For the longest time, I had never even heard
of this song, in any of its incarnations. I was led to it by a newspaper
feature I try never to miss: The Financial Times’ “The Life of a Song” column in its weekend edition, which, several months ago, told of the
tune’s prosaic genesis—the theme of a 1950s Western starring Anthony Quinn.
Johnny Mathis’ 1957 version did little to make
listeners think of “Wild is the Wind” as much more than rather soporific film
music. It was Nina Simone’s 1964 cover, complete with thunderous piano and
lengthened to an electrifying seven minutes at Carnegie Hall, that turned the
song inside out. It was this latter version that fired the imagination of David Bowie and lured him to follow its
lead.
The British rocker first tried his hand at the
Dimitri Tiomkin-Ned Washington song on his 1976 LP, Station to Station. It
had, he told Rolling Stone interviewer
(and future filmmaker) Cameron Crowe, “a good European feel.” But its appreciation
by an unlikely visitor to his recording session, Frank Sinatra, surely didn’t
hurt its final inclusion on the album.
Thirty
years later, Bowie was still at it, in this YouTube clip. His rendition of the song’s life-on-the-line lyrics (“With
your kiss my life begins”) gains even more in poignancy when it’s recalled that
he performed it last at a private AIDS benefit in New York in November 2006—hauntingly,
his final public performance. It was so appropriate: In this impassioned
rendition, he holds nothing back.
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