Lyrics series | 3 | from “Rock ‘N Roll Suicide”

“Oh no, love, you’re not alone
You’re watching yourself, but you’re too unfair
You got your head all tangled up
But if I could only make you care
Oh no, love, you’re not alone
No matter what or who you’ve been
No matter when or where you’ve seen
All the knives seem to lacerate your brain
I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain
You’re not alone”

“Rock ‘N Roll Suicide” succeeds in putting words to what must be universally felt from time to time, for which words previously did not seem adequate to describe. At its core, the song describes a feeling of being overwhelmed and hopeless due to a situation of one’s own making. As always, Bowie is speaking to the alienated. In this case, perhaps, this feeling of alienation is situational— the line I heard somewhere about Bowie being all the weird kids’ favorite might not apply here, because we’ve all had our heads all tangled up with self-judgement. In this case, our sense of isolation is self-imposed, but the point of Bowie’s song is that it is an illusion. Because we’re not alone.

This is a song of friendship. But the friend here also feels a sense of frustration— “if I could only make you care.” But the solution is not complicated, as he sings later, “just give me your hands, and you’re not alone.”

This is another song I’ve been listening to for years but I feel like I’m only really hearing it now, at this moment in my life. I get a shiver when I hear it. I find I can listen to the song over and over as a kind of vicarious mantra.

The song starts out with somewhat oblique and disjointed lyrics, but quickly evolves into what’s actually one of Bowie’s most straightforward major songs. The singer repeatedly reassures his audience that he understands and has been there himself, that whoever he’s singing to is “wonderful,” that he wants to help, and that she (I’m going to go with “she”) is not alone. That’s the repeated message— you’re not alone.

I think of the song as kind of a companion piece to “All the Young Dudes,” which also mentions suicide— “Billy rapped all night about his suicide; how he’d kick it in the head when he was twenty-five; speed jive, don’t want to stay alive when you’re twenty five.” In both that song and this, “suicide” is self-destructive behavior. “Rock ‘N Roll Suicide” appears on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and is first encountered as the conclusion of a story of, well, the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust. But the story that’s been superimposed on the album has always held together only tenuously— it’s an archetype that listeners have awkwardly tried to force the actual songs to fit. Sure, “Suicide” could be heard as the consequence of overindulgence in the rock and roll lifestyle. But the more Ziggy is injected into the song, the less it has universal meaning. Not everyone is a messianic bisexual space alien rock star. Sounds like a lot of pressure to me, too.

But everyone has felt like the knives are going to lacerate our brains. What a great line. I know the exact feeling Bowie is describing. It’s a cliche to say, “my head is going to explode,” but you have to think about it, and really feel it when you hear about the lacerating knives.

Here again I think of a line from “All the Young Dudes”— “is there concrete all around, or is it in my head?”

Bowie has many songs about isolation, alienation and a sense of helplessness. What’s almost unique among Bowie songs is the sentiment behind the repeated, increasingly desperate and passionate attestation that “you’re not alone.” Actually, “almost” is an exaggeration— “Rock ‘N Roll Suicide” is singularly hopeful among Bowie’s entire catalogue and therefore essential to translating everything else he did. A song like, say, “Quicksand” speaks to the alienation and isolation for sure, but offers no way out. Bowie, who wrote a song called, “I’m Tired of My Life” as a teenager, sings in “Quicksand”:

“Don’t believe in yourself, don’t deceive with belief
Knowledge comes with death’s release”

As I think about songs such as this I realize there are quite a few. The arc of Bowie’s message is bleak. Actual suicide comes up again and again— “We’ll buy some drugs and watch a band, and jump in the river holding hands” (“Sweet Thing”); “If your mother don’t love you you then the riverbed might” (“Glass Spider”). So too does suicidally self-destructive behavior— “Time, in quaaludes and red wine; demanding Billy Dolls; and other friends of mine.” You don’t need to know that Billy Dolls is Billy Murcia, the drummer from the New York Dolls who died of a heroin overdose and, as Bowie kinda predicted, has been all-but forgotten in the passage of time. There are just too many examples in Bowie songs of simply giving up in the face either of external pressures or the allure of self-destruction. Partying, for Bowie, is not fun— its pain relief that comes to an inglorious end— “the Pretty Things are going to hell; they wore it out (but they wore it well”).

But then I come back to Bowie’s one song with “suicide” in the actual title and it’s not about suicide at all. It’s about endurance and survival. The Ziggy albums ends with a song that’s not really about Ziggy. Footage of Bowie as Ziggy performing the song, moments after declaring that “its the last concert we’ll ever do” is captured in Ziggy Stardust: the Motion Picture. There, in his alien regalia and androgynous makeup, Bowie reaches his hands out to his audience. “Gimme your hands” is directed at the fans at the end of the star’s story.

But despite its seeming finality, “Rock N’ Roll Suicide” isn’t an ending at all. It’s not a star singing to his audience. It’s one friend singing to another. We don’t know how the story ends. What we know is what the friend needs to do immedtaly next— “gimme your hands.”

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This video features Irish singer and actress Camille O’Sullivan performing the song at a jazz festival. It barely qualifies as jazz, but this is a terrific performance.