5 thoughts on “David Bowie, “Pablo Picasso”

    • Oh good. Maybe it’s catchy. I was just appalled by the way it ignored the original, though I certainly don’t think you have to. This is a good place to put the Modern Lovers version. Produced by John Cale. This is the best. The pounding piano and roaring guitar solo make it seem like it would be crazy to think of it as a joke.

      https://youtu.be/1agI3u1YUjQ

  1. The bitter, tortured side of Jonathan. Here is the Velvets influence most evident. Yeah Peter, sweet and nasty lead guitar outro. It reminded me of this, which is two guitars:

  2. BTW I guess you can call Pablo Picasso bitter and tortured, but the story I see unfolding is of an energetic enthusiast who has to live within the boundaries of his limited effectiveness, despite his ambition. Which means he sometimes tries to pick up girls and gets called asshole because he’s not yet a star. In the song, he aspires to be Picasso, who turns fellas the color of an avocado.

    This song IS a bitter joke, unless you think the will to stardom is noble, and Richman stopped playing it shortly thereafter and not again for a long time, because he decided to change. I saw him many times with the great second version of the Modern Lovers and then solo, and he decisively rejected all that ambition and star turning bs.

    For better or worse, too often worse, but for a time for far better, he sacrificed his ambition for stardom to be a better person.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.