He plays with the similarities to allude to himself, between scars and scary. Paradise immediately stained by the shadow of his scars hidden under the layer of glam: “ I’ve got scars that can’t be seen”. Resuming the model of otherworldly dialogue, even Bowie brings us straight into “the bosom of Abraham”, straight to the afterlife with a dry, striking phrase: “ Look up here, I’m in Heaven”, exactly the beginning of the song. In the Gospel of Luke (16, 19-31) we find the two characters that the White Duke would incarnate in parallel, as the master of theatre (Drama) that he was: a Lazarus that is a wounded beggar, a marginalised, suffering human monster that immediately after death is brought by angels right “into the bosom of Abraham” (“ in Heaven”), and at the same time the opulent antagonist who, having ignored the wounds of others, is in anguish (“ in Danger”) before divine judgement. He seems to want to quote not the risen Lazarus, but that of a lesser known parable, whose narrative is as innovative as this song, unfolding almost entirely in the afterlife.

It almost seems that in Lazarus, Bowie’s unearthly talent wanted, once again, to represent himself bivalently: both a scary monster covered with scars, and a greedy millionaire with the world at his feet. The meeting with Reeves Gabrels made me realise that I could not continue like this.” Scary monster: Lazarus, the monster and its scarsĮl’azar, the one who is assisted by God. I thought I had nothing more to say and thought only to earn as much as possible I was afraid of being near the end. “I didn’t know what I was doing anymore intoxicated with success, I had lost my natural enthusiasm for things.

Personally I don’t think it’s proper to criticise that dance-pop period – certain things really were remarkable – but in a 1995 interview Bowie himself was very strict about his 80s: Devotion from which not even our hero escaped: “I was looking for your ass” confessed Bowie in 2016 but in those days everything really was Fashion. Once defined his “perfect balance”, it was a musical work of high synthesis between art rock and pop which offered a decisive contribution to the best sound aesthetic of the following decade, a decade devoted to the cult of image and possession, in which everything was joyfully trade and business. In facts, if at the beginning of the 70s he was The man who sold the world, only ten years later he could very easily have bought that world back, and without anyone being able to object: just arrived in New York in 1980, David Bowie was the King: “By the time I got to New York, I was living like a King, then I used up all my money…”.Ī kingdom claimed in Heroes ( “I, I will be king”) and constantly rising from Hunky Dory to the Berlin trilogy: years that culminated in Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980, a bridge between two irreconcilable eras.

Bowie lazarus