David Bowie – Always Crashing in the Same Car

General CommentTo poster #2, jimmymike -- who told you Bowie ever had an opiate habit??

Bowie was a coke head, not an opiate user -- that's why his memory is fried, as he attests. Opiates don't do that, period.

Lots of coke and paranoia when he was making Low. That was the defining characteristic of the sessions for Bowie: Bowie being in a state that prevents him from remembering anything about the sessions, except why he can't remember them.

So, if it's about drugs, it's definitely about coke. And it'd be hard, I think, for a man as intelligent as Bowie to sing these lyrics, about driving in circles at high *speeds* and *crashing* without thinking on his coke use, regardless what the initial meaning was. It's pretty clearly coke, though.

BTW, there's a really great video clip that VH1 showed in a Behind the Music or whatever that shows Bowie clearly all coked up in the late 1970's (i.e. the period of Low, which has this song) and being driven around in a car -- he's looking all around, like he's paranoid, and his face is just so coked out.

It's also just a very striking lyric inasmuch as the image of repeatedly crashing in the same car is beautifully "existential". It really is all over the place, this album. I like it, too, but why is it that more critics put this as Bowie's greatest than any other album? It's very good, but it's also, like I said, all over the place, coked out, and whatnot. It's beautiful, but I'm surprised there's such consensus on it! And it's the peak of his "Berlin" period.

Funny, too, how the critics are the same way about Lou Reed's "Berlin" album. (He went all the way and just named it Berlin!) And, Berlin is actually not just an outgrowth of coked out craziness, but is, as I remember it, explicitly a concept album about a coked out chick. Or, that's some of the songs, at least.

And Low was not made about a "previous" period of drug use. Low was made while Bowie in the middle of his period of using cocaine most heavily -- it was the late 1970's and he was a rock star! Can't you hear the scatterbrained, verging on drug induced manic psychosis, misery of using too much coke, the feeling that comes long after the high and somewhere before the physical crash?

That's Low -- that and a myriad of beautiful and weird soundscapes, digital-flesh tearing synthesizer screeches and beep-boops, and Bowie's bleached white voice as otherworldly and thin-souled as it gets.

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  @just12
  +1

  uh he went to berlin to clean up so he probably wasn't in the centre of his addiction when he made 'low'...but i'm just guessing.

  Flag manic_ashon March 13, 2009  

  +1

  You're right, you're guessing haha. He was still very much on cocaine when recording Low. Not at the depths of his addiction, but still dabbling, and continued to dabble here and there when living in Berlin. The thing about Berlin was that he and Iggy kept using, or having "binge days" as Iggy put it, when they moved to Berlin. He gave it up eventually.

  Flag noyeson February 02, 2012  

  0

  I'm pretty sure he continued to use coke, although, much much less of it until the early 80's. I read somewhere that his final push to quit was when he gained full custody of his son, and he didn't want to be that way in front of his son. And since he divorced Angie in 1980, I'm guessing it was after that. Although i guess he could have gained custody whilst being seperated as well.
  
  Either way, coke consumed our dear Starman and Berlin was where he got it under control. Not necessarily quit totally but, not letting it run his day to day life either.
  
  Also, that clip you are speaking of just12 was from the film Cracked Actor, look it up on youtube, it's very interesting, following DB on his Diamond Dogs tour. It was filmed in 1974 I believe (released in '75) Some very coked up scenes in that, David Bowie once said that he should never have survived that time in his life. But the music...my God, only Bowie could be so brilliant while being so high!

  Flag ziggytwigon May 31, 2016  

General CommentBowie explained at the 2000 BBC gig which I was lucky to be invited to, that this song was quite literal - he was so out of it and paranoid that he drove round and round pretty much as he described in this song, crashing into the same car again and again. I think the driver pissed him off, or something.

Sure, it also seems to be about the recklessness of cocaine addiction as well. But it is still a masterpiece. It was great to hear it again, live.

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  @nalex

General CommentI think the title refers to inevitability. No matter what he does, it keeps happening, he keeps falling back into addiction/whatever, he just keeps crashing in the same car over and over and over again.

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  @Crane42

General CommentWhoa, First to comment. Imo, this is the best song in the album. The production is so brilliant and different than the other songs. Just pops out of nowhere and it feels so liberating (How lame can I be?).

Not much to say about the lyrics though. Guessing it's about self-destruction. That's all there's to it.

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  @Stamehad

General CommentIt looks as if he's talking about his heroin addiction ("Those kilo(meters)"), his sexual exploits ("and the red lights"), the paranoia he eventually - albiet momentarily - succumbed to ("I was looking left and right"), and commenting that while he wanted to stop, he was always "crashing in the same car", or repeating his mistakes (further strengthened by "I was going round and round the hotel garage").

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  @jimmymike

General CommentI think this song could be about suicide. Getting intoxicated and driving round and round in a hotel garage, then coco or someone coming to save him. Also a metaphor for life and always going back and making the same mistakes.

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  @k_kintano

General CommentI was thinking along the same lines as jimmymike-- making the same mistakes over and over again, whether they're having to do with drugs, or sex (probably both), or whatever. It's hard to learn from your mistakes sometimes, and it's a bit depressing when you can't.

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  @Buddha of Suburbia

General CommentTo me, it seems to be about a promiscuous guy and one special relationship in his life. It's like, he does whathever he wants, experiments, does what is bad for him, trying to feel the new high, but there is only one person that makes him feel something (pain i suppose).

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  @placebo981

General CommentThe extensive use of cut-up technique on both Low and 'Heroes', makes interpretation difficult.

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  @milkshock

General CommentOr maybe he is just crashing in the same car over and over again. Maybe he's just a bad driver.

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  @dirtyjew