small children away
And our talk was old and dust would flow thru our veins and Lo! it was midnight back o’ the kitchen door
Like the grim face on the Cathedral floor
And the solid book we wrote Cannot be found today
And it was Stalking time for the Moonboys
The Bewlay Brothers
With our backs on the arch
In the Devil-may-be-here
But He can’t sing about that
Oh, And we were Gone
Real Cool Traders
We were so Turned On
You’d thought we were Fakers
Now the dress is hung, the ticket pawned The Factor Max that proved the fact is melted down
And woven on the edging of my pillow
Now my Brother lays upon the rocks he could be dead, he could be not, he could be You
He’s Chameleon, Comedian, Corinthian and Caricature
“Shooting-up Pie-in-the-Sky”
The Bewlay Brothers
In the feeble and the Bad
The Bewlay Brothers
In the Blessed and Cold
In the Crutch-hungry Dark
Was where we flayed our Mark
Oh, and we were Gone
Kings of Oblivion
We were so Turned On
In the Mind-Warp Pavilion
Lay me place and bake me pie I’m starving for me Gravy
Leave my shoes, and door unlocked I might just slip away
Just for the Day, Hey!
Please come Away, Hey!
OK, don’t think I can translate that? Well, guess what.
I can’t. That’s the point of the song.
Bowie’s half-brother,
Terry Burns, was apparently schizophrenic, trying to commit suicide several times, and eventually doing so in 1985. In my opinion, this song, along with
“All The Madmen” and “The Width of a Circle”, was Bowie struggling to understand what was going on with Terry. I’ve worked with schizophrenics in the past. Their logic leaves you almost stunned at times. The pace at which ideas flow out is overwhelming if you try to understand what they’re conveying during an event. In
The Bewlay Brothers, Bowie rushes nonsensical phases out until he’s breathless. He’s emulating
schizophrenia. Whether or not these are actual quotes or not I have no clue obviously. But, this is definitely a song about schizophrenia. I really see it as someone who cared about someone else struggling to make sense of what they were witnessing. With
All the Madmen and
The Width of a Circle, I think Bowie tries to explain what he’s seeing to some degree, but really can’t. As Bowie slipped into his own self-imposed mental chaos, he lost track of Terry. He apparently made a brief attempt to re-connect with his brother after the 1982 suicide attempt. However, from my own experiences, trying to connect with a full-blown schizophrenic is both impossible and terribly disappointing. Bowie never saw Terry after 1982 ( from all I’ve read ). I don’t fault him for that. Terry would not have known who he was.
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