Tin Machine and the Sound + Vision Tour were over. This was year zero. Bowie’s first solo album in this new era was Black Tie, White Noise. It saw the return of two collaborators: producer and guitarist Nile Rodgers, and guitarist Mick Ronson (who passed away less than a month after the release of the album). It was energetic, upbeat, and indebted to the sounds of House music. In contrast, the songwriting was both personal and weighty. He and Iman were married in 1992, and two of the songs on the album (“Pallas Athena” and “The Wedding Song”) were among the five that he had written for their wedding. The title and title track are derived from Bowie’s observations about race, chiefly because the LA riots had also just occurred. Newlyweds Bowie and Iman happened to arrive the day they began, watching the events unfold firsthand while confined to their hotel.
“Jump They Say” addressed the suicide of his mentally troubled half-brother Terry Burns, who had taken his life seven years before. Up until that point, Bowie had remained quiet about the matter and refused to attend the memorial. On his own terms, he wrote “Jump They Say” about Terry’s schizophrenia and suicidal struggles.
In the video, Bowie’s character jumps to his death from a building. The resulting tableau of him lying dead on the roof of a car is unmistakably a reference to a famous photo of Evelyn McHale, a woman whose suicide in 1947 was documented by photographer Robert Wiles. She jumped to her death from the Empire State Building, and landed on a car. Her final resting state on the car was in a reclined position, and was noted for how uncharacteristically serene and ironic it appeared, given the circumstances.