“Working Class Hero” Updated

I do these updates when the video link I originally used for earlier posts break down. I think I originally linked to a live version of Tin Machine performing this John Lennon cover. I didn’t write much about what I thought about the song in my original post— I mostly don’t like it, and worse, see it as a missed opportunity. There’s easy-to-find footage of Bowie doing a great cover of “Imagine” at a concert during the Serious Moonlight tour. That’s Bowie singing one of Lennon’s best and most beloved post-Beatles song. While I understand Bowie himself was fond of “Working Class Hero,” I think it’s an example of Lennon deliberately trying to make iconoclastic music. The song isn’t catchy, it’s not subtle, it’s not poetic — in all those respects it fits on the first Tin Machine album, but what’s the point? Why exactly are we listening to this song?

Expanding on the question of, what’s the point, what was Lennon’s point? The song suggests that people born into working class households are prescribed their futures and steered through life by unnamed “folks on the hill” that use them up and spit them out. No self-determination in this vision. The mindset behind this song is kind of a counter to “Give Peace A Chance”— how can anyone give peace a chance if they have no agency? This is especially ironic considering that John Lennon himself obviously shook off his working class destiny, only to become, a hero to many (and not in the ironic way of the song).

Bowie’s own roots were more middle class, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say he also transcended the kind of working class fate that Lennon’s lyrics depict as so dehumanizing.

The one out allowed for in the song is for those born into the working class to rise above their stations by learning how to “smile while [they] kill.” Is that how Lennon and Bowie saw their own paths to success? Or, as they were singing this song as famous and wealthy men, did they still think of themselves as working class heroes?

No, I don’t especially like the song. “Imagine” probably wouldn’t have been a good fit for Tin Machine, but I don’t know, maybe they could have done “Revolution.”

Here’s what I originally posted on 10/22/2016, Day 280 of the tribute:
I missed John Lennon’s birthday last week, but there are many Bowie covers of Lennon songs to make up for it. This is Tin machine’s rendition of “Working Class Hero,” but Bowie also did “Across the Universe,” “Mother,” and “Imagine.” Lennon collaborated on “Fame,” although I’ve always been suspicious about the extent to which he actually contributed to the song. Bowie supposedly admired Lennon, Elvis and Frank Sinatra as pop-role models. Album: Tin Machine.