My Favorite Nacho Video: “Sweet Thing” Suite

I don’t know what it is with me, but I like to rank things and put things in lists that usually exist only in my head. When I turned six years old I followed my practice of the previous two years and changing my favorite number to match my age. But— I actually remember this— in an early nod toward keeping it real, I decided then and there that this would be the last time. Six would be my favorite number going forward. And, while the importance of having a favorite number has receded over the past half-century, I have never wavered since.

In the same vein, at some point, many years ago, I decided that my favorite Bowie songs (which are, at the same time my favorite songs) are and forever would be, in order— “Beauty and the Beast;” “Panic in Detroit” and “Queen Bitch.” And so they are, and so they have been.

But that number four spot fluctuates. Currently, and for a while now, that distinction belongs to “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)” off Diamond Dogs. The reality is, based on the frequency that I summon up this song (I’m going to call it a single song), and the extent to which I have contemplated its Byzantine depths over the past five years, for all practical purposes it is my true favorite song.

I am not alone. The song comes up again and again when I interview “Bowie people,” often as their favorite, too. Nicholas Pegg, who I have yet to interview called it, “one of the great Bowie songs” and that “Bowie’s vocal performance is among his finest ever.” It’s too long, and frankly too weird to have ever become a genuine hit or to make it onto more mainstream lists of “Bowie’s greatest,” but it holds a special place in the hearts of many Bowie fans.

I have yet to recount the full and true meaning I assigned to the song during the “year of the scavenger,” which for me was 2021. I’ll do that someday, and no, Bowie could not have anticipated what the song would come to mean for me, personally on a subjective level.

Anyway, it’s a shame that there wasn’t a video. There was the potential for a “Blue Jean”-style mini movie, but maybe that would have been too much for 1974, and the song is too dark for mass consumption. (Though, the album Diamond Dogs was actually a product designed for mass consumption, so maybe I’m wrong).

Many years after its released, though Nacho, who will join me tomorrow for an exclusive interview, came to the rescue with the help of audio from Bowie’s 1974 appearance at the Universal Amphitheater and footage from Alan Yentob’s documentary, Cracked Actor.

Nacho’s notes, in the YouTube description, are fascinating and I won’t reproduce them here, but I will echo his reaction to hearing live versions that I initially found to be inferior to the one that’s on the album. They, and especially this live version have grown on me, and the video, which itself is that mini-movie, has a lot to do with it.

It isn’t exactly a coincidence that I’m featuring this video today, two days after I saw Earl Slick perform at the Berklee College of Music along with what was otherwise an all-student Bowie tribute concert. He makes an appearance during a guitar solo here (the sequence of which is described, briefly in the dramatized Bowie Odyssey ‘74, by Simon Goddard, who is also an upcoming interview guest). Mike Garson, who I recently interviewed as well, can’t be seen in the video but can definitely be heard through distinctive piano playing. It’s a reminder both of Bowie’s ability to attract musical talent and that these guys and others, who were very young at the time, have still got it today.

Anyway, enjoy the video and be sure to come back Saturday for my exclusive interview with the man himself, Nacho!