Major Tom (Coming Home)
Following up on Bowie's masterpiece by an German unknown
Apologies for no song of the day last week. I started a new job and had a couple of other commitments and it exhausted me. Working on a way to get these out in a sustainable way. So let’s begin!
I just finished watching Moonage Daydream, the film about David Bowie’s artistic life, yet I found myself walking away wanting to hear this song again.
Peter Schilling’s career is fascinating. Like most artists of that era, once he got that huge international hit, he was asked to constantly tour around the world while also recording. It was harder on him because he was releasing in both English and German versions. He burned out and eventually asked to be let out of his contracts. What’s unusual is that he was without penalty after doing one last show at Madison Square Gardens. He then spent 12 years away from music, eventually returning and releasing albums in German ever since, while remastering his English ones.
The song follows on from Bowie’s Space Oddity, using the character of Major Tom from that song and looking at it from a different angle, one in which the protagonist is the one who cuts off communication because he’s decided space is now his home. Stylistically the songs are very different as Schilling came from the synth-pop/new-wave tradition and that nestled nicely into the ascendancy of that style in 1983. It’s damn catchy.
The song was originally in German. An American record exec heard it and had him record the entire album in English, which was released world-wide. Here’s that version:
And here’s him doing an interview in his native German about the song and the journey he went on after. (English surtitles should be turned on - turn them on with the gear on the bottom right if you don’t see it.) Funny thing, as I was watching the interview I’m looking at the surtitles that are part of the interview and thinking “Wow, German IS really close to Dutch!” (I’ve been studying Dutch for a while now.) Turns out the surtitles are Dutch as it was filmed by a Dutch network. Nice to know that I’m getting really good at recognizing it. Enjoy!
Back when record stores were a thing, I went into a Tower Records looking for a copy of "Major Tom" by Peter Schilling. The staffer there snottily informed me that it was "2001 Space Oddity" and it was by David Bowie, and I had to explain to him that, no, it was the sequel by a German dude. He didn't believe me until I actually found it on a collection of 80's synth-pop hits in the odds-and-ends crate.