Mrs Major Tom

Bowie's Major Tom saga, Part 3

“Mrs Major Tom” is a song that continues the story of Major Tom (from David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and “Ashes to Ashes”) but now told from the point of view of the wife left at home.

The song has two versions; Sheryl Crow’s cover (acoustic), and the original edit (ambient electronic) that I released as K.I.A.. Here’s the lyrics:

You went up, so bright Tom
Thought my love was rocketing you along
When you didn't come back, and didn't come back
My nova heart collapsed to a black, black hole

Floating on sine waves in inner space
Awaiting a signal of grace
From ground control, to lost control
Ballet to battle, halo to hole

You were so far gone
Right was wrong, up was down
By going still further on
You hoped to come around
It was light years long
Dear husband Tom
At last back you've come
Yet still, you're gone

Floating on sine waves in inner space
Awaiting a signal of grace
From ground control, to lost control
Ballet to battle, halo to hole

I watched the skies, for all that time
And now your asteroid eyes
Say you were never mine
Never mine, never mine
Never, never mine

Floating on sine waves in inner space
Awaiting a signal of grace
From ground control, to lost control
Ballet to battle, halo to hole

You didn't burn up
My Major Tom
You just burnt out
You just burnt out

The song is in the tradition of an Irish lament, a song of longing, loss, and loneliness, the sailor’s wife on the shore watching the sea, waiting for her husband to return. Here’s lyrics from “A Sailor’s Life”, a folk song from the 1700’s:

A sailor’s life, it is a merry life
He robs young girls of their heart’s delight
Leaving them behind to weep and mourn
They never know when they will return

In “Space Oddity”, Major Tom is lost in the ocean of space due to a malfunction and unlikely to return (“I think my spaceship knows which way to go/ Tell my wife I lover her very much she knows”). But in the sequel song “Ashes to Ashes”, being lost in space is a metaphor; Major Tom is a hundred-thousand miles away due to addiction, depression, despair:

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom’s a junkie
Strung out in heavens high
Hitting an all time low

My mother married my father when she was 22. Over the years she often mentioned how charismatic, witty, and dynamic he was back then, with a sparkle in his eyes you can still see in old photos. But by his late twenties things changed. He drank a lot, and once, on a bender, disappeared for two weeks. He came back, but he would sometimes go without sleep for days, and at other times, be in bed for weeks. He was — eventually— diagnosed with manic depression. One of the solutions for this back then was electro-shock therapy. The high-voltages that surged through his brain with this treatment burned his memory out. He also changed physically — for example, his easy and fluid walk (he was an athlete when younger) became a strange sort of shuffling, short steps but with knees high. (All the way down the street on his daily walks. And all the way across the field, before my soccer games...)

The EST stopped at some point. He was prescribed an avalanche medications, dozens of pills a day. He came back to “normalcy” for awhile, but on the freeway to work one day a few years later he was the victim of a hit and run (rear-ended; his car rolled so dramatically it was the entire front page of the newspaper). He suffered a traumatic brain injury, his jaw was broken, his lips split, his lungs punctured, his bones broken. But he lived. Or rather, survived, into his 70’s.

My mother was on the shore, all that time, awaiting his return.

Leaving them behind to weep and mourn
They never know when they will return

At last back you've come
Yet still, you're gone

---

NOTES:

The song “Mrs Major Tom” is on all streaming sites (Spotify, Apple, Amazon etc.)

• Hear K.I.A.’s version, on the chillout compilation album DXLR8 (vocals by Larissa Gomes)

• Hear Sheryl Crow’s version, on the William Shatner album "Seeking Major Tom”

• When my father was around six years of age, his mother was diagnosed with TB. She was sent to an isolated ward in the second story of a sanatorium. For three years he could only wave to her from the sidewalk below, his cement shore, hoping she’d come home soon. She never returned.

• Sheila Chandra sings the most beautiful version of the song “A Sailor’s Life”. It’s on her album “The Zen Kiss”, released in 1994. It’s minimalistic, her vocals only accompanied by a tanpura drone. Her voice is absolutely hypnotic, and it profoundly influenced me. Googling her for this post, I found out she lost her voice completely in 2010, due to suffering from Burning Mouth Syndrome. She is unable to sing or even speak without suffering intense pain. So she is now mute. She never knows when her voice will return.

• Mrs Major Tom typifies how ideas are built upon, remixed, spread (memes). From Kubrik’s Space Odyssey to Bowies Space Oddity to Schilling’s Major Tom to my track to…. a performance artist in the Ukraine who has adopted the name Mrs Major Tom (as have multiple users on Twitter and Instagram). There is even a racing horse named after the song. Mrs Major Tom has also been referred to in various academic essays and books, and been mentioned in multiple newspapers, online publications and blogs around the world

• There’s an NFT of the lyrics, digital neon HERE

• Trivia: Sheryl Crow drops the word “asteroid” before “eyes”. Don’t know why.

• Idea: There should be a Broadway musical of the Major Tom story