The freakiest show on earth

David Bowie was thinking of dying in late 1971. His father had died, and his brother had been committed to a mental asylum. "I'm frightened by the total goal / Drawing to the ragged hole / And I ain't got the power anymore / No, I ain't got the power anymore." We can safely assume he got it back. Possibly at the very moment he identified its absence, in the act of writing the magnificently cold-hearted song in question: Quicksand, off the album Hunky Dory, in which Bowie flirts with fascism bef...