“Ashes to Ashes” and the Humiliation of David Bowie
“Ashes to Ashes” is one of David Bowie’s most iconic songs. It collapses myth, reinvents old characters, and confronts the shadows of his own past. In this episode, we trace the story behind the song: its deep ties to “Space Oddity,” its place within Bowie’s 1980 album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and the new era it ushered in for Bowie after the Berlin Trilogy. Along the way, we’ll uncover the darker meanings beneath its art-pop surface, explore the groundbreaking artistry that surrounded its creation and its music video, and arrive at a moment of unexpected humiliation when Bowie himself was stripped of all mystique by a single passerby on a beach. This song is a reminder that even pop’s great chameleon was never beyond being humbled.
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WATCH NEXT:
✓ The Exorcism of David Bowie’s Swimming Pool 👉 https://youtu.be/7Lcrjc5Mzm4
✓ The Cover that SHOCKED David Bowie 👉 https://youtu.be/1U5bRdcTR5E
✓ The Dark History of “Young Americans” 👉 https://youtu.be/x8GYGY_zZr4
🎥 David Bowie on the Poetic Wax Podcast 👉 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLylroYWVYWWXbh5rk9DGX_XjU39YXBaH6
Get David Bowie on Vinyl 🎧 https://amzn.to/4lQg7xe
Get Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) on Vinyl 🎧
Poetic Wax is hosted by Andy Fenstermaker.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 The Story of “Ashes to Ashes”
1:23 Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy and the Need for Change
3:33 The Birth of Major Tom and Bowie’s Breakthrough
7:45 Childhood Revisited as a Shade of Addiction and Decay
12:09 Pierrot and High Art Meet New Romanticism
16:00 The Humiliation of David Bowie
18:56 A Nursery Rhyme for the End of an Era
REFERENCES & CLIPS:
Ashes to Ashes Music Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyMm4rJemtI
Space Oddity Music Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRMZ_5WYmCg
Station To Station (Think White Duke Clips): http://youtube.com/watch?v=tBOnE79LTQE
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-insult-that-kept-david-bowie-grounded/
https://www.bowiebible.com/songs/ashes-to-ashes/4/#google_vignette
https://www.duffyarchive.com/david-bowie/david-bowie-scary-monsters-colour-clown/
#davidbowie #ashestoashes #newromantics #berlintrilogy #scarymonsters
#vinylcommunity #vinylrecords #vinylcollection #andyfenstermaker #fensepost #vinylchannel #poeticwax #musicessay #musicstory #albumstory #musichistory #albumhistory #musicdocumentary
@AndyFenstermaker
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Next, dig into the dark history behind "Young Americans" 👉 https://youtu.be/x8GYGY_zZr4
@danielwilliamson6180
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Ashes to Ashes was David Bowie's In The Air Tonight. His dark side.
@yrooxrksvi7142
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Rather than a humiliation, "Ashes To Ashes" is a Mea Culpa, a self reflection on his guilty habits and decadent life style in the mid 70s, the consequences of success, the weight of broken hopes and dreams.
@vondalynn2906
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
This Video is full of mispronounciations and flasehoods. Quite stupid and lazy. Cringe
@Ironorchids
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
It's his best work. I wish Lorde would cover it.
@thedevilinthecircuit
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Click-bait title. You can do way better than this.
Nothing humiliating here to see. Bowie was simply re0inventing himself–again.
@robwalsh9843
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Humiliation? That's not how I would describe it. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) was a reset for Bowie. He was reflecting on a lot of things – drug addiction, artistic ambition, relationships, etc. – and how to venture into the forthcoming 1980s decade.
@cameroncameron2826
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Jaguar – the car marque – for some unfathomable reason produced a promotional video that seemed to rip off the Ashes video as if nobody would notice. (IMHO)
@chandler-k6h
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
scary monsters album worth the humilition
@duane_313
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
2:00 “Ziggy stardust’s plastic soul” 😒
@onshiplessoceans1675
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
This is really good. Thank you. Forgive me, please, for saying so, but when we have AI help us write things–and I'm not saying you did or didn't, nor am I judging it–we've got to make sure the script doesn't use words we don't know well enough to pronounce correctly. ("Underpins" is not "underpines," for example.) We should also watch out for super generic claims like "every line drips with latent meaning." Best to screen the text for pseudo-intelligent bits like that. Peace. I mean no harm. Thanks for this and for the work you do.
@dumpwoodhere
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
During filming on a beach, Bowie was in full clown costume—pale face paint, striped pajamas, and a conical hat—when an old man with a dog wandered into the shot and disrupted things. Director David Mallet asked the man, "Do you know who this is?" The guy looked Bowie up and down and replied, "Of course I do. It's some cunt in a clown suit." Bowie's ReactionBowie found it hilarious and humbling. He later said it was a "huge moment" that "put me back in my place" and reminded him he was "just some cunt in a clown suit," helping him stay grounded amid fame.
@Loosh-o7v
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Thumbs down. You are what’s wrong with YT in 2026.
@Loosh-o7v
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Should have known this was going to be another rewrite from the reality of the subject being discussed. This is 90% of what YT music channels are now. The worst is punk. They now treat it like it was every other genre of music and also as if every bandmember involved had the foresight of being aware of the music they were making’s impact in real time. It’s just so cringe and irritating.
@tamasmihaly1
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
What?
@jomeke101
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Beautifully explained…..but at the end of it all it's really just a song…
@AdamGorelick-o4t
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
I remember seeing the 'promo' video for Ashes To Ashes in 1980, and being startled by its unsettling, hypnotic beauty. I was 14 at the time, and became a huge admirer. The measure of art is how it matures with us. Bowie's best work doesn't necessarily evoke past associations, but remains open-ended, I'd say.
@adamfindlay7091
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
I'm not a bOwIe what ever. I've heard/observed his career in a new town vaguely so I just know one thing: he is melodic as hell; maybe the best there is at this. Though he did use alot of collaborators. I care not for those personas or clothes. It's the music/words that creep into our psyche though I do get the personas power/ psyche.
@contraindicator---4
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Check out the website parareligion's occult analysis of Bowie's lyrics, "the Laughing Gnostic"
@BroonParker
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
The use of Major Tom in Hallo Spaceboy came from the Pet Shop Boys, not Bowie. It appears on the single, not the original track.
i had expected something on the other elements in the video, not just the beach. The exploding kitchen. The rubber room. The suspension in the spacesuit. How some of the settings were also used in the Kenny Everett Video Show in the UK in a suitable pre-MTV video. And who the old woman on the beach was abd why she was there.
I guess this video is for a popular and specifically US audience for whom the next several albums were churned out. I'm glad you're focusing on his better work here, at least.
@wendymorgan6651
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Bullshit
@karllux-d6g
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
When the new romantics follow Bowie on the video, in a sort of funeral procession, for a split second it reminded me of the Sgt Pepper's sleeve picture of a funeral – whose funeral? Follow the arrow… anyway, the B.'s slow-burn separation brought about pearls like Magickal Mystery Tour and its extra singles, or even Abbey Road, whereas Bowie would start a ''very different period'' after that fine ep ''Baal''…
@maximiliandonelly6292
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Oh dear, mostly drivel, I would caution against not acknowledging all this as your personal opinion and experience.
I think David was a fabulous artist blending fantasy and reality.
Watching him doing impressions from The Fast Show on tv gave me far more insight into the man than anything you have to say.
I wish you well, however, but I’d use a lot more “ I felt….” in your perspective
@sirkuscustom
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
🥰😂🤍🤍🤍💙💙🤍🤍🤍😂🤩
@islandbirdw
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Bowie had a cynical edge, “and the papers want to know whose shirts you wear”
Right capitalism right into space🤷🏼♀️
@sdc8547
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
What the hell does this guy know about our Dave, when he's not even the same nationality? 🤯
@darrenl.woodward9168
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Bowie stole Gary Numans image.
@nvm9040
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Love the rykodisc version of Scary Monsters(and Super Creeps) especially with Crystal Japan being a bonus track
Just love the Pierrot character 🩵🤍
@MartyMoriarty
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Gosh this guys thee biggest knob jockey I ever heard. What dross!
@andrewscott3517
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
David Bowie was never humiliated, not even when he was in Tin Machine.
@driverdave1298
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Was I not entertained ?
@lastdayslost
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Superb video with lots of decent info. Wonderfully scripted and beautifully eloquent. Genuinely interesting to listen to (and not everyone's uploads about Mr B are like either….. lol) and I really enjoyed it thank you. Subscribed, please return the favour if possible 😉
@fittalk
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Your videos are great .
@paulosalazar1216
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Siempre supe que david insinuó en que "major Tom" plasmó o fué la referencia a su medio hermano Terry Burns quien estuvo internado debido a la esquizofrenia que sufrió, el cual se suicidó en 1985
@GlennSmith-m2e
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
I see some of the lyrics to Ashes To Ashes as a sly reference to Brian Eno. The baldness, the lack of money and pictures of Japanese girls fit Eno to a T in the mid 1970s to early 1980s.
@williamhackman9101
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
"Ashes to Ashes" is masterpiece, but his video doesn't even come close to explaining why. Also, you should really learn how to pronounce "Pierrot." It's not "Perot."
@antonyoakes7903
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Bollox……. I loved that album
@StuartDitchburn
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Hallo spaceboy
@kevindbeaver
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
Kitty!
@pascalpicher
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
pierrot = not pero, pee-yero
@Tonya-n1x
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
It's aggravating to listen to. Lining up album covers, using AI … Yikes, but then you call Steve Strange's band "Vissage" ???? Somehow that just proved to me that 1980 you were listening to Dolly Parton instead of David Bowie. It's Visage, French for FACE.
You're trying too hard to come off as the connoisseur ( yup, here the sharp double s pronunciation is correct) , most die hard Bowie fans probably cringed trying to listen to the artsy pauses and gasps, trying to tell the story of one of the most creative artists of his time but then doesn't even seem to know Visage. fissage/ Vissage … Oopsie
@michaelniemi2673
April 3, 2026 at 8:29 am
"A book must be the axe that breaks the frozen sea within us" Franz Kafka.
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