#RHMS Ellinis

[ginandoldlace]

RHMS Ellinis ( ex - Lurline) together her fleet mate RHMS Australis ( ex - America) in Southampton, both of the Chandris line

RHMS stands for Royal Hellenic Mail Ship

[envisitadecortesia]

El viaje del Delgado Duque Blanco

El viaje del Delgado Duque Blanco

El día 21 de septiembre de 1975 mientras algunos esperaban el inminente otoño en el puerto de Barcelona aguardaban la llegada de cuatro cruceros con turistas, dos de ellos era italianos: el Enrico C de Costa Line y el Irpinia de Grimaldi-Siosa Lines; y otros dos eran griegos, el Argonaut de Epirotiki Lines y el Ellinis de Chandris Lines. A estos se les añadiría el Cristoforo Colombo de la naviera…

[bowietracks]

Something terrible is about to happen – that is what those dates in the middle title, the first parenthesis, scream. Bowie gives the main title of the song Aladdin Sane, but then two qualifiers. 1913 the year before WWI; 1938, the year before WW2; 197? – something terrible is about to happen. “Aladdin Sane was based pretty fundamentally on the Vile Bodies novel of Evelyn Waugh” said Bowie. “I thought it was terribly effective about the air of ridiculousness just before the War. So mine was a follow-on. He covered that war, and I invented a war and did my bright young things before that war. So, it was kind of quasi-literary.” The music had been laid down in the first Aladdin Sane recording session in New York in December 1972. But there were no proper lyrics as yet. The vocals were recorded back in London in early January, during the second recording session of the album. These were written on the American liner RHMS Ellinis on his trip back to the UK (his flight to the USA hit by turbulence, he wouldn’t fly again for another five years). On the sea voyage, one of the books he took was Vile Bodies, a 1930 satire of decadent London high society, set in the period leading up to WWII. Apparently, the original title of the book was to be Bright Young Things, which Bowie steals for the line ‘Passionate bright young things’, and as the novel has a grotesque title, so does the song: Aladdin Sane. There – as witness to this new apocalypse – is Aladdin Sane. Who is Aladdin Sane? A play on words, of course – A Lad Insane. Thus the homophone affect in the song: ‘Who’ll love a lad insane?” Aladdin Sane is a new character, perhaps a Ziggy Stardust who never died, who crawled away with broken hands to America, to witness the end of the world which was endlessly delayed in cold détente, a new, gritty realism in Bowie’s music. And the music. Music hall rock n roll, drama and theater…  Trevor Bolder’s killer, driving, incessant, maddening bassline, and Mike Garson’s avant garde, deranged, jazz piano. Garson: ‘dissonant, rebellious, atonal, and very outside’. A decadent song, with a decadent at the centre – who nonetheless sees the decadence: ‘Millions weep a fountain, just in case of sunrise’ – the sunrise of the atomic bomb, the war to end all wars…

Written by David Bowie. Recorded 4-10 December 1972 and 18-23 January 1973. Released 13 April 1973. Available on Aladdin Sane (1973).