Sorrow

Dear James,

More from Ian, who was unaware as I was that this video existed. True to Bowie form for the early 70s, the video is gash. The woman who looks like Claudia Schiffer, but clearly isn't because Schiffer would have been three years old at the time, is Amanda Lear, former lover of Bowie and Salvador Dalí and the model on the cover of Roxie Movie's For Your Pleasure. One wag on the youtube comments says Lear is a transsexual, which explains the big hands.

Sorrow is also notable as being the only decent song on the Pin-Ups album, which mostly consists of slowed-down covers of songs that used to be good in the sixties. The album's release came at a time of British nostalgia for all things past, this being the dark days of 1973. It's odd that Bowie, being so futuristic with the likes of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, should have released a covers album. The album also charted the same week as Brian Ferry's These Foolish Things covers album, so maybe it was an in joke with the arty people.

The b-side to the Sorrow single was a cover of Jacques Brel's Amsterdam, as featured below. I always thought Sorrow was a Pretty Things cover, and then had trouble trying to work out how it was a cover of SF Sorrow is Born. Turns out it was originally by The Merseys, The Pretty Things song on Pin-Ups was Rosalyn.