Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy - David Bowie & Bing Crosby
It's worth watching
the entire scene, from a 1977 CBS TV Special. All the small nods towards aging into obscurity are perhaps a littler more poignant, given that Bing Crosby died a month after filming:
Bowie: Hallo. Are you, ah, the new butler?
Crosby: It's been a long time since I've been the new anything.
When asked to sing 'Little Drummer Boy', Bowie refused, saying he hated the song and was only doing the show because his mother loved Bing Crosby. The show's writers told him to wait, ran frantically into a meeting room, and bashed out the counterpoint in just over an hour.
Bowie: Do you like modern music?
Crosby: Oh, I think it's marvellous. Some of it really fine. But tell me, uh... You ever listen to any of the older fellas?
Bowie: Oh yeah, sure, I like, uh, John Lennon and the other one... Harry Nelson.
Crosby: You go back that far, huh?
I think I'm disproportionately affected by the thought of old people fading into lonely obscurity. It's no sadder than many other injustices, but something gets to me about people forgotten by a society they've served for decades upon decades.
Earlier this year, I was speaking on an abortion rights + technology panel. I was chatting to this one older lady before the panel started, and I gradually realized that she knew a
lot more than me about the topic. In fact, Pat had been one of the first abortion rights activists in the USA (see:
her Wikipedia page). "It's amazing how quickly people forget," she said, explaining herself to yet another young person who had never heard of her. (There's a particularly painful panel in Kate Beaton's comic
Ducks that hits that same note.) It's easy to be callous and young. I don't think I know how not to be.
Bowie & Crosby, in harmony: Every child must be made to care / Care enough for his fellow man / To give all the love that he can
Anyway, the song itself, a rushed accident brought about by maternal bullying, is really quite lovely.
(some
sources for the stories)
