Halloween 2021 #7: Quicksand - David Bowie | Cover

Our last song of Halloween is this absolute masterpiece by one of our favourite people to have ever existed that isn't immediate family. The song is that good there is no lavish video or production. Just us two playing it. Guitar and vocals. Not something that immediately comes to mind when you think Halloween but the mention of Aleister Crowley and The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was enough for us. "Quicksand" was recorded on 14 July 1971 at Trident Studios in London. This ballad features multi-tracked acoustic guitars and a string arrangement by Mick Ronson. Producer Ken Scott, having recently engineered George Harrison's album All Things Must Pass, attempted to create a similarly powerful acoustic sound with this track. Bowie said of the song "The chain reaction of moving around throughout the bliss and then the calamity of America produced this epic of confusion. Anyway with my esoteric problems I could have written it in Plainview or Dulwich" and that it was a mixture of "narrative and surrealism". Lyrically the song, like much of Bowie's work at this time, was influenced by Buddhism ("You can tell me all about it on the next Bardo"), occultism, and Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Superman. It refers to the magical society Golden Dawn and name-checks one of its most famous members, Aleister Crowley, as well as Heinrich Himmler, Winston Churchill and Juan Pujol (codename: Garbo). #DavidBowie #Bowie #Quicksand #HunkyDory #Halloween #Halloween2021 #Genius #AleisterCrowley #TheHermeticOrderOfTheGoldenDawn #Occult #Paranormal #Spirits #Ghosts #31stOctober #Winter #Spooky #Season #Haunting #CoverSong #Enchanting #Spells #Curse