I imagine him -David Bowie- sitting at a subway stop in NY, wrapped in his thoughts, images, sounds, vibes. He who loved solitude in the same way as life; because the great ones seem to be alone, because we cannot see their sparkling inner richness. But here is the man who moves me and this wants to be my caress for you ... miss you David.
David Bowie sang his "No Plan" in the fifth note after the tonic; his voice is practically that of the countermelody. Vice versa, I have always musically heard "No Plan" as being interpreted in another way and I thought then to add my voice to his. In my recording, we have reversed the roles. He sings "in fifth" as a good chorister singer would have done, and I added the "tonic", as I imagine he would have liked.
Just a curiosity about David Bowie's No Plan.
I thought for a long time about why David had almost obsessively sung that note riff in every strophe of No Plan, that is, the "A - F# - F - E - F", which overlap (to be clear) with the phrase "Here - am - I - nowhere - now?" as well as all the others that follow in the text of the song. Above all, since he had long since lowered the tones of his songs, I wondered why he had sung it "in fifth" and higher, rather than "in tonic"? Well, what I am about to tell you will surprise you and not a little. David in his private life was a loner and a regular listener and I believe that in his wandering around New York, he waited for the subway so many times at so many stops ... And that is what I am talking about exactly. That sequence of notes is precisely the noise of the start of each New York subway carriage: "A - F# - F - E - F". Amazing!
© Ambra Mattioli.
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