When did Bowie really become a big star in America?

He made a lot of national press with Ziggy. Newsweek and Time (which mattered in those days) had a lot of photos of his outfit and look. Whether it sold well or not he was on the map.

 

Nah - Bowie was already super-famous well before 1983.

"Let's Dance" took him to a higher level, no doubt, but he was already a household name by the mid-70s at the latest...

 

As others have noted, Bowie started to get into the higher reaches of the charts with "Diamond Dogs", as it hit #5 in the US.

Buoyed by hit singles, his 3 1974-76 albums all went top 10.

Even the not-very-accessible "Low" still rode the wave to #11. It purged the audience of the "hit single fans", so "'Heroes'" and "Lodger" did less well, though even so, "Lodger" made top 20.

"SM(ASC)" rebounded to #12, and of course "Let's Dance" was a big success.

So I think Bowie got attention as a "weirdo" in 1972/73 but that attention eventually brought real sales by 1974...

 

Agree, but I don't think you have to be toppermost of the poppermost to be a "big star".

OP leaves definition of "big star" up for grabs. If you go by the Elton/Zep/Floyd status, then he never was at that level, as his albums were never as big as those artists.

BTW, I never considered the Floyd to be "big stars" in terms of fame. They were enormously successful, of course, but each one could walk down the street in 1977 and no one would recognize them!

 

Here in Detroit, he was big (at least on the radio) after Ziggy. "Diamond Dogs" was huge. On that tour, he did 5 0r 6 nights at the Michigan Palace, which was unheard of at the time (I did attend one of those nights). Granted it was a small venue, but I'm certain he could of sold out a night or maybe 2 at Cobo Hall at this point. I seem to recall he purposely chose multiple nights at that venue because he wanted small & intimate. It was a great show.
As for "Let's Dance", I viewed it as his attempt at becoming relevant in the mainstream again (quite successfully). I thought it was a shrewd move on his part involving SR Vaughn in those recordings. It brought a lot of credibility to those who listen to the musicianship of a recording. Too bad that SRV didn't do the tour with him.

 

The Floyd one is may be the very one to view this. They were pretty anonymous, yet had staggering sales (from '73 onward) and serious tours. Whilst Bowie made a lot of noise with image and didn't have the sales or tour at that level yet he was famous/well known. Then briefly in the 80s he touched that level. Remember Bryan Adam's manager being annoyed at Sting saying some people can sell a noisy 500, 000 -1,000, 000 whilst others (meaning Bryan) can sell a quiet 4-5,000,000.

 

With the US success of "Space Oddityt" in 1973, his first Top 20 hit.

 

Yup from 1973 through 1978 he did 16 nights in Detroit (more than NYC); in '74 he did 2 nights at Cobo, then came back and did 6 nights at the Palace. He did two nights at Olympia in '76, is that larger or smaller than Cobo?

 

Ha ha - yeah, I do remember that Adams/Sting quote, and I almost alluded to it as part of the thread!

This is where the definition of "big star" becomes the sticking point. As we both agree, Bowie was very famous as early as 1973 or so, his sales never really matched that level of stardom.

For all its hype and fame, even "Let's Dance" wasn't that big a seller in the US. It went platinum - but so did "Tonight", an album regarded as a semi-flop.

Those are Bowie's only platinum studio albums in the US. A bunch of gold albums but no other platinums.

So IMO, Bowie was a "big star" in terms of actual fame from 1973, but his sales never really caught up with that. Pretty consistent in that 500K-1 million range much of his career...

 

As an aside, Sting sold better than Adams' manager claims. 3 triple platinum and 1 double platinum studio albums!

And of course, that ignores his sales as part of the Police. "Synchronicity" was 8x platinum!

Adams only had 2 albums that moved more than 1X platinum: "Reckless" (5X) and "Waking Up the Neighbours" (4X). Everything else was 1X or worse... so Sting had more multi-platinum albums than Adams!

 

I think Let's Dance might've sold more than that. Multi platinum certs weren't put in effect until late 1984 and there are still albums that never saw proper updates to their certifications. Not saying I think it sold 5 million but 2-3 million stateside isnt unthinkable. I'm sure it did as well as Men At Work's Cargo did in 1983, which is triple platinum. But Sony eventually updated their certs. Ziggy Stardust is likely at 2 million as well judging from the 1983 RCA audits as well as catalog sales from the years since. But with Bowie's discography, his albums were shifting from label to label so certifying an album that sold the majority of copies on another label is never a priority, same with labels not bothering if said artist goes to another company (see Janet Jackson's grossly undercertified A&M albums)

 

You might be right - I can just go by the data as provided!

Point remains that I think "Let's Dance" is viewed as a much bigger hit than it actually was.

Everything came together for Bowie in 1983. He'd been "away" for 3 years - an eternity back then - and scored a nice-sized hit with his first new album and its singles.

He launched a tour that achieved bigger-than-ever success because all the established Bowie fans went as well as the new generation brought in by "LD".

"Brit Pop" was big in 1983 - Culture Club, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, etc., virtually all of whom revered Bowie, so that made him seem "cool".

By no means do I intend to diminish the sales of "Let's Dance" - just saying that a lot of people seem to view it as an album that sold like 6 million US, not what it actually sold.

Its reputation as a commercial behemoth doesn't match the sales...

 

I think LD looks like such a megahit because Bowie had become such a cult artist stateside with four consecutive albums that didnt even reach gold here that when he finally achieved mainstream success again, it looked even bigger than it was

 

He did a lot of shows in California in the '72 to '78 timeframe did he not, Los Angeles in particular?

 

19 (8 in '74), and smatterings in San Diego, and SanFran/Oakland surprisingly (wonder if he ran afoul of Bill Graham).

 

I liked Space Oddity and Changes but never really focused on Bowie until Ziggy.

Unfortunately I was a wee lad in 1972 when he played the Santa Monica Civic. I also missed the Universal Ampitheater shows a few years later. First time I saw Bowie live was Oakland around 78 during the Stage Tour. I recall seeing the Lets Dance tour (Serious Moonlight) in Philly also. Sorry that I only saw him live those two times. I still put on the Ziggy movie and the Serious Moonlight movies. Both have mediocre sound but good shows.

 

1974 With Diamond Dogs

 

There's a difference between being a successful recording artist and live performer, and a well-known "star" recognisable to the general public. By the first measure he was that from the Ziggy era, and he became more of a star in '74/'75 appearing on more chat shows and the like, then "Fame" was a big hit.

 

It was actually 10 shows in Cali in September of '74. Seven straight nights at the Universal Amphitheater in L.A., one night in San Diego and, after a short trip to Arizona, back to L.A. to play the Anaheim Convention Center on the 16th and 17th of September.

BASSMAN'S DAVID BOWIE PAGE: tours

 

I remember my sister had a book called "Superstars of the 70s" that she bought in 1977 -- I think the book had been published in 1976.

It featured some of the usual suspects -- Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Peter Frampton, the Who, etc. but also some pop stars with less staying power like David Cassidy or the Osmonds, for instance.

One of the featured "superstars" was Bowie. I remember clearly because his androginous look was a bit shocking for me.

So I guess he was already quite big by then.

 

This ^

I was around 10 and can easily remember Fame and Golden Years all over the radio. Every kid in my school knew who he was. If grade school kids knew of him, I cannot believe high school kids did not. I mean somebody made those singles chart.

By 1977 he was singing with Bing Crosby on his Christmas special. Crosby's specials were like the network broadcasts of the Wizard of Oz back then. This was still the pre cable era Everybody stopped everything to watch it. The impact of that performance cannot be overstated. Bowie was seen by huge swaths of the Silent Generation, the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and the up and coming Generation X. That is one helluva an audience.

He was a well known and established commodity by Let's Dance. The big discussion about that was whether he was selling out to commercialism or not.

 

More specifically, it was around 4:23 pm eastern time, if I remember correctly.

 

He was a huge deal in the rock world almost from the git-go. But it was around
the time of `Young Americans' that he started to become a household name.

 

Didn’t it depend on whether you listened more to FM or AM? I mean you didn’t hear “Suffragette City” on most AM stations in 1972.

 

From my own limited perspective as a teenager growing in in a typical suburb of Los Angeles?

At 13 year (1971) I had a copy of Hunky Dory, which I loved. I thought it was a minor masterpiece. Played the heck out of it. Virtually no one in my set of music-loving friends knew who David Bowie was, nor did they care. My crowd ordinarily coordinated our record purchases, so we could maximize the music we shared at listening parties (and just hanging out). Typical of the day, music was everything. But there was zero interest in Hunky Dory. This album was a private treasure that I enjoyed alone.

I'd say Bowie was obscure (if not invisible) at that time. IMS Bowie was being championed by the influential rock critic at the LA Times, Robert Hilburn, but I was the only person in my posse who faithfully read the LA Times and Hilburn. I'm sure under Hilburn's influence Hunky Dory penetrated a little, but he was not generally known--far from it.

Yes, the earlier Space Oddity had gotten some airplay, but it really became famous through airplay later as a "re-discovery."

Then Ziggy Stardust (which I bought upon release) dropped. I was so jazzed about the new album. It ways in some ways reminiscent of when Dylan went electric compared with Hunky Dory. I started evangelizing. Heavily.

And there was media penetration. Bowie was started to be "known," but known more for the glam image initially that the music.

As a then 14 year old in a neighborhood that wasn't exactly forward thinking--I started taking grief for pressing this guy on my friends. A lot of grief. But I held fast.

By the time Aladdin Sane dropped, the tide had turned in my set of friends.

The comrades who once gave me crap all transformed into big fans. Hell, they've have claimed they were always big fans. LOL.

Ziggy Stardust was a party album and Aladdin Sane was cranking on stereos on my block. The great local band that played our school dances covered Panic in Detroit and Suffragette City to warm receptions.

Bowie became huge as I hit high school. Especially among the rock n roll "anti-disco" contingent. Diamond Dogs only widened his popularity (even if I personally felt like it was a drop off). Rebel Rebel was on the airwaves.

Then Young Americans hit. I liked it, but boy was it polarizing. The "anti-disco" rock n rollers were aghast. Blue-eyed soul was not the direction they were hoping for, but by 1975 David Bowie was a household name.

The rest is history.

That's my recollection.

Bill