Inside 'Life On Mars?': David Bowie's Revenge on 'My Way,' and the Late-Arriving Tonic That Makes It Work
Bowie opens the verse on F and sits there for eight bars, then walks the bass down by half step through a chain of augmented and diminished chords, none of it resolving. The tonic doesn't land until "Sailors fighting in the dance hall," a quarter of the way into the song.
