I've been thinking about Absolute Beginners quite a bit this week, really wanting to pick the book off the shelf and read it again but something is telling my that revisiting a book I loved so much in my teenage years may not be a good idea. What if it is not as good as I remembered? Or even worse the grumpy old git in me may now think that it is a load of rubbish.
Anyway, here is the only post Let's Dance, Bowie song that I remember liking with added crackles. The film adaptation it came from wasn't that good, it did, however have a young Patsy Kensit and a gorgeous Vespa GS in it.
David Bowie - Absolute Beginners (full album version)
As a bonus here is the St Etienne cover version
St Etienne - Absolute Beginners
4 comments:
Go and re-read it. It's a great book; I've gone through three copies of it over the years.
Meanwhile, Absolute Beginners by Bowie. Woo, there is a whole catalogue of tunes I was listening to around this time back in 1986 that soundtracked my first big 'affair', one that didn't go well. That sense of sadness that fills it...gets me every time.
I had a feeling that you may comment on this, being the mod you are, is it not your tribe's bible?
I have re-read On the Road a few times now and the last time didn't really enjoy it but that may be the law of diminishing returns.
As for AB by Bowie, I know what you mean.
It's a great book that holds up under re-reading, as does all of Colin MacInnes' 'London Trilogy' -- particularly 'Mr Love & Mr Justice'.
The movie might be a bit of a stinker, but as a teenager who'd never been to London when it came out it certainly fired the imagination. The best musical sequence has gotta be Slim Gaillard singing "Selling Out"!
I have said this before, but I think Absolute Beginners is almost a really really good movie, floored by two serious flaws, one being the leads who just weren't up to it at all and one being the usual requirement to trim the book down so that it turned from something of a rite of passage for the narrator into a romp through an overeventful London summer. But I think all of the cameos in the film are spot on and the moment when Bowie appeared at the top of the stairs at that party everybody in the cinema sighed. And as for Sade...
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