I Am With Name

Written by: David Bowie, Brian Eno, Reeves Gabrels, Mike Garson, Erdal Kızılçay, Sterling Campbell
Recorded: May 1994 – February 1995
Producers: David Bowie, Brian Eno, David Richards

Released: 11 September 1995

Available on:
1.Outside

Personnel

David Bowie: vocals
Brian Eno: keyboards, synthesizer
Reeves Gabrels: guitar
Erdal Kızılçay: bass guitar
Mike Garson: piano
Sterling Campbell: drums

Presented as a medley with ‘Segue – Ramona A Stone’, ‘I Am With Name’ is sung from the perspective of murder suspect Stone and her acolytes.

Q magazine’s 100th issue contained a three-page fictional diary written by Bowie, entitled “The Diary Of Nathan Addler, or The Art-Ritual Murder Of Baby Grace Belew: An occasionally on-going short story”.

I thought, ‘What an incredibly boring thing to do.’ Because we did all our recording in Switzerland, it’s about, ‘Day one: went skiing, looked at mountain, looked at lake. Day two: bought fromage.’ So I wondered, ‘What would Nathan Adler be doing?’

The piece was reproduced in full in the CD booklet and inner vinyl sleeve of 1.Outside. The character Ramona A Stone appeared in two entries:

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1999, 11.00AM
“DAUBER” HQ, SOHO

The only names the Data bank can associate with Baby Grace are Leon Blank, Ramona A. Stone and Algeria Touchshriek. The rundowns are brief but not to the point:

Ramona A. Stone: Female. Caucasian. Mid-40s. Assertive maintenance interesting-drug dealer and Tyrannical Futurist. No convictions. Contacts: Leon Blank, Baby Grace Blue, Algeria Touchshriek…

11.15AM

Jesus Who. I hate typing. Anyhow, we’ve got some real interesting solvents from Mack-random. How about this! Verbasiser down-load, first block:

No convictions of assertive saints believed Caucasian way-out tyrannical evoked no images described Christian saints questions no female christian machine believed no work is caucasian assertive saints believed female described christian tyrannical questions R.A. Stone convictions martyrs and tyrannicals are evoked Female described sado-masochist questions I am suicide described the fabric machine Slashing way out saints and martyrs and thrown downstairs.

Now the swirl begins. Now the image stack backs up and takes center stage. Ramona A. Stone, I remember this thickness, this treacly liquid thought. But wait, I’m ahead of myself.

JUNE 15, 1977
KREUTZBURG, BERLIN

It’s two in the morning. I can’t sleep for the screaming of some poor ost-racised Turkish immigrant screaming his guts out from over the street. His hawking shriek sounds semi-stifled like he’s got a pillow over his mouth. But the desperation comes through the spongy rubber like a knife. It cuts the breeze and bangs my eardrums. I take a walk past the fabric machine, turn left onto a street with no name. The caucasian suicide center, naked and grimy silhouetted by fungus yellow street lamps female slashing way-out saints for a dollar a time thrown downstairs if you can’t take any more. Pure joy of retreat into death, led by the shepherdess. Anti mixed-race posters pasted upon their altar of pop-death icons party people. A zero with no name looks dull-eyed to Ms. Stone, the drone that says “in the future, everything was up to itself”. Yea. I remember Ramona. She set herself up as the no-future priestess of the Caucasian Suicide Temple, vomiting out her doctrine of death-as-eternal-party into the empty vessels of Berlin youth. The top floor rooms were the gateways to giving up to the holy ghost. She must have overseen more than 30 or 40 check-outs before the local squad twigged what was going down.

Outside, Track 12 – Segue – Ramona A. Stone / I Am with Name

Much of this album reminds me of concepts David explored decades earlier with Diamond Dogs – a post apocalyptic waining days of the millennium feel. #TimsTwitterListeningParty

— Mike Garson (@mikegarson) July 5, 2020

‘I Am With Name’ was the b-side of the UK single ‘The Hearts Filthy Lesson’, released ahead of 1.Outside on 11 September 1995. Although described as the ‘album version’, it was a longer edit.

In September 2004 Columbia released a limited edition of 1.Outside, with a bonus disc containing 14 b-sides and remixes including ‘I Am With Name’ (Album Version).

‘I Am With Name’ (alternative version) appeared on Re:Call 5, included in the 2021 box set Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001).

It seems this track is nearly all elaborately created and electronically altered sounds except for my piano parts on which really makes the piano even more haunting on this one. #TimsTwitterListeningParty

— Mike Garson (@mikegarson) July 5, 2020

A ten-minute version of ‘I Am With Name’ was leaked online in 2003 as part of the bootleg The Leon Suite. The improvised piece includes a section which finds Bowie almost quick-fire rapping:

I won’t eat me
It will hide me
He should take them
I won’t tell it
She can’t take them
It will do less
He said tell it
He said smell this
He should do less
He should be there

She can’t hide me
He said do less
He said tell it
I won’t take them
She can’t eat me
He said kill that
He said take them
He said be there
I won’t kill that
It will be there
She can’t eat me
I won’t hide me

It will tell me
He said hide me
I won’t be there
He said hide me
He said be there
I won’t hide me
They won’t smell this
He should hide me
I won’t kill that
It will take them
They won’’t tell it
She can’t feed them
They won’t hide me
He should hide me

They won’t hide me
She can’t be there
It will hide me
He should eat me
He should take them
He should take them
I won’t kill that
They won’t be there

They won’t tell it
I won’t take them
I won’t eat me
I won’t eat me
I won’t eat me

They won’t do less
He said tell it
They won’t take them
It will hide me…