Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell: The Dangerous Glitter of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed Book

I recently watched, for the first time, Todd Haynes's 1998 film "Velvet Goldmine", a fictionalized "interpretation" of the 1970s glitter-rock era. Specifically, the film focused on David Bowie; except, in the film, Bowie was a character named Brian Slade (played wonderfully by Jonathon Rhys Meyers), who fakes his own death in 1974 and disappears into obscurity, or so everyone thinks. It is meant to reference Bowie's "killing off" of his Ziggy Stardust persona on-stage, and the multitude of subsequent transformations---personally, publicly, and musically---that characterized his post-'70s music career.

Apparently, Bowie himself saw the film and didn't like it, and I can understand why. While beautifully shot, with a killer soundtrack, the film is somewhat cruel in its treatment of Bowie. On top of that, it's not wholly accurate. For example, the film focuses on an alleged homosexual love affair between Bowie and Iggy Pop (a character named Kurt Wild, played by Ewan McGregor), which ultimately led to a hostile divorce between Bowie and his wife Angela (played by Toni Collette).

In everything I've read about Bowie and Pop's friendship, I have never come across any evidence that theirs was a sexual one. Granted, it's Bowie and Pop we're talking about: two men who enjoyed pushing the envelope of societal mores and cultural sexual norms, so anything is possible, but from what I've gathered, theirs was mostly a friendship based on mutual respect of each other's musical talent, of which both of them had in abundance.

Plus, Angie and Bowie's divorce had been a work in progress, and it hadn't been finalized until 1980. Close friends and enemies all agreed that it probably should have happened years before, but very little of it had anything to do with Pop.

There is also Haynes's more-than-implicit condemnation of Bowie for becoming a sell-out in the '80s, with his release of his 1983 album "Let's Dance". I personally think that this is unfair, only because "Let's Dance" was one of the very first vinyl albums I ever bought, and I loved that album to death. So what if Bowie happened to make an album of catchy pop tunes, almost all of which got serious radio-play? As if true musical artists can't also write popular songs that everyone likes. For fuck's sake, I dig Arcade Fire, but I also like Taylor Swift. Sue me.

It's an age-old silly argument, though, between music-lovers and pretentious musical "artistes".

For a somewhat more objective take (as if that were at all possible) on the '70s glam-rock era, check out Dave Thompson's immensely readable and thoroughly researched book "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell: the Dangerous Glitter of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed".

This book---besides having the coolest title in the world---is rock journalism at its best. This book will remind you of Cameron Crowe's film "Almost Famous", if that movie had been rated NC-17, of course.

Thompson's treatment of Bowie, Pop, and Reed is a fair one, if not always a glowing one. Bowie comes across as a British dandy sometimes who seems way out of touch with the crassness of the New York scene. Pop just comes across as an idiot, albeit an idiot who has more talent than he knows what to do with. Reed just comes across as a pretentious asshole, but I suppose that's a part of his charm.

It's basically a chronological examination of the phenomenon that was glitter rock, starting with Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground, moving into Bowie's Ziggy Stardust days, his introduction to Iggy and the Stooges, Reed's resurrection as a New York rock icon, and, finally, the inevitable dissolution of the glitter rock era as the UK Punk movement slowly encroached upon the scene. Weird to think that all of this only happened within a few short years. It seemed like a lifetime.

"What about the annihilation of self?" asked the New Musical Express.
"I have tried that in the past --with some success, I might add."
"But you gave it up?"
"I do it on weekends." -Jimmy Osterburg
A crash-course for the ravers. Doesn't diverge from the generally accepted version of things but adds a plethora of interconnections.

When the Velvet Underground played the Cafe Bizarre in Greenwich Village, six sets a night for three nights before Christmas 1965, Gerard Malanga, Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol were there.

The Cafe Bizarre engagement was a disaster. Occasionally the band would slip into a song that the audience-- on occasions that there was an audience, might recognize... but they concentrated on their own compositions, and swiftly discovered that the club's owner was not a big fan of theirs, or of their dissonance.
"The Black Angel's Death Song"-- in which viola keened over percolating guitar while Reed's vocals clashed staccato poetics with nightmarish vision-- was especially objectionable, and finally the owner laid out an ultimatum. If they played that song once more, they would be fired on the spot. "So we started the next set with it," Sterling Morrison laughed, "the all-time version" --and sure enough, they were fired. And hired almost immediately.

The audience was listening.

Author Thompson proceeds in this vein to shake out all the webs of influence and connection, starting in the early mid-sixties and proceeding thru the late seventies. Everybody's here who was anybody: Mott The Hoople, Marc Bolan & T-Rex, Maryanne Faithfull, Romy Haag, Wayne County, Cherry Vanilla, Mick Ronson, Nico, John Cale, Ingrid Superstar, Kraftwerk, Anita Pallenberg, Johnny Thunders, Stiv Bators, Brian Eno, Roxy Music, Patti Smith, and the New York Dolls. Sinatra and Bing Crosby make cameo appearances too.

Here's Iggy Pop on the old Max's Kansas City hang : "I was a kid from the midwest who had some exposure, mainly through books and records, to both the outrageous and the arts. I was aware of John Cage, I was aware there was a concert that had been given consisting of a woman playing nude cello while someone else beat the strings of a piano with hammers, I was aware of these things... But coming into that room [Max's:] was kind of like entering a University Of Dementia ... "

Heady times, sights and sounds of the never-before and never-again. Thompson sticks to the standard hagiography of Pop/Glam here: In the beginning there was Warhol, it was almost good, and even better with the Velvets as the soundtrack. The general idea became The Idea as one David Jones lifted a million outré cues from pop culture and created alienist & clairvoyant, doppelganger 'David Bowie'; even more unexpectedly, the Idea persisted to become flesh with circumstances conspiring to give birth to Iggy Pop, idiot-savant and world's-forgotten-boy ... Warhol is the grey (or shock-platinum) Eminence who founds the cult, Lou & the Velvets the greek-choir; wizardly Bowie triangulates the signs & symbols, and emerges as a different Other every outing; Iggy subsumes, encapsulates and proceeds to yank down the swish velvet curtains in the sanctuary.

As on this occasion :

Pop gasped, "I don't think I had ever seen so many rock critics in one room in my life, nor will I ever. If they weren't rock critics, they looked like rock critics. It was just wall-to-wall."
Pop's reputation for self-destruction had of course preceded him and he was in no mood to disappoint. Wayne County recalled watching Pop leave the stage mid-set, and pick his way through the audience via their chairbacks and tables, until he finally tumbled from his perch and landed chest-down on a table stacked with glasses. As he rose from the shattered mass, his chest was slashed to ribbons, with one cut so deep that, every time Pop moved his left arm back, a jet of blood shot out.
So he kept on doing it.
"It was horrible, like a Roman arena," County shuddered, but the show went on, Pop still singing even as roadie Bob Czaykowski attempted to patch him up with duct tape. But Pop was bleeding so heavily that the tape couldn't adhere to the flesh ..."

Enchanting times, lilting tunes, and a good day's work turned in by all contestants.