DAVID BOWIE AND MICK JAGGER – “Dancing In The Street”
One of the questions I asked myself as I got halfway through Popular is: have the charts got worse? The answer to that question remains “let’s wait and see” but one reason people who grew into pop before 1984 might think they have is that the nature of the charts seems to have changed. I’d guess that for most of those people the ideal of the charts is as a mirror to all of pop music: if something exciting is happening in pop, it should be reflected in the Top 40. If that doesn’t happen, either the charts are broken, or the thing wasn’t so exciting after all.
But there’s another way the charts work, which is as a mirror to anything in mass culture: cinema, TV, the news, gameshows, sport. Band Aid – and associated releases – weren’t the first example of that by any means, and of course they emerged from within a pop establishment that was showily flexing its muscles as such a thing. But the way in which the charts of 1985 seemed quite so full of post Band Aid releases sets the tone for future hijackings and interruptions of the story, which gradually became as normal as a record going straight in at number one. If you want a division between the first and second “halves” of Popular, there it is.
And for me in 1985, aged 12, this was really the final straw, the moment Band Aid and Live Aid lost me: these intolerable old ninnies capering about for four long weeks, roaring some old song I didn’t care about but could tell had been coarsened and worsened, bullying me into joining their party.
Now, as I approach the age Bowie was in 1985, my tolerance for the two of them acting the goat is much increased: “Dancing In The Street” is vastly improved on video, and watching the two stars flirt and battle is three minutes’ solid entertainment. On record, however, it’s still a stinker.
The obvious comparison is “Under Pressure”, but that was a battle of styles, whereas this is celebrity karaoke given a rocked-up Double Whopper production. Lots of fun to do, for sure, and that comes through to put it above Ali and Chrissie at least. Jagger has much the best of things – he knows the territory, and his bellowing at least stands up to the bombast. Bowie just flaps around, not sure whether to stick to his mannerisms or try and rock out. When I did finally hear the Martha and the Vandellas original, expecting not to think much of it, I was floored by how this boorish hustle was once so full of joy and conviction.
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Tom in FT / Popular • Pop • 1,931 views • Share/Save
Jesus God, a Jagger version of ‘Wet Dream’ with video of the aged Lothario enacting the lyrics with 19-year old supermodel. No! No! No! ‘Wet Nightmare’!
#23 hah this TOTALLY explains why I really hated DITS so much. “Holding Out For A Hero” was a huge favourite, because it sounded a bit like the covers of White Dwarf magazine looked. Dare I go back and see if it’s any good?
Re#18 – two other Italo-type hits that did OK in the UK, Taffy’s majestic I Love My Radio and Ryan Paris’ less-majestic Dolce Vita. I put our resistance down to a prejudice against ‘non English-language’ pop, certainly European music seemed to be regarding as slightly comical and not in the same league as that from the home of the Beatles (cue, sniggering references to Johnny Halliday and Plastique Bertrand). It took the tidal wave of dance records in the early 90s from Europe (at both ends of the spectrum of credibility) to start wearing us down.
I did like the Taffy. Also big on a vaguely Italo-inspired tip was Maria Vidal’s ‘Body Rock’.
1:10-1:20 in the video is weird to me because I don’t think I’ve ever seen David Bowie trying for “really actually enjoying himself” other than this.
I’ve always liked Ryan Paris ‘Dolce Vita’ at least I think I have (I can’t definitely remember what i thought of it when it was out) -it may be just nostalgia for the great summer of 1983 – anyway it’s got to be better than that dire Taffy record which all the tackiest Radio 1 djs enjoyed playing back then just because it was about radio and its djs.
#27 Tom Yes! – holding out’s video was like a live action Chris Achilleos picture from WD
The song (DITS) was just a pompous unloved event single – like food at some shoddy corporate buffet people ate it because it was there
I recall my siblings reckoned Bowie looked ridiculous in the clip, and well doesn’t he just? I’d never heard of David Bowie before. This was my first sighting of this strange man. Just goes to show first impressions are not always right. Mind you my second impression was
” Labyrinth “.
Was it really nessecary for the two of them to shove their bony rear ends in our face at the end?
This went straight in at number one, didn’t it? It was the first time I can remember that happening, and it felt to nine-year-old me like a historical event. Straight-in-at-number-ones had their own little section in my Guinness Book of Records. I remember poring over the names from ancient history – The Beatles, Slade, a big gap to the equally-ancient The Jam and Duran Duran. Frankie Goes To Hollywood also seemed as if from another time in the ‘biggest selling ever’ list opposite.
When this hit I thought it was great, that our age finally had its turn! I liked it and thought Bowie looked really cool, long coats being about everything I wanted out of life. But I never could, and still can’t, figure out why Jagger has to act so manic all the time. It’s only got more grotesque as time passes, ‘Shine A Light’ made at times very uncomfortable viewing.
Jagger and Bowie cover Martha and the Vandellas. The global roll-call at the beginning. The over-polished horn section. The rhythm section drowning in the mix. The excruciating video. The faux-pallyness of the two protagonists. The Miami Vice clothes. The Live-Aid compassion fatigue.
IT ALL COMES FLOODING BACK!
I hated it then and I still hate it now. 1
Probably analogous to the UK charts, but 1985 was the year in the U.S. charts where dinosaurs from the previous decades crashed the party and embarrassed themselves and everyone around them, ruining a reputation for the 80s deemed unrepairable until, well, THIS decade!
This single was the signal.
I was 15 in 1985 and I just want to echo Tom’s apt observation that there was something irritatingly exclusionary about this song. It felt like boomers [indulging in masturbation, in saltier language, to/with] each other. Us kids didn’t know the original, and we didn’t really care about Mick or David that much, and as Tom says, you could just tell it was lame without knowing the backstory.
Bowie seems to have invented ridiculous big-trouser dances five years before Mister Hammer. The hands in pockets at the top of the stairs wasn’t a good look.
As over-the-top as this was, it did at least have the saving grace of alerting those of us too young to remember it to the original. (“I Got You, Babe” had never really gone away, at least where the AM radio hits ‘n’ memories format was concerned.) But as the final number one for two once-great performers, this was a tawdry swansong. I’m relieved to learn that they considered it a one-off for Live Aid – if it had been, it might today have a kind of kitsch charm – but why did they agree to extend its life? Charity is all well and good, but when you’re a millionaire it’s got to be better to write a fat cheque than to don a silly costume and go out shaking a bucket. If you saw someone boogyin’ up to you in those outfits, you’d be dancing around them in the street. 3.
#19 Good point about “event” no. 1s – a somewhat baneful development around this time as increasingly record-buyers purchased a single because they felt they ought to. At least with bad chart-toppers the previous 30 years there was the knowledge that awful records were at number one due to a sort of deranged attraction rather than guilt or indulgence. I suppose it was inevitable, but that doesn’t make it especially welcome.
I don’t suppose a reverential cover of ” Dancing in the Streets ” would have been any better even so there is a rank, starry bluster about Bowie and Jaggers version – a post Live-Aid smugness.
” Surely everyone is amazed at the sight of two superstars together!!!! ” It’s an attitude we still come across all too frequently. A rather mundane example being those M&S adverts with all-star casts that are shown around Christmas – ” Look at all these famous faces together. Isn’t it impressive? ”
#29 Thanks for mentioning ” Body Rock “. In an ideal world Maria Vidal would have raced past these two has-beens.
As I recall they only consented to finally release this as a single when it became clear there was a mounting demand for it. I think ‘Woo’ Gary Davies actually made a special announcement to that effect on his lunchtime show (I’ll confess I was euphoric – Bowie meant everything to me at that point). There was even a tacky tie-in poster mag to commemorate the release.
Dudes saying they weren’t aware of the original at the time: I can confirm there was a tipping point later on when Martha & Co reclaimed theirs as the canonical version for the next generation – I certainly didn’t realise Bowie and Jagger had done this one until much later on (possibly when they re-ran all the Live Aid stuff on telly about ten years later).
Utterly dreadful cover that really butchers and caterwauls over its original, whereas the awful ‘I got you Babe’ cover merely flattens its original: 1
Wow, this record is sure provoking a lot of bitterness. I hardly remember it, actually. We did have a discussion two years later in my fanzine regarding the proper treatment of aging stars, or, as the question was posed by Phil Milstein, “Isn’t it time they put Johnny Carson out to pasture? And the Rolling Stones too, for that matter?” Byron Coley answered, sensibly, that “if you mean, is it time that we take these persons to a field & then fuck them from behind, then I must say ‘No.’” But Patty Stirling had a different view: “No No No! That’s a cruel thing to say. Would you put your dear grandma or mom (dad, grandpa, etc….) in a convalescent home just cuz they get old? For shame!”
In any event, here’s a weird little single that I retain a fondness for.
(And here’s another version of that single that’s interesting in context.)
Re 43: Jon Savage just told me how impressed he was with your name dropping.
Re 33: Yes it was necessary. They are baboons; they are presenting.
The video would have been much more effective than Just say No/’Heroin screws you up’ as anti drugs propaganda. Bowie looks inches from death (he was edging closer to Never Let Me Down which was more or less the same thing).
@#43 Koganbot. The audio on that first youtube clip is *amazing*. Just, wow. Beyond that, though, I don’t think anyone’s complaint here about DITS is age-ist, as such. It’s definitely hard to sustain a vital pop/rock career for multiple decades of course, but everyone here agrees that both Bowie and Jagger had plenty of life left in them at this point. This particular song just seems like a wretched mistake (madonna’s saturday night live appearance with lady gaga a few days ago struck me as a possibly analogous wretched mistake… lame and beneath her in something like the way that this song and vid was for two preternaturally cool/stylish guys).
I guess even the biggest stars make bad career moves – even Jagger, who is probably more controlling, and more in control of, his career as artist/pop star than anyone bar Madonna.
The Stones last single (or at least last hit) before this was “Undercover of the Night”, a pretty credible stab at updating their trademark sound for the 80s – certainly a big step forward from Start Me Up’s anachronisms.
Bowie in 83 had probably the most successful year of his career.
As a one off for the Live Aid concert it’s hard to be too critical about the intention. On purely artistic grounds, they really shouldn’t have consented to its release, though perhaps they felt they would look uncharitable if they didn’t.
I don’t suppose either of them rate the recording now – it never features, as far as I am aware, on any best-ofs or anthologies.
As a Bowie fanatic at the time – the Berlin Bowie, the lad insane Bowie, the Bowie who drops Nietzche and Kafka quotes into his songs – this one really pained me back then. It was like the final cut in his hari-kiri artistic suicide. I still do think it represents the utter nadir of his musical career: ‘Tonight’ at least had a couple of halfway decent singles, and Never Let Me Down, despite being awful, is at least some sort of stab at originality. The difference between ‘Dancing’ and Bowie’s earlier superstars-having-fun-in-the-studio duo with Freddie Mercury is really quite striking.
#47 “Bowie in 83 had probably the most successful year of his career.”
Commercially yes but I’ve never heard anyone make the case that “Let’s Dance” is one of his best albums.
The hero-worship of the New Romantics elevated both Bowie and Ferry to superstar status but ironically neither produced much essential music afterwards.
16 years between ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ and ‘Dancing In The Street’ – Is this the longest gap between number ones that we’ve had in Popular?
#50 Billy, it depends on whether you count presence on charity ensembles in which case it’s the 27 years between “Mary’s Boy Child” and “We Are The World”.
#25: “Harlem Shuffle” and “Dancing in the Street” were hits of 1964… or was it different in the UK?
I’m going to have to go seriously off-kilter with most of the above comments. I’ve revised my opinion of other number ones in Popular upwards, partly due to the mellowing of hostility brought about by time, partly due to persuasive argument on these pages – but I’m not going to revise this one downwards. Sorry, but I really enjoyed it then and still do. It’s two megastars happily sending themselves and each other up – insofar as Jagger was ever deadly serious, he doesn’t look it here, and I find Bowie’s vocal stylings do work to the song’s benefit.
I’m NOT saying it’s as good as the original, by any means, and the original played, if not at the time then certainly in retrospect, an important part in social change. Here’s what I said to Mike TD when it featured in Which Decade a few months ago: “a great pop song which, even if it wasn’t intended to be iconic, became so because of the social circumstances of the decade. It still staggers me how people who were among the most successful entertainers in 60s America (the Supremes hitting number one as regularly as the Beatles) were such third class citizens.”
But in the context of Live Aid, given an 80s production that does different things to the song, I still think this is a lot of fun and some people on here could lighten up!
Erithian, you’ve got a point, it’s harmless enough. But in context, the people who were watching Live Aid at the time and generally paying attention afterward couldn’t escape the breathless and nauseating and repetitive MTV-style commentary to the effect that coming up now we have a “world premiere” of something “reallllly special and important” and … ugh, it was just this stupid, self-satisfied thing that didn’t resonate at all to the people who normally buy singles (young people). Out of context, it’s better, you’re probably right.
Agreed, Erithian you do have a point. Reflecting a little more I guess for me this track runs together a couple of negatives: it’s an obnoxious, worse-than-redundant cover (a la say ‘i got you babe’ or ‘lady marmalade’ on the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack a few years ago), but it’s also a hugely disappointing outing for stellar, fondly-remembered figures (a la Stevie Wonder with ‘I just called to say…’). I guess the latter, legacy-betrayal idea is a little irrational: it amounts to holding past genius against present efforts in a way that can seem unfair. What would be an ok mediocrity for someone else is mocked as a scourge for the chosen ones. In effect, the same forces that are leading *other* people to overrate the stuff (and plant it at #1) are leading afficionados/egg-heads to want to throw themselves off a cliff. Or something. At any rate, although I can’t help the way I feel, trying harder to correct for my own biases, maybe Tom’s score of 3 is about right after all
I was at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid, and the atmosphere was akin to a magnified version of The Pyjama Game’s Once-A-Year Day; picknicking families, the general air of a World Cup school sports day or a Brent Cross celebrity car boot sale. It was warm but not overwhelmingly hot, despite the size of the crowd – the summer of 1985 was something of a tepid washout in Britain – and when Status Quo arrived at the stroke of midday to rock us all over the world the words were “good sports.” The local bazaar environment continued through rest of the acts deemed unfamous enough for American TV coverage – Weller and his Council of Internationalists, the Boomtown Rats abruptly being reminded of their true place in this world. As the afternoon wore on Live Aid turned into an upmarket Chiswick restaurant, with the soothing suavity of the Sting/Phil Collins/Branford Marsalis trio (bass, drums and sax – if only they had seized the moment to pay tribute to Ornette at the Golden Circle), then Sade, then Bryan Ferry loping around as though he’d stepped into the Tooting branch of Primark by mistake, interspersed by Moyet and Paul Young acting soulful.
The Philadelphia sets were largely used by the Wembley crowd as an excuse to queue for the toilets or order more lukewarm lager; the only one of those acts truly to connect with us were the Beach Boys, Mike Love cheerleading as ever, the Wellesian bulk of Brian immobile and unknowing behind his modest keyboard.
Nearly everyone towards the front was there for U2, and theirs was by far the day’s best performance; some corny audience bits of business which both David Cassidy and David Essex had deployed a decade earlier, perhaps, but somehow it worked, and Bono and the girl became that pastel-coloured couple in the Yellow Submarine cartoon, waltzing forever. Queen were immaculate, Mercury the supreme master of timing and dealing with an audience – but what did their set have to do with the starving Ethiopians, and were we the only ones present who felt more than somewhat nauseous at the mass sieg-heiling in “Radio Ga Ga”?
Perhaps the noblest performance that Saturday was Bowie’s; besuited, disciplined, ready to bend his art to make it relevant to the issue at hand (“We can be heroes just for one day”) and sufficiently generous to cut his set short to allow the screening of the CBC “Drive” montage. The silence thereafter lasted for some seconds, and neither Dire Straits nor Elton nor McCartney and his malfunctioning mike nor even the Who could banish the scar that left.
That is, if it left any real scars; for what seemed to matter in Live Aid was that suddenly we were once again reminded who in pop and rock mattered and who didn’t. Compare the subsequent sales of the Queen, U2, Phil Collins and Dire Straits back catalogues (or even the renewed success of “Drive,” returning to the top five less than a year after its first visit there), and the promotion to the Luvvie League of George Michael, with the sharply contrasting fates of all the Culture Clubs and Frankies and ABCs who either couldn’t or wouldn’t participate, or weren’t even asked. Meanwhile, what was left of “indie” music was forced to retrench into a defensive tugboat of resistance – think of the Mary Chain’s “My Little Underground” or C86 passim.
With their massacre of “Dancing In The Street,” Bowie and Jagger seemed to relish rubbing it in. Originally conceived as a video interlude for Live Aid and not intended for single release, public demand in those pre-YouTube days quickly reversed that decision. As performers old enough to have been affected by the original in 1964, their slaughter of the song is doubly unforgivable. Archie Shepp was neither wrong nor alone in detecting a subtext of black revolution in the subtly insistent rhythms of the song and in Martha Reeves’ super-confident lead vocal. Note that on the Motown original there are two sets of percussion at work; the tribal/slavery pounding on the main kit by co-writer Marvin Gaye, and the chains (freedom!) rattling and smashing half a beat behind (or ahead), wielded by Steve Reid, the future noted free jazz drummer who in his long and distinguished career has worked with just about all the major American post-Coleman improvisers – including a stint with Shepp. The message – as with the Impressions’ “We’re A Winner” – was inescapably clear.
Bowie and Jagger jettison all those inconvenient political signifiers for a straightforward glossy run through the song; its hard-faced firmly-on-the-beat ’80s drums unforgiving in their meanness, the coarseness of its seamless production clashing uncomfortably with the singers’ schoolboy pranks. It ushers in the Jools Holland era of the cause being more important than the art, the style far superseding any worthwhile content; besuited, de-androgynised, de-sexualised Proper Music which sounds expensive from five rooms away but so, so cheap whenever you attempt to get close to it.
And Proper Music is bad for pop. I know we’ve had long conversations on the political affiliations of Spandau or Wham!, but this record and Live Aid (musically) were as conservative as pop has ever got.
Good call on My Little Underground – I’m also wondering if ’85 was the first time “indie” was used as a term, either positively or negatively. It certainly helped the industry to create a sub-genre for Live Aid refuseniks, blending all the delights of the ‘independent charts’ into one instantly identifiable ‘indie’ noise (ie The Wedding Present).
Punctum an especially fascinating critique of the effect Live Aid had on music because of the eyewitness vantage point.
Interestingly Dancing in the Streets was one of the tracks Jon Anderson (Yes) listed as one of his favourites singles. I wonder if he revised his opinion after this version.
The video preening is great though.