The Bewlay Brothers

It seems to me that this song is about a lot of different things that may or may not have had significant meaning to Bowie. The Bewlay Brothers may have been Bowie and Iggy, it could have bee McCartney and Lennon, but throughout the song, themes change and the things that may have seemed to "prove" that it was about one thing are inconsistent later on.

For instance, when I saw the references to McCartney and Lennon (thank you ned1), I figured that made sense. I saw it as Bowie writing from McCartney's point of view when he said, "I was stone and he was wax/So he could scream and still relax/Unbelievable". Towards the end of the Beatles career, McCartney thought Lennon was just doing whatever was "in" to grab attention (he was moldable like wax.) Even though McCartney also made changes throughout his career, from his point of view, Lennon was too erratic and it annoyed McCartney and the rest of the group (McCartney was stone). Lennon was always the attention seeker.

Then, if you agree that the song COULD at some points be written from the POV of McCartney, later it it says, "now my brother lays upon the rocks/ he could be dead/ he could be not". This is inconsistent with the "Paul is dead" theory because Paul is supposed to be singing about John, right? Then again it could mean "dead" as useless because Lennon was on heroin so often by the time the Beatles split. But Bowie wouldn't write that lyric with such an obvious reference to "Paul is Dead" if it were from Paul's perspective! Or did Bowie just not give a shit? Probably.

This is just an example of how looking at it in ONE particular way doesn't sense because the whole song is inconsistent.

Another possibility was WWII (thank you jbalakhdar), and that makes sense as well. The second half of the album is allusions to culture or philosophy, including Quicksand in the first half which I believe is a monologue from Hitler's point of view before he committed suicide.

Then, I think AllTheMadMen made perfect sense when he said the whole thing was a schizophrenic episode. The whole thing may have been just as confounding to Bowie as it is to us, so how does Bowie piece the whole thing together? In a way that is personal to him, like his brother's illness.

So we have pop culture allusions to other songs on the album, some Nietzsche thrown in there, mental illness, and again more WWII and history for ya.

I think this song may be a mashup, if you will, of many different ideas and concepts. Really, it's all over the place and takes whatever meaning is most significant to the listener. Sort of like Happiness is a Warm Gun? (Although, even being a die hard Beatles fan, I think this song is better.) The Bewlay Brothers may be a complaint how this type of relationships seems to repeat itself in an unhealthy way (and this is simply proven by all the different possible guesses as who the Bewlay Brothers are supposed to be.) Regardless who you individually think it is, the relationship between the Brothers isn't a good one.

I'm not as educated or well read as a lot of these submissions, CLEARLY, but I think giving it one meaning is disrespectful to the song and limits it. If it's JUST about WWII or schizophrenia or the whole Velvet Underground scene, that reduces the universal meaning of the song, and then the meaning is lost. Whatever you think that meaning is.