From My Way to Life On Mars
QUESTION Why did David Bowie describe Life On Mars as his version of the song My Way?
In 1967/1968, a young David Jones — the real name of David Bowie — had the chance to write English lyrics to the tune that would inspire My Way, but he blew it.
It was common in the Sixties for singersongwriters to provide English lyrics to the tunes of popular foreign songs.
One famous example is Dusty Springfield’s hit, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, based on Lo Che Non Vivo
(Senza Te) — I, Who Can’t Live (Without You) — which was a number one in Italy for Pino Donaggio.
Bowie had already penned a few such songs, including Love Is Always and Pancho, which were hits in Belgium for the singer Dee-Dee. Claude Francois’s French hit Comme
D’Habitude (As Usual) was released in French in Britain, but Essex Music boss David Platz wanted it translated into English. He gave the task to Bowie, who came up with the Anthony newley-esque Even A Fool Learns To Love.
By his own admission, it was dreadful. ‘God it’s so awful — really embarrassingly bad,’ he said. If you sing Bowie’s lyrics to the tune of My Way you get the idea:
Their funny man won’t let them down No, he’d dance and prance and be
their clown That time, the laughing time When even a fool learns to love.
Shortly afterwards, the Canadian artist Paul Anka heard Comme D’Habitude on French TV and wrote new lyrics in English for it.
He pitched the song, which he renamed My Way, to Frank Sinatra, who had been threatening to quit the music scene. And, boy, did it revive Ol’ Blue Eyes’s career!
Bowie claimed he was angry for a year that his version had been discarded. As revenge, he set about writing a better song for his Hunky Dory album that used the same chord progression as My Way. It turned out to be Life On Mars, or My Way On Mars, as Bowie once called it.
Keith Sitwell, Durham.
QUESTION From where did we get the phrase ‘peter out’?
THE earliest examples of this phrase date from the late 19th century and come from mining.
There are two possible derivations. One is that it is derived from saltpetre, the colloquial name for potassium nitrate, a component of gunpowder (from the Greek petros meaning rock). If you run out of saltpetre, the charge peters out.
The other, more convincing, derivation is that it comes from the French péter, which means to pass wind.
British sappers in the Middle Ages used a device they dubbed a petard (a fart) to destroy bridges or barricades. This was a bell-shaped metal grenade filled with 6lb of gunpowder and set off by a fuse in a tunnel or trench.
However, they were unreliable, often blowing up the sapper. From this came the idea of being hoisted by their own petard, a phrase coined by Shakespeare in Hamlet: ‘For ’tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard.’
Gordon Ellwood, Grimsby, Lincs.
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