Cat People (Putting Out Fire)

As far as I know this song was written for the 1982 remake of the film 'Cat People', starring Nastassia Kinski. The story follows a young woman who turns into a panther when sexually aroused. The song ususally carries the subtitle "Putting Out Fire". The original film version is close to seven minutes long, but there is a shorter 'single' version as well.

All that aside, I love how this song captures the idea that we are human animals. Oh sure, we have our courtship rituals so we don't feel so base about it, but what it boils down to is we need to be spoken to, noticed, touched and loved (Sexually and emotionally) just as much as we need food and shelter. Without it, people become sick and deviant.

In the end which is worse, a person who is a cat while making love or a person who becomes a sexual predator through lack of human contact?

Fantastic track, from a very solid film imho. Written for the film, it can easily be interpreted as the perspective of the cat man Paul Gallier.

In the film, Paul tells his sister he's 'been waiting a long time' for her ('well you've been so long'). He begs her to aid him and to embrace her animal nature ('feel my blood enraged - it's just the fear of losing you'), asking her to lie next to him ('just be still with me - you wouldn't believe what I've been through'). By succumbing to his own nature and killing humans, he's putting out fire with gasoline.

Agreed with all above, especially Arbiter's interpretation. Though came here mostly to say how wonderfully this song is used in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and paring it with the fabulous character of Shoshanna.

I love the line "Pull the blinds and change their minds." Seems to suggest that people act like prudes to the public but in the bedroom their just as naughty as anyone else. Great song. I think it's the best of the "Let's Dance" album.

Agree. Stevie Ray Vaughn really makes this song--I really like the melody and the drive of this. Very underrated.

I do love this song...it's just that I got down on my knees and thanked God that Mr. Moroder helped remake the song. I did NOT like the original version. It's just like 'I'm Afraid of Americans.' Trent Reznor helped spice things up. But this song is totally about the cat people. And only Bowie would say, 'I'm putting out fire...with gasoline!'

By the way, LOVE the panther sound effects.

Soo awesome in Inglourious Basterds!

This song is so powerful! I love getting my eyes all red and listening to it

Whenever I listen to this song, I think of Major Tom still up there hopelessly orbiting the earth, too far out for anyone to reach, still taking the drugs to forget his plight (putting out fire with gasoline). And I imagine people looking up at the night sky, and then the thought of Major Tom still up there, and sensing his orbit is at present overhead, with our collective guilt at not being able to help him, making people pull their blinds.

“I can stare for a thousand years”: he's been up there so long now (was it 68, 69 he launched? - I can't remember now), and it will seem so much longer to one in solitary confinement (“Floating in a tin can / Far above the world”) - he must be at least half-mad by now.

There's a space reference: “colder than the moon”.

“Feel my blood enraged”: by the drugs. And even if “We know Major Tom’s a junkie” (Ashes To Ashes) does not refer to drugs, but to just being a junkie to his own plight and/or ego (and is Ashes To Ashes all about Major Tom, or more about David Bowie?), the blood being enraged and the eyes so red still fit.

“Still this pulsing night”: the pulsing black of space.

It was never clear whether something went wrong with the equipment on board ship or whether Major Tom deliberately severed communication with Ground Control (and thus the Earth and all his family and friends), but if he did: “A judgement made can never bend”.

I know this may well not have been in Bowie’s mind when he wrote the lyrics, but it’s what I like to imagine when listening to the song. It keeps Major Tom’s story going, and helps us not to forget him - and what he, if still alive, is still going through.