Lyrics Series I 11 I From “Panic in Detroit” (1973)

Panic in Detroit, I asked for an autograph

Bowie occasionally played around with the concept of frivolous behavior in the face of catastrophe. Think, “ As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent you asked for the latest party” from “Diamond Dogs” or “Battle cries and Champaign, just in time for sunrise” from “Aladdin Sane.” “Five Years” depicts characters going about their lives amidst news that the end is nigh. But my favorite expression of this concept comes from one of my favorite songs, “Panic in Detroit.”

The song is set amidst societal breakdown, in which celebrity conflates with violent revolution, and politics conflate with criminality. The narrator seeks an autograph from “the only survivor from the National Peoples Gang.” We never learn his exact politics, but we know he looks a lot like Che Guevara.

If “Diamond Dogs” paints a post-apocalyptic scene, “Panic in Detroit” describes a kind of apocalypse in motion. Yet Bowie’s characters can’t take calamity all too seriously whether before, during or after.

It’s not like Bowie is advocating laughing at danger. His dark scenarios have dire consequences. Songs like “Ashes to Ashes” and “The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell” are essentially about what happens next, and, as another of his song intonates, the next day is none too pretty.

“Sunday,” which Bowie released nearly 30 years after “Panic in Detroit,” might very well be a sequel. As Bowie’s narrator in “Panic” is running around looking for an autograph, he passingly notes, “a trickle of strangers is all that were left alive.” “Sunday,” which takes on a more somber tone, picks it up from there:

“Nothing remains
We could run
When the rain slows
Look for the cars or signs of life
Where the heat goes
Look for the drifters
We should crawl under the bracken
Look for the shafts of light on the road
Where the heat goes”

To be clear, Bowie is not celebrating hedonism. If anything, he’s warning that superficiality and placing value in fatuous things spells doom. Yet, he has a sense of humor about it in songs like, “Panic.” There’s almost a kind of admiration for the shallow, or at least a kind of fatalism that suggests that disaster is inevitable. This sentiment is even expressed in some of Bowie’s songs that are generally taken as inspirational, such as (and especially) “Heroes.” The narrator proposes being heroes “just for one day.” In, “As the World Falls Down,” a song written and performed for a children’s movie (Labyrinth), Bowie celebrates falling in love as the world collapses.

Bowie continues with the theme again and again. So why do I especially like the idea as expressed in “Panic?” I think, in part, because it’s funny. I have this image of someone running around burning buildings and rotting corpses thinking the most important thing is to find the celebrity revolutionary because he’s famous. This is radical chic in musical form.

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I always thought that if I ever got to meet Bowie, I’d make some sort of “I asked for an autograph” joke. Sadly, I never got the chance.