( * David Bowie & ... )
Chart entered : 27 November 1982
Chart peak : 3 ( 73 on re-release in 2007 )
We now say goodbye to another member of the original chart cast. For a long time it seemed that Bing's chart career had ended as Elvis arrived with his last hit being "Around The World" in May 1957. Then, eighteen years later , came the abysmal valedictory shlock of "That's What Life Is All About" and a memorable car crash appearance on Top of the Pops where he distractedly mumbled his way through the song whilst leching at Pan's People limbering up on an adjacent stage. The single stalled at number 41 after that. Two years later a re-release of "White Christmas" reached number 5 in the wake of Crosby's recent death.
The pan-generational duet was recorded in September 1977. Bing was in England to tour and record an album . He was also recording a Christmas TV special at Elstree Studios and Bowie was selected for a guest spot because he lived nearby. Bowie , at his creative peak after recording Low and Heroes accepted the invitation to please his mum but balked at the prospect of duetting on "Little Drummer Boy" because he hated the song. The show's writers Grossman and Kohan quickly came up with a counter-melody and new bridge under the title "Peace on Earth" that he could sing while Bing ambled through the song proper. Despite the lyrics being uninspiring doggerel Bowie agreed to the compromise and the pair recorded the song for the show after a couple of hours rehearsal .
It followed a couple of minutes' worth of rather awkward, unfunny dialogue between the two and it's long been speculated that Bing didn't really know who the emaciated young Englishman was. The pair then performed the song (s) stood by a piano, the tired-looking Bing leaning on it for support and hardly glancing in his companion's direction. He was 74 and the voice had diminished; when Bowie launches into the first new verse his contribution drops to a barely audible hum before they sing the bridge together.
Bing never saw the show broadcast; he died just a few weeks after recording it, of a heart attack on a golf course in Spain. With Bing no longer around to touch up his contribution in a recording studio the song remained on film alone until 1982 when RCA , with the first new Bowie album for almost three years ready to go, decided to buy the rights and put it out , lo-fi as it was. It took its place in a wretched end of year chart that included other "classics" such as Rene and Renato's Save Your Love , Shaky's Blue Christmas , Keith Harris's Orville's Song, Cliff's Little Town and David Essex's Winter's Tale, something else for New Pop's champions to quickly skate over.
Bing's posthumous reputation took a hammering after the publication of his son Gary's book Going My Own Way in 1983 which portrayed him as a harsh and physically cruel parent. Other family members supported or denied his claims to varying degrees and Gary himself recanted some of it before his death in 1995 but the damage to his image as a home loving family man was done.
He's had subsequent hits with re-releases ; "True Love" ( 1983 ), "White Christmas" ( 1985 and 1998 ) and this once more ( 2007 ).
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