Music / Station to Station

"Never look back, walk tall, act fine."

"Well worth stopping for."

— Tagline from the album's advertising campaign.

Station to Station is the tenth studio album by David Bowie, released in 1976 through RCA Records. It is seen as a precursor to his "Berlin Trilogy" (Low, "Heroes" and Lodger), which began the following year.

It's a Concept Album built around a character named The Thin White Duke, a character Bowie thought up while writing a story called "The Return of the Thin White Duke" during the filming of The Man Who Fell to Earth, a still of which is used for the album cover. This eventually resulted in this music album, influenced by Krautrock music, which would be explored much closer in the Berlin albums that followed.

It was recorded in Los Angeles while Bowie was suffering a full-blown cocaine-induced psychotic breakdown and had just finished appearing in the Cult Classic The Man Who Fell to Earth. He claimed in interviews he remembered nothing about the recording other than describing the guitar sound he wanted on the title track to the session musician, but there are many stories about his behaviour at the time.

Station to Station was commercially successful upon release, peaking at No. 5 on the UK Albums chart and No. 3 on the Billboard 200, as well as being certified gold in the UK, the US, and Canada.

Station to Station was supported by three singles upon its initial release: "Golden Years", "TVC 15", and "Stay". A heavily truncated version of the Title Track was also released as a promo single in France. Bowie's cover of the Johnny Mathis song "Wild Is the Wind" was later released as a single in 1981 to promote the Greatest Hits Album Changestwobowie, on which it was included.

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Tracklist:

Side One

1. "Station to Station" (10:14)
2. "Golden Years" (4:00)
3. "Word on a Wing" (6:03)

Side Two

4. "TVC 15" (5:33)
5. "Stay" (6:15)
6. "Wild Is the Wind"^note Originally by Johnny Mathis. (6:02)

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Bonus Tracks (1991 Reissue):

7. "Word on a Wing (live)"
8. "Stay (live)"

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This week troped past me so slowly; the days fell on their knees...:

• Alliterative Title: "Station to Station."
• Alternate Album Cover: The 1991 Rykodisc and 1999 EMI/Virgin reissues use the uncropped, full-color version◊ of the cover photo, with the title text overlaid atop it, as the album art. A Japan-only "mini LP" CD in 2007 would revert back to the 1976 cover, with all later reissues since then following suit. The sole exception is the Who Can I Be Now? [1974-1976] Boxed Set's copy of the 2010 remix, which uses a color-corrected version of the 1991 cover.
• Anti-Love Song: A recurring theme throughout the album; true to the Thin White Duke's sociopathic nature, most of the lyrics on the album are made to read like love songs, but in context come off as coldly calculated and insincere.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: The Thin White Duke, a cold-hearted cocaine addict with a taste for fascism who spends time "throwing darts in lovers' eyes".
• Big Bad: The Thin White Duke, who is a heartless Fascist.
• Breather Episode: "Word on a Wing", just mildly so; while still fairly moody in tone, the lyrical content is much more honest; Bowie himself even confirmed that it's the only track on the album whose lyrics were written in earnest.
• Cover Version: "Wild Is the Wind", the title song from a 1957 film. It was originally recorded by Johnny Mathis, though Bowie seems to have based his version on Nina Simone's, as discussed below under Lost in Character.
• Darker and Edgier: This album takes the "plastic soul" of Young Americans and directs it in a more dour, brooding direction with heavier emphasis on experimentation and occultism. The Thin White Duke was also a much, much more unpleasant figure than any of Bowie's other personae; getting Lost in Character and saying things he would later end up regretting was one of the reasons Bowie stopped creating such characters.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The original LP cover features a cropped black and white photograph taken on-set during the production of The Man Who Fell to Earth, featuring Bowie as Thomas Jerome Newton entering his self-built return ship^note the image is commonly mistaken to be an actual still from the film, but at no point is Thomas ever shown actually walking into the ship from that specific perspective. While the cropping appears to be a stylistic choice, particularly given the large white border and stark red text, the decision to make it black and white came from Bowie seeing a full-color version of the original image and finding the skyline behind the ship's door artificial-looking.
• Digital Destruction: The original US CD release by RCA Records is mastered at an abnormally low volume compared to the label's other Bowie CDs, and turning the dial up reveals that the sound is extremely thin compared to the original LP; the latter can also be said of the Japanese RCA CD, which is simply a volume-boosted version of the US CD. Both discs also lop off the very start of "Word on a Wing". The European RCA CD doesn't have any of these problems; consequently, a repressing of it was included in the 2010 deluxe edition as a bonus disc.
• Doo-wop: "Golden Years" is sung in this genre.
• Double Entendre: The title phrase; in the context of the Title Track, it refers not only to literal train stations (indicated by the steam engine sounds that open the song), but also the Stations of the Cross, tying into the album's heavy occult influences and twisting of Judeochristian imagery.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: "TVC 15", inspired by a drug hallucination from Iggy Pop in which he imagined the TV set was swallowing his girlfriend.
• Epic Rocking: The title track in particular, at 10 minutes 14 seconds, is the longest studio track he ever released (although the title track of ★ was originally intended to be longer, but thanks to iTunes' single length limitations, it was trimmed for release, as Bowie did not want to confuse listeners by having the single and album versions of the song be different). "Word on a Wing" (6:03), "Stay" (6:15), and "Wild Is the Wind" (6:02) also qualify. In fact, this album's mean song length is itself nearly six minutes!
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: One of the running themes behind the album is the Duke, who has no capacity for love or for any real emotion, struggling to grasp and convey romantic sentiment; there's a certain hollowness behind the surface emotions of these songs which exposes the Duke as The Sociopath. Bowie himself says that "Word on a Wing" is the only track not meant to sound coldly calculated and insincere.
• Eye Scream: In "Station to Station", the Thin White Duke has a habit of "throwing darts in lovers' eyes".
• Face on the Cover: Bowie's face shown from a distance, in a still from The Man Who Fell to Earth.
• Genre Mashup: It combines a number of genres that weren't commonly combined at the time, as seen under New Sound Album. Some of them still aren't; arguably, no other record sounds quite like this one.
• God-Is-Love Songs: "Word on a Wing":
  "Lord, I kneel and offer you
  My word on a wing
  And I'm trying hard to fit
  Among your scheme of things"
• Gratuitous Panning: The guitar sounds mimicking a steam engine in the introduction to the Title Track Fade In on the right channel and gradually sweep into the left, as if an actual train is passing by the listener.
• Helium Speech: Some of the background singing during "Golden Years" is very high pitched.
• Incoming Ham: After the lengthy intro of "Station to Station", with bizarre sound effects mimicking a train with the Thin White Duke on board.
  The return of the Thin White Duke, throwing darts in lovers' eyes.
• Longest Song Goes First: The longest song of Bowie's career, "Station to Station", is also the opener.
• Lost in Character: Getting lost in character as the Duke, whom Bowie himself described as "a nasty character indeed", was ultimately the reason he stopped portraying characters in his music. The Duke was, amongst other things, a fascist; while Bowie generally kept his political views to himself, his actual beliefs seem to have been somewhere between libertarianism and socialism (in any case, nearly as far from fascism as possible). After Bowie got so lost in character that he actually began espousing fascism himself, he realised he'd gone down a very dark rabbit hole and decided to stop using his music to portray characters entirely. He also appears to have considered this a wake-up call regarding his drug use; he would detox from cocaine after the tour for this album. It's probably also worth noting that his band at this point and for the rest of the '70s was racially integrated, including Puerto Rican rhythm guitarist Carlos Alomar, African-American bassist George Murray, and African-American drummer Dennis Davis, which is a strong piece of evidence suggesting that the Duke did not reflect Bowie's actual beliefs. Additionally, Bowie was inspired to record "Wild Is the Wind" for this album largely because he was an admirer of Nina Simone, an African-American jazz singer known for her civil rights protest anthems who had previously recorded the song; he decided to record the song after meeting her in Los Angeles in 1975.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The overall nastiness of the Duke and the coldly calculated, insincere aspect of most of the lyrics are not obviously reflected in the music.
• Mind Screw: Good luck figuring out what the title track is about.
• Nazi Nobleman: The Duke is essentially this trope, and in fact Bowie described him as an "emotionless Aryan superman".
• New Sound Album: The album was a transitional album for Bowie; while still including the R&B, soul, and funk influence that permeated Young Americans, Station to Station was a more experimental album, with longer songs and some influence from Krautrock bands such as Neu! and Kraftwerk (particularly seen in the synthesizers and the motorik rhythms), which would be expanded further in the "Berlin trilogy" that followed. There is also some art rock, space rock, and Progressive Rock influence. The one label that can most accurately describe this unusually multifaceted sound is "avant-funk."
• Nostalgia Filter: "Golden Years":
  Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years
• The Not-Remix: Received one in 2010 by co-producer Harry Maslin, first included on an audio DVD as part of a Boxed Set devoted to the album, before later being made available on CD, LP, and digitally exclusively as part of the Who Can I Be Now? [1974-1977] Boxed Set.
• One-Word Title: "Stay".
• Please, Don't Leave Me: "Stay".
  Stay — that's what I meant to say or do something
  But what I never say is
  Stay this time
  I really meant to so bad this time
  'Cause you can never really tell
  When somebody
  Wants something or wants to stay
• Re-Cut: 8-track releases reshuffle the tracklist to fit the constraints of the format's four-program configuration. UK 8-tracks feature the running order "Golden Years", "TVC 15", "Stay", "Wild is the Wind", "Word on a Wing", and "Station to Station", while North American 8-tracks use the running order "Station to Station", "Word on a Wing", "Wild is the Wind", "Stay", "TVC 15", and "Golden Years". Additionally, due to them overlapping with the changeover between programs, both "Station to Station" and "Wild is the Wind" are split into two parts across regions.
• Secret-Identity Identity: The threat of the heartless, Fascistic Duke, who was partly inspired and "aided" by Bowie's substance abuse problems, consuming him was the primary reason he stopped creating and assuming such stage personae.
• Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: The album was recorded when Bowie was going through a severe cocaine addiction.^note How severe, you ask? Bowie claimed in interviews that he remembered absolutely nothing about the three-month recording process save for a vague recollection of describing how he wanted the guitar on the Title Track to sound, and that's not even getting into his well-publicized psychotic episodes. Many of the metaphors and lyrical techniques in the Title Track also allude to the effects of acute and chronic cocaine use.
• Shout-Out:
  • The album cover is a photo taken on the set of The Man Who Fell to Earth, depicting Thomas Jerome Newton entering the space capsule that will return him to his home planet. The shot is commonly claimed to be a still from the movie, but while similar frames exist, none of them are a 1:1 match. The album cover of Bowie's next album Low would also be based on an on-set photo from that film's production.
  • The title track references Aleister Crowley's book "White Stains". The words "From Kether to Malkuth" refer to mystical locations in the Kabbalah.
• Sincerity Mode: Bowie later indicated that "Word on a Wing" was the only song whose lyrics he truly meant sincerely.
• The Sociopath: The Duke has no capacity for emotional arousal, and spends the album attempting to comprehend love and other stimulating emotions through cognitively (and sometimes physically) twisted means that are blatantly cold and calculated.
• Special Guest: Roy "The Professor" Bittan of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band plays piano and organ parts throughout the album.
• Television Portal: "TVC15" has the protagonist's girlfriend crawl into a TV set and never come back: by the end of the song he's wondering whether to follow her or not. Yes, this is from his "cocaine madness" era, but in this case it was Iggy Pop's .
• Time Title: "Golden Years" is named after the period of time in which one's life was most productive/satisfying/fulfilling, tying in with the ironic lyrics about living life through a Nostalgia Filter.
• Title Track: "Station to Station", which by logical extension also features an Album Title Drop:
  You drive like a demon from station to station.
• Train Song: "Station to Station". It even starts with train sounds.
• Uncommon Time: The title track is almost entirely in 10/4 for its first half (though it could also be counted as five-measure patterns of 4/4). There are some more time signature changes before it settles on 4/4 for the ending. Despite its rhythmic complexity, its groove never lets up; if it doesn't at least get your head moving, you're either lying or simply don't have a sense of rhythm. Along similar lines, "Stay" cuts out a beat in the last measure of each verse, but this doesn't ruin the song's groove at all.
• Villainous Cheekbones: His angular cheeks served him well as The Thin White Duke (which came at a time when he was downright bony, weighing as little as 90 lbs, which at a height of 5'10" is frighteningly frail).
• Villain Protagonist: The heartless, fascist Thin White Duke acts as the narrator of the album. However, the music eschews a Sympathetic P.O.V. in favor of doubling down on the Duke's status as a vile figure, with the opening line of the album describing him as "throwing darts in lovers' eyes."
• Wall of Text: The album credits are styled to run into each other without spaces.
• Waistcoat of Style: The Thin White Duke's black one was vital to the character's look; as himself, Bowie would wear one for the Sound+Vision tour as well.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: An overarching theme of the album, courtesy of the downright sociopathic Duke.

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