at Bowie's insistence as a way to "break down a particular type of sexist attitude about women". James Perone writes that the track establishes the album's theme of "scary events". The lyrics of "Up the Hill Backwards" deal with the struggle of facing a crisis. Bowie misquotes Thomas Anthony Harris's 1967 self-help book I'm OK – You're OK, a guide on how to save marriage relationships; Carr and Murray see this as a reference to Bowie's divorce from Angie Bowie. Musically, it features unusual time signatures and a Bo Diddley-inspired beat. The title track dated back to a 1975 song titled "Running Scared", which David Bowie originally played to Iggy Pop. The rhythm section took inspiration from Joy Division; Davis's drum performance has been compared to Stephen Morris's on "She's Lost Control" (1979). Described by Perone as punk rock, the music is heavily distorted, featuring Fripp's ferocious guitar-playing, Davis's pounding drums, and Bowie's treated Cockney accent. Lyrically, it follows a claustrophobic relationship between a woman (dating back to Bowie's Berlin days) and a man (the demons inside Bowie). "Ashes to Ashes" revisits the character of Major Tom from "Space Oddity" (1969). Over ten years later, Major Tom is described as a "junkie", which has been interpreted as parallel to Bowie's own struggles with drug addiction throughout the 1970s. In 1990, Bowie acknowledged "Ashes to Ashes" as a confrontation of his past: "You have to accommodate your pasts within your persona. You have to understand why you went through them... You cannot just ignore them to put them out of your mind or pretend they didn't happen, or just say, 'Oh, I was different then. Musically, "Ashes to Ashes" is built around a guitar synthesiser theme by Hammer, augmented by Clark's synthesiser. Like "Space Oddity" before it, the song was built in stages, and features layers of instruments in its mix. "Fashion" is reminiscent of Bowie's former single "Golden Years", with its mix of funk and reggae. It evolved out of a reggae "spoof" started by Clark on his synthesiser and features guitar "squeals" from Fripp. Apart from being a dance track, the song provokes elements of fascism, with lyrics such as "we are the goon squad" and "turn to the left, turn to the right". The "beep beep" lines were taken from an earlier unreleased song titled "Rupert the Riley". Side two "Teenage Wildlife", the longest track on the album,