Bowie Album-By-Album Thread- Second Run

Brother from Another Planet - Bowie and black music
http://www.mtv.com/news/2727414/brother-from-another-planet/

 

That's the silliest thing I've seen posted today, but it's early and you might still post again so all bets are off. Where do people get this stuff ?

D.D.

 

Thanks! A very interesting take on Bowie:

"David Bowie ranks as high in our electric church’s Afrofuturist pantheon of demiurges as Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, and Miles Davis. That’s for his outrageous aristocratic style, not-just-skin-deep soul, badass brinksmanship, and all-around Alter-Negrocity. Not to mention the Starman’s own sui generis take on The Funk. Bowie remains that rarity — a white rock artist whose appropriations of black kulcha never felt like a rip-off but more like a sharing of radical and bumptious ideations between like-minded freaks.

On Young Americans, you hear a white rock star who didn’t want to be read as a mere tourist in Blackonia but as a contributor, a collaborator, and ultimately a real comrade.

we can infer that Bowie’s love for the most politically committed black artists — Nina Simone, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Gamble & Huff, Gil Scott-Heron, et al. — was more than lip service."

 

...sillier than 'thank god black people had white David Bowie to take their music to its full potential?'

 

Sorry, a bit late to this thread ... My wife loves glam era David but she absolutely hates this music. I bought the London Boy CD last year because I'd never really heard the Deram material, and put this into the car CD player when we went on a road trip. We got through Track 1 OK (early version of Space Oddity) but by Teack 4 she told me to turn it off. So i selected Track 10 (Laughing Gnome) just to really annoy her. She hit me so hard I almost crashed.

So we tried it once but we dont listen to the Deram era Bowie in my house.

But I do like some of the Pye material. Particularly Can't Help thinking About Me. This was quite good mod era music. I cant understand how he went from 1966 to the whimsical/fey rubbish he recorded in 1967.

 

That's not silly - it's sarcastic. And if it's not sarcastic, then it's stupid. But it's not silly.

D.D.

 

I really don't think the poster in question was writing sarcastically. I was pretty flabbergasted. if it's as straight-faced as it seems, it's unquestionably one of the... strangest things I've read on this forum.

 

I couldn't agree more.

 

...so therefore the same will apply to everyone else in the world.

That's some slick logic.

 

It wasn't really "rubbish", it was simply deliberately in a lighter style. His manager saw him as being the new Anthony Newly or Tommy Steele. David was also feeding off what The Kinks, Traffic and Syd Barrett were doing around the same time. To get a better understand, it's wiser to listen to the actual "David Bowie" Deram album and not the compilations.

 

Is it time to move to STATIONTOSTATION yet...please!!

 

I'm giving each record a couple of weeks. We'll move on over the weekend. I've got a half-written post on Young Americans that I might actually get finished before then...time permitting.

 

Actually bring the ref....not much talking about YA happening just heated exchanges!!

 

Think YA, has had more mileage than AS thread wise.

 

Well, I am listening to it again tonight, from the Rykodisc remastered CD. And it does rock, and in some places the music is a little slow but still tight, and it's a crisp recording. And even if it's not even my 4th fave Bowie live set, it's good to have an officially released document of this period.

I think my earlier comment comparing it to Dylan at Budakan" is pretty spot on.

 

I realized today it took Bowie & company less time to record Young Americans than it's taking me to finish my writeup of it...

 

The writing of the album took David more time. The recording was nothing.

 

Young Americans 1975


When I break Bowie albums into playlists and time periods, for me his early years end with Diamond Dogs and the second stage of his career begins with Young Americans. As I mentioned in my previous post, Young Americans was a new Bowie in every way possible. A new look, a new full on pop sound and while Diamond Dogs still clung to shades of Ziggy and glam, Young Americans for better or worse drove a steak through its heart!


This of course was shocking to the young androgynous glitter crowd who claimed David as their conquering hero. By and large this was David’s first of many pop sell outs, with songs like the title track and Fame you had songs on the radio that even your rock n roll hating grandparents would know and even hum along to! None of this is condemning to David Bowie or Young Americans, like Lets Dance 8 years late would do, it had to happen. I firmly believe had David remained Ziggy the glam king he would now be little more than a legacy act, a remember when like many other late 60’s, early 70’s artists who had trouble adapting to new styles and trends.

History has show however that Bowie from here on out became the great appropriator in a similar vein to Miles Davis. He moved forward at almost every turn. He found inspiration in new directions, fads and styles and made them his own. He made avant guard, kitch and the esoteric palpable to the masses. That was his skill and gift! And when necessary he went full on unabashed pop, infused cash into his coffers and then went on his side trips gain as he saw fit.

I am surprised here at the dismissal and disdain Young Americans elicits. So you liked Ziggy and the Rono years better, cool I do too, but that does not mean that Young Americans sucks in any way. Maybe I like and appreciate it so much as I do like soul and the 70’s Philly sound. I love John Lennon’s Walls and Bridges and find it to have a similar sonic thumb print.

I also like Steely Dan and the rise of the slick mid 70’s studio sound, and as a professional audio engineer this album is recorded and mixed impeccably.

If you think you hate this album or just dismiss it, take it out, throw on a pair of good headphones, or sit between the speakers and let the classic mid 70’s vibe sweep over you for 48 un-interrupted minutes…just a thought!


Now on to the music



1. Young Americans: Hard to find fault with this song. Its got a killer groove, flawless musicianship, and a mix and sound that is smooth as glass. It sounds like it is a classic LCR (left right center) mix which adds to its depth and clarity. Bowie has other songs in is lexicon which are trickier, deeper, and more artistic and yet as a good friend of mine said along with Fame, This is a song that will still exist in pop music history and will still be remembered and sung along to in 50 years time. 10.0


2. Win: I am not sure I can top what @Mother already said about this song it is “exquisite in the context of the album”. I could not agree more. Its not a song that pops into mind when one sets out to jam some Bowie, and yet when encountered in context it is a fantastic track that holds up nicely along side many of the rest of Bowie’s non-hit-single album cuts. 7.0


3. Fascination: Not only wah-wah guitar but wah-wah sax and wah-wah clavinet. Perhaps it tries too hard to be funky especially with the background vocals, but who cares, again in the context of 1975 soul its a nice little ditty! I often throw it into Bowie-road trip playlists. 7.0


4. Right: This is a song where again, all of the soul elements are there and its got some cool moments, but in reality the cool production masks a mediocre song that would fall apart quick when stripped of the width, effects and funk. Vocally it really foreshadows his mid-80’s sound, and I really like the thin funk guitar playing. The doubled/effected sax when focused on is kind of annoying and incessant though 6.0


5. Somebody Up There Likes Me: Just seeing the title I always forget what this song is until I hear it, and when the vocals come in I start to dig it! Of all of the songs on the album, if you dumped the sax, synths and percussion I could almost hear this one fitting in played by the Spiders with Garrison on piano. A good song, not a great song 6.0


6. Across the Universe: Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…OMG does this song SUCK!!!!! It tries hard in places to be cool…but it sounds like an overdubbed, salvaged outtake from Pin-Ups which it isn’t but its like a C grade Pin Up outcast none the less. 2.0


*I wholeheartedly agree with everyone who has mentioned that why was this here in light of the stellar Young Americans outtakes of: Who Can I Be Now? which is an easy 7-8 or the other 1974 outtake It's Gonna Be Me which I think is an easy 9 or 10 and one of my favorite all time unreleased Bowie songs!


7. Can You Hear Me: Love this song. The intro and bass playing are stellar and it has real vibe. Imagine if this came right out of the aforementioned It's Gonna Be Me instead of Across The Universe that would have changed the whole flow and tone of the album. This has a great sensitive vocal delivery and the band is dialed in sweetly 8.0


8. Fame: Lennon, Alomar and Bowie!!! This song transcends the whole album. If all he released in 1975 was this song as a single it would still sit along-side Space Oddity as one of his 5 most iconic 10.0


ALBUM RATING: 7.0

 

I was at all 6 (7?) of the Universal Amphitheater shows that were the basis for Cracked Actor, and I remember the night of BBC filming : pretty sure it was Thursday. Bowie only broke out the Italian accent that one night, and I always assumed it was just for the cameras.

 

I never understood the hate on Across the Universe. I love it. About the same as the original actually

 

Bowie sings the blues...................

Yes, "Who Can I Be Now" is a great outtake that I would not be without. As a matter of fact, I had it long before Rykodisc coughed it up as a bonus track.

 

In the wake of Bowie's death, I've been returning to Young Americans more than any other record, and after a couple of weeks staggering about in a bit of a daze, started to wonder exactly why. Unlike many fans, I've always liked the record - even if I thought it was flawed - but it also represents probably the most unusual record in Bowie's catalog. Apart from "1984" off Diamond Dogs there isn't much direct stylistic precedent for it in his catalog up to that point, and except for maybe Let's Dance and Black Tie, White Noise, not much in his subsequent catalog exhibits much evidence of direct descent from Young Americans either. However, on examining the record in more detail for this writeup, I’ve come to realize it actually had a massive impact on almost every subsequent album, and after Hunky Dory might be the most important album in his catalog from an artistic development standpoint.

Bowie had tried on a wide range of styles in his evolution since the mid-‘60s - from blues to Floyd to Zep to Newley to Bolin to VU to Stones - but Philly soul hadn't been one of them. His influences and his music seemed as lily white as his translucent skin. And yet this is a guy who got turned onto rock by none other than Little Richard, so perhaps it shouldn't have been too surprising he'd eventually turn his attentions to R&B, and yet Young Americans was received and is still perceived as the most audacious transformation of his career.

It’s important to recall the pop landscape of ’74 – ’75. After a few commercial wilderness years soul music was moving back toward dominating the American mainstream again, as Philly soul's commercial fortunes neared their peak and the nascent genre of disco - which partly arose from it - began its chart reign. Unlike Dusty Springfield, who'd arrived in Philly five years earlier while the scene was embryonic to record her follow-up to Dusty In Memphis, the poorly-received but cutting edge A Brand New Me, Bowie landed at Philly soul's commercial and cultural peak to create Young Americans.

Bowie wasn't the only white UK rock act to "go soul" at the end of '74 either - the Bee Gees had just cut their own well-reviewed but poorly-received Mr. Natural, and while Bowie was recording Young Americans they were tracking the album that would define the rest of their career (and indeed probably the rest of the decade when it came to the pop charts), Main Course. Still, whatever Bowie lacked in forward vision compared to Dusty or Barry Gibb, his Young Americans made up for in sheer audaciousness. Blue eyed soul after all had been a playground for Springfield and Gibb for around a decade – in contrast, trying to imagine Ziggy recording O'Jays tunes results in a sort of musical divide by zero error.

Of course, as it turns out that's not what Young Americans is at all.

Bowie spoke in contemporary interviews about attending shows at the Apollo in Harlem while he lived in New York, where he took in acts like the Temptations, the Spinners and Marvin Gaye. And while Young Americans is certainly informed by acts like that, it's also got a surprising touch of call-and-response gospel to it, likely brought in by an early-career Luther Vandross and his backing singers, Anthony Hinton and Diane Sumler. The whole band Bowie assembled was top shelf, including Sly's drummer Andy Newmark, a young David Sanborn, and crack bassist Carlos Alomar, who'd work with Bowie off and on over the next 30 years (it was Alomar who brought in Vandross & company). While Bowie passed off Young Americans as "plastic soul" - and it's easy to see it as that, given who's doing the singing - the reality (which has just dawned on me since listening to it after his death) is that the album is actually a more authentic soul record than almost anything else being done in the mid-'70s, a throwback in a way to the Atlantic/Stax Memphis soul of the mid to late '60s, with just enough then-modern sax and funk bass licks to camouflage its origins. It's Bowie's Dusty In Memphis, except he mostly wrote it himself, and he's never gotten proper credit for the achievement.

And what an achievement Young Americans was. Bowie was an increasingly popular cult act by this point in America, but had enjoyed nothing like the mainstream success he’d had in the UK and Europe. Remarkably, he’d only scored one top 40 single by this point, the American re-release of “Space Oddity” in 1973, which managed to climb to #15 on the charts. The title cut from this album gave him his second, and possibly most important chart single. Although it barely climbed out of the top 30, it established Bowie as more than a one-hit-wonder and it exposed a bunch of listeners to his new sound. Both of these developments kicked down commercial – and genre – barriers in radio, and paved the way for the album’s other big hit.

“Young Americans” was certainly a worthy title for this kind of success. Not only is it musically an inspired slice of Philly soul, but lyrically it’s one of Bowie’s densest – and most American, most insightful – works. Bowie was an early fan and a big fan of Bruce Springsteen, and was clearly inspired by his work on this track. But if anything, Bowie transcends his inspiration. Instead of the sentimental angst that typifies so much of Springsteen’s work when it comes to depicting his fellow Americans, Bowie opts for a sympathetic but more rigorous approach, the result being more like the work of his fellow outsider-in-America genius, Joni Mitchell. “Young Americans” is Bowie’s “The Hissing Of Summer Lawns”, laying bare the wave of decay and dissatisfaction that swept the American landscape in the wake of the 60’s.

Scanning life through the picture window
She finds the slinky vagabond
He coughs as he passes her Ford Mustang, but
Heaven forbid, she'll take anything
But the freak, and his type, all for nothing
He misses a step and cuts his hand, but
Showing nothing, he swoops like a song
She cries "Where have all Papa's heroes gone?"

All the way from Washington
Her bread-winner begs off the bathroom floor
We live for just these twenty years
Do we have to die for the fifty more?"

I could really quote the whole lyric and dissect it in excruciating detail. It’s both an incredible character study and a thorough examination and indictment of American politics and society. There’s nothing else quite as sweepingly successful in his catalog – in addition to the intellectual content, the language constructs he spins out are radiant with inspiration.

Well, well, well, would you carry a razor
In case, just in case of depression?
Sit on your hands on a bus of survivors
Blushing at all the afro-Sheeners

Not only are the lyrics inspired, but his dramatic performance here is second to nobody. Bowie is utterly convincing as a Philly soul crooner and yet he’s also retained his dramatic flair. Just listen to how he sings the next passage, how his tone and voice change from line to line:

Ain't that close to love?
Well, ain't that poster love?
Well, it ain't that Barbie doll
Her hearts have been broken just like you

People have won Oscars for lesser performances.

But the true kicker is, this “plastic soul” that Bowie is laying out? Well, to my ear it ends up being not only more emotionally genuine than 99% of the pop charts of that era, but more genuine than most of the rest of The Dame’s catalog as well, as the track resolves in a spine-tingling, gospel-flecked conclusion:

Ain't there a man who can say no more?
And, ain't there a woman I can sock on the jaw?
And, ain't there a child I can hold without judging?
Ain't there a pen that will write before they die?
Ain't you proud that you've still got faces?
Ain't there one damn song that can make me
Break down and cry?

I adore “The Hissing Of Summer Lawns” – it’s ethereal, it’s incisive, its lyrics reveal that Mitchell possessed awe-inspiring gifts, ones so vast they diminish my opinion of other artists who, as much as I might love them, simply aren’t capable of operating on her level. But it’s also an emotionally distant work – indeed, that’s part of what’s so brilliant about it, its clinical qualities providing it with a kind of x-ray cold societal vision. The remarkable thing about “Young Americans” then is that it provides the same kind of deeply insightful portrait of America and Americans, but does so rapid-fire, fully enmeshed in contemporary pop sentiments, and from a completely emotionally-connected perspective. Genius doesn’t begin to describe the multifaceted brilliance of this track.

While plenty of people like the two big hits off of Young Americans, the album cuts have never gotten as much love, which I think is unfortunate. Even if they aren’t quite as inspired, they’re utterly unique entries in Bowie’s catalog for another reason – their personal sincerity, a quality his material had lacked since he adopted his Ziggy persona almost half a decade before. Just as the confessional singer-songwriter movement was collapsing, Bowie releases his own uniquely bizarre entry in the canon. “Win” is the first of these, all soaring soul vocals and intimately revealing lyrics:

If there's nothing to hide me
Then you've never seen me hanging naked and wired
Somebody lied, but I say it's hip
To be alive

This includes one of the best constructs in his catalog:

Me, I'm fresh on your pages
Secret thinker sometimes listening aloud
Life lies dumb on its heroes
Wear your wound with honor, make someone proud
Someone like you should not be allowed
To start any fires

All of it glides over possibly the most beautiful musical accompaniment in Bowie’s entire catalog, guitars and sax fluttering thru sonic clouds. He billed this as “plastic soul”, but “Win” cuts closer to what was really happening to David Jones than anything we’d heard from him since Space Oddity.

“Fascination” I’ve never felt was quite as strong as its predecessors. It’s funky and somewhat compelling, but also feels a bit more stilted, and lyrically it suffers in comparison to the rest of the album. The bones are good but not great, and there’s not enough meat on them to fully compensate. So this first attempt the record makes to lay down a killer soul/funk groove isn’t a runaway success, but that’s not to say it’s a failure either – Bowie delivers another great vocal and again sounds remarkably at home in the genre. But for me the song never quite fully takes flight the way I want it to.

The wonderful call and response ballad “Right” on the other hand feels much more successfully realized. I’ve always thought this was sorta Bowie’s “Let’s Get It On”, and something about its beat almost seems to presage hip-hop. What it lacks in intellectual content it makes up for in smooth sensuality, keeping it sexy and sultry without becoming crass.

“Somebody Up There Likes Me” then is something of a change of pace, with far more intellectual content than its predecessors. In a way its vaguely religious and political lyrics make it play a bit like a leftover from Diamond Dogs – the Pushing Ahead Of The Dame blog thinks it’s about some future TV driven politician conjured up by Bowie, but I suspect the figure is less a figment and more an amalgamation of existing, rising political (and possibly religious and cultural) figures Bowie had spied on the American landscape, like Reagan.

Leaders come, they hate all the people know
That given time, the leaders go
Tell me, can they hold you under their spell
Can they walk and hold you as well as a
Smile like Valentino?
Could he sell you anything?
Keep your eyes on your soul, keep your hand on your heart
He says "Don't hurry, baby
Somebody up there (somebody) likes me"

Again, more gospel-like call and response work, really brilliantly executed by Luther Vandross and the gals. David Sanborn wails away thru most of the song, no doubt annoying the hell out of anybody who hates wailing sax, but I love it – it’s terribly evocative of 1975 and east-coast rock and soul.

When Bowie returned to Manhattan to finish the album John Lennon dropped by the studio, resulting in a pair of tracks that unfortunately displaced a couple of the Philly originals. The first of these is a truly awful, ill-advised, dead cat wailing cover of “Across The Universe” that I suspect only survived to the final cut because Bowie was unsure how the album would be received and Lennon’s presence provided both a bit of a commercial fig leaf as well as an overt critical endorsement. Unfortunately it sonically doesn’t quite fit in with the other tracks and emotionally it stops the flow of the album cold. If this were Lennon’s only contribution to Young Americans it would be truly regrettable, because it’s easy to argue the cut ruins what would otherwise be a really solid album. Fortunately, there’s one other cut Lennon was involved with that not only justifies his presence, but which made Bowie an otherworldly superstar in America.

Young Americans regains its footing with the gorgeous “Can You Hear Me?”, the closest Bowie’s probably ever come to writing a conventional love song – and even then it’s a unique take. Annie Lennox would build a whole career out of smart, solid, engaging material like this a decade or so later, and indeed if there’s one unfortunate thing to come out of Young Americans it’s that Bowie never cut another album like it, because he could have easily milked the genre for a trio of wildly successful records:

There's been many others
So many times
Sixty new cities, an' what do I
What do I find?
I want love so badly,
I want you most of all
You know, it's harder to take it from anyone
It's harder to fall
Can you hear me call ya?

Bowie cut a memorable duet of this with a mushroom-haired Cher on her CBS variety show in 1975, himself bedecked in brash suits from Sears of all places that – given his coked-out physique and massive coif – made him look even more like a visitor from another planet than usual. Someone in Hollywood must have finally taken notice…

But it wasn’t a duet with Cher that made Bowie an American superstar, it was that other studio collaboration with a Shirley & Company-obsessed John Lennon which finally gave Bowie’s career the American break it needed. This track began life as a guitar riff Carlos Alomar developed while playing with James Brown on tour, but foolishly Brown never made use of the funky thing. Bowie did, first turning it into the foundation of a cover of the old Flares tune “Footstompin’” and then hauling it out again while Lennon was in the studio. The Walrus put it together with “Shame” from the Shirley & Company hit, and before long this chocolate and peanut butter accidental combo became “Fame”, maybe the funkiest thing a white act has ever recorded.

Right from its menacing intro you can tell “Fame” comes from a different well than its Philly-soul counterparts on the record – it’s far more Manhattan and its funk is cutting edge. Indeed while the rest of the record is – at least superficially – “plastic” soul, there’s nothing plastic about “Fame”. It’s as authentically urban and raw as anything else to come out of the decade – the fact that it came from David Bowie just made it all the more surreally awesome, as if the P-Funk Mothership had landed and disgorged an albino alien funkmeister.

Kudos to Carlos Alomar for laying down the groove – one of the greatest in chart history – but it would have gone nowhere without Bowie & Lennon’s razor-sharp melody and sneering, elbow-throwing lyrics.

Fame, what you like is in the limo
Fame, what you get is no tomorrow
Fame, what you need you have to borrow
Fame
Fame, "Nein! It's mine!" is just his line
To bind your time, it drives you to, crime

The other brilliant thing about the track is that it never relies solely on its groove, with Bowie & company instead lobbing a profusion of fantastic breaks and bridges at the listener and then, near the end of the track, dropping a manipulated-vocal breakdown that’s – to this day – one of the most riveting moments I’ve ever heard on the radio. What the funck is that and I need to hear it again RIGHT NOW!

After ET has dropped the ultimate in intergalactic funk on you there’s nowhere to go but down, so the original issue of Young Americans concludes with its most effective track. Ryko’s reissue from the ‘90s however rights almost two decades of wrongs by including a pair of bonus tracks that are better than most of the cuts that made the actual record. The first is the gorgeous, dramatic “Who Can I Be Now?”, one of the most overtly autobiographical entries in Bowie’s entire catalog:

If it's all a vast creation
Putting on a face that's new
Someone has to see, a role for him and me
Someone might as well be you

Up in heaven, any angel
Writes a special game to play
Oh oh, could we, could we
Make a star to snatch their angels, boy?
Played your role for every day
Please help me

Who can I be now? You found me
Who can I be? Fell apart, you found me
Now can I be now? You found me
Now can I be real? Can I be?

When I called Young Americans Bowie’s Dusty In Memphis it’s tracks like this I was thinking of, really traditional, heartfelt soul that he executes totally authentically. Big drama sure, but drama that cuts dangerously close to home.

Speaking of which, the saddest cut from the original Young Americans has to be “It’s Gonna Be Me”, Bowie the cad lamenting a love he unwisely discarded:

I've tried so many, many, many, many, many, many ways
I've lied and taken off into the day
Leaving another girl to weep over the breakfast tray
Loved her before I knew her name, hit me Jack, 'cause I'm
Gonna love her way

“That kind of love can only . . . destroy!” Bowie cries, and he fantasizes about something better:

I want to race down her street
And knock hard, hard, hard on the door until
Until she breaks down into my arms like a
Treasured toy and I feel her pain
I'll be so strong, again and again

Even coked out of his head, frantically scrawling lyrics in between recording takes at Sigma Studios, the former Ziggy Stardust and future Thin White Duke mines as much emotional truth as an Al Green or Gladys Knight. Plastic soul my ass.

Again – as on the title track – Bowie delivers a flawless dramatic performance here that’s a career highlight. You can argue that Bowie doesn’t have the greatest singing voice – an early critic dissecting one of his glam records in Stereo Review said that Bowie’s voice was like an electric eel on a barbecue grill, which might not be all that far from the truth – but the guy could do more, more convincingly with that voice than should have been humanly possible. I truly feel for Lady Gaga and all the other poor souls being called upon to churn out Bowie tributes in this year’s upcoming awards shows, because it’s going to reveal how difficult-to-impossible it will be for anybody to successfully cover – let alone best - Bowie’s material. Like Joni Mitchell, David Bowie had a unique voice and immaculate dramatic delivery that is simply inimitable and irreplaceable.

The Ryko release closes with a lengthy early disco track, “John, I’m Only Dancing (Again)”. It’s an amusing cultural artifact, and it’s funny to see that Bowie was keyed into the rise of disco a year or so before many of his contemporaries, but it’s also interesting to note that Barry Gibb was actually already way more hip to what made a great disco record. That having been said, it’s fascinating to imagine what might have happened if “John, I’m Only Dancing (Again)” had evolved into a more-successful disco track instead of its somewhat clunky self. Coupled with “Fame” could Bowie have found himself on the vanguard of the whole disco phenomena? And how might he have shaped that nascent genre? Swap out The Bee Gees for David Bowie and suddenly disco becomes a very different musical and cultural beast.

Unfortunately given his epic cocaine consumption Bowie wasn’t really in any shape to lead some kind of cultural or musical movement. His next play would find him ensconced in a rented home in Los Angeles, scrawling the Tree of Life on the carpet and subsisting on a diet of cocaine and milk while he by turns tried to become a film star and cut his next chart success. The resulting record – Station To Station – would be his highest-charting album yet in the US and more of a critical darling than Young Americans, but it’s also a record he didn’t even recall making and marks probably the darkest, most dangerous period in his entire life, one he almost didn’t survive.

A whopping 40 years on, Young Americans stands out as a unique and pivotal entry in Bowie’s catalog. Under the guise of plastic soul Bowie actually drops the masks he’d hidden behind for years and reveals more of his true self than most of his audience had ever seen, obscured only by the audacity of Bowie doing straight-up soul. Although he never cut another record quite like it – even next year’s Station To Station found him rapidly moving back toward a more European, cabaret-influenced sound – the vocal techniques he deployed here remained with him the rest of his career and particularly mark his Berlin-era work. I don’t think you get “Heroes” without Young Americans, it’s as simple as that, and it’s the contrast between the electronics and those impassioned, soul-tinged vocals that really make those Berlin records work (a trick Yaz and Eurythmics picked up on a few years later, to enormous success). To a large and largely unheralded degree Young Americans both delineated and defined the next phase of Bowie’s career and – given the massive influence his next few records came to have – very much helped to define the sound of the 1980s as well, a decade in which black and white artists blended traditional black and white musical genres right out in the mainstream of pop, creating superstars like Prince and Madonna in the process. I don’t think Young Americans has been recognized as such, but on reflection it might be the single most-important album of the 1970s in terms of setting the stage for much of what was to come. Fortune, as it turned out, favored the bold.

 

Epic!

 

I remember not caring at all for Young Americans when I first heard it back in 97 or so when I was immersing my 17 year old ears in his discography, but at the time I was more closed off to "other styles" and was upset it wasn't a more rock or alternative sounding Bowie record.

As I grew older and my tastes expanded I grew to love the album. Win is one of Bowie's sexiest performances ever and I also just love Fascination and Right as well.

Fame of course is just pure epic as well