In this song, Bowie is imagining inhabitants in a post-apocalyptic future looking back at old video films that they have kept from the 1960s and '70s. In 1972, Bowie introduced the song at The Public Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, with the following: "It's about a future where people have forgotten how to make love, so they go back onto video-films that they have kept from this century. This is after a catastrophe of some kind, and some people are living on the streets and some people are living in domes, and they borrow from one another and try to learn how to pick up the pieces."
This was originally written by Bowie for Mott The Hoople as their follow-up to "All The Young Dudes." However after they rejected it, their professional relationship effectively ended and Bowie took it for himself. Bowie recalled on VH1's Storytellers that he drunkenly shaved his eyebrows when Mott the Hoople turned this song down. ("that taught them a lesson").
Bowie wrote this during his 1972 US tour. It was influenced by the barren landscape between Seattle and Phoenix, Arizona.
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