Life on Mars? A Mystery Uncovered?
By WTJU Rock
By Paperback Writer/Tim Wendel
A great song works on many layers. But sometimes you stumble upon another sliver of understanding while exploring something else.
“Life on Mars” is one of my favorite David Bowie songs. Right up there with “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide,” “Suffragette City” and “Heroes.” “Life on Mars?” came out in 1971 on Bowie’s Hunky Dory album. Guitarist Mick Ronson supplied the string arrangement and Rick Wakeman was on piano. The song was a pushback against Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”
Paul Anka had bought the rights to a French song “Comme d’Habitude,” for which Bowie wrote the English lyrics. That effort was rejected by publishers, but Anka’s remake was made famous by Sinatra. That prompted Bowie to write “Life on Mars?” as a parody. Liner notes for Hunky Dory read that it was “inspired by Frankie.”
Bowie’s response was also a fever dream, with mentions of Mickey Mouse and John Lennon as seen through the eyes of a girl with mousy hair who’s infatuated by the movies. But is there something more when it comes to place and title?
In Niall Williams’ novel This is Happiness, the protagonist, Noe Crowe, falls under the spell of the lovely Charlotte “Charlie” Troy. Set in rural Ireland, Noe is Charlie’s unlikely date to the local movie house, where teenage couples in the balcony engage “in amorous acrobatics.” The name of the movie palace, where the movies of Audie Murphy and John Wayne play on the silver screen below the balcony, is The Mars. It was a place young Noe never forgets, telling the reader: “Life on Mars was not in the realm of the known. Nothing could be accounted for. Here was the flawless magnificence of Charlies Troy with eyes closed, pulling at the front of my shirt because, by unvoiced directive, what she wanted now was to feel the flesh of my chest. . .”
Williams’ novel came out in 2019, three years after Bowie’s death and decades after “Life on Mars” was released. A first pass at any Mars movie theater chains in Great Britain comes up empty. But digging deeper, one finds a lone listing for a defunct theater in County Clare, the Mars Cinema in Kilrush, not far from where Williams’ story takes place.
Did Bowie ever visit there? Perhaps witness the horny, disillusioned kids in the balcony? We’ll never know for sure. But he did tell us to: ‘Take a look at the lawman, beating up the wrong guy, oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know? He’s in the best-selling show. ‘Is there life on Mars?’’
