← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Starman to Blackstar Edition Part 1
01:04:32
How rock’s freakiest alien built his pop stardom through a series of ch-ch-ch-changes.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:15]
Chris Melanfi
The Pitt is back for a new season on the Pitt Podcast. Join Alok Patel and Hunter Harris as.
- [00:21]
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They unpack each episode after it airs, discussing the stories, real medicine and ethics behind every scene.
- [00:27]
Chris Melanfi
You'll also hear from the cast and creators who bring the show to life, including Noah Wylie, Catherine Lanassa and more.
- [00:34]
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Watch the Pit podcast on HBO Max.
- [00:36]
Chris Melanfi
Or wherever you get podcasts. Hey there Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is Part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hitparadeplus you'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the Day it Arrives plus Hit Parade the Bridge our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join, that's slate.com hitparadeplus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode Episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show. Fifty years ago, in January 1975, David Bowie was climbing Billboard's Hot 100 with his archetypal single Changes. It was the second attempt to turn that classic song into a hit. Originally released on Bowie's 1971 album, Hunky Dory, Changes had climbed as high as number 66 the first time in 1972. But a couple of years later, Bowie had broken through on the charts. So RCA reissued Changes, promoting it as Bowie's ultimate statement of purpose. As he sings in the lyrics, he had to be a different man.
- [02:50]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
But I can't trace down.
- [02:54]
Chris Melanfi
It didn't work. In the winter of 75, changes stalled at number 41, just missing the American top 40 again. But just a couple of months later, Bowie proved any remaining doubters wrong. He could not only change, he could become a new kind of pop star. His next single sounded like this. Young Americans Transformed David Bowie into a soul man. With hip shaking rhythms and funky grooves inviting listeners onto the dance floor, the single cracked the top 40 with ease. Before, Bowie had self consciously sung about his need to change. Now he just did it. He changed and he scored. This is a perpetual theme of the man born David Robert Jones. He would try anything for his art. They called David Bowie a chameleon, a restless artist who never stayed in one place very long, always changing to satisfy his muse. And sure, he lived up to that reputation, trying on styles from glam. To disco, Synth pop. To industrial rock.
- [04:58]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
I'm afraid of America, I'm afraid of the world.
- [05:05]
Chris Melanfi
But what David Bowie's changeability also meant was that his commercial fortunes waxed and waned. For Bowie, pop's success was one more cloak to try on and then discard. Today on Hit Parade, a decade after the passing of the Starman, AKA Aladdin Insane, AKA the Thin White Duke, AKA the Godfather of Change, we will not only chronicle how David Bowie went from this. To this, But also why Bowie needed to change to stay in the pop conversation, even occasionally to top the charts. In fact, this month we commemorate Bowie's most improbable chart feat of all. The moment when he wrote his own epitaph while recording his first and last number one album.
- [06:22]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Look up here, I'm in heaven.
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Chris Melanfi
I've.
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David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Got scars that can't.
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Chris Melanfi
And that's where your hit parade marches today, the week ending January 30, 2016, when Black Star, David Bowie's final recording, reached number one on the Billboard 200 album chart. The same week, this song Lazarus became his last top 40 hit. It was an act of self sacrificing genius. But like so many deeds by David, it was equal parts calculation and happenstance, both inspiration and fluke. What was David Bowie's relationship to the charts? And how did the starman become the black star? Join us as we turn and face the stranger the freakiest show and consider the question, was chart topper one more of David Bowie's chit chit ch Changes. Stick around.
- [07:50]
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Chris Melanfi
One of my favorite pieces of chart trivia about this song by Lou Reed, Walk on the Wild side. Well, besides the fact that it technically made Reed a one hit wonder on the Hot 100. Seriously, if you don't believe me, go back to our One Hit Wonders episode of Hit Parade. I explain it all. There is this the man who produced Walk on the Wild side was in the top 40 with his first major US hit at the same time Walk on the Wild side was in the top 40. That man was David Bowie.
- [09:45]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Ground Control to Major Tom. Take your protein pills.
- [09:54]
Chris Melanfi
Bowie and his guitarist Mick ronson produced Lou Reed's entire 1972 album Transformer. And while Walk on the Wild side was climbing the Hot 100, this song by Bowie, Space Oddity, was climbing alongside it. They actually crossed each other on the chart at one point. Wildside and oddity were just two positions away from each other. Read at number 19, Bowie at number 21.
- [10:28]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Take a walk on the Wild side I said hey honey, take a walk.
- [10:36]
Chris Melanfi
I'm also playing Lou Reed to try and get at a David Bowie conundrum. Who were his artistic peers? Reed certainly qualifies as a man who was not only friends with Bowie and a contemporary, but who always followed his muse. Both with the Velvet Underground and as a solo artist, Reid was influential, admired, and popular to a point. Anytime Lou had a hit album, his next LP tended to be darker and more alienating. He didn't want to remain too accessible for too long.
- [11:20]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
In Berlin.
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Chris Melanfi
By the Wall, Bowie's career was fairly similar insofar as he was either topping the charts or too hip for the room. But David scored many more hits than his friend Lou. So Reid is not a perfect parallel for Bowie. In fact, when you go through chart history, there really are few parallels for Bowie's pattern of Chart topping hits alternating with near obscurity. Famously, Neil young scored just one big hit in the early 70s, Heart of Gold. It was much bigger than Lou Reed's one hit. Neil's went all the way to number one.
- [12:22]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
I've Been a Miner for a Heart of Go. It's these expressions.
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Chris Melanfi
And then, by his own admission, Neil Young deliberately turned away from pop music. But again, Bowie had considerably more hits than Neil Young did. And he also wanted hits more than Young did. Or maybe Joni Mitchell. She certainly followed her muse into unusual corners.
- [12:54]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
But Help Me, I Think I'm Falling in Love Too Fast.
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Chris Melanfi
Mitchell scored more hits than Lou Reed or Neil young, including her one top 10, 1974's Help Me, or my personal favorite among her hits, the number 22 banger, free man in Paris.
- [13:17]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
I was a free man in Paris. I felt unfettered and alive.
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Chris Melanfi
But Mitchell's major hits were concentrated into that one early 70s period. She didn't come back to the top 40 over multiple decades the way David Bowie did. So then maybe REM. Like Bowie. REM Were deeply influential on the sound of alternative rock in the 80s and 90s. And R.E.M actually had quite a few big hits. Four top 10s over three different albums, including the One I Love, Stand, and of course, Losing My Religion.
- [14:08]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
That's me in the corner, that's me in the spot.
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Chris Melanfi
But REM Had a little over a decade of hit making, not the multiple decades racked up by Bowie. The comparison doesn't really work with 21st century artists either. Listeners may recall that when Abel Tesfe, the singer known as the Weeknd, began recording in the early 2010s, his identity was shrouded in mystery and his music was considered very left of center, not unlike early Bowie. But once the Weeknd started scoring big pop hits, he never really went back. Unlike David Bowie, he became a permanent hit maker and a pop force. Perhaps the closest commercial parallel to David Bowie is the artist we covered one year ago in his own own Hit Parade episode, Bob Dylan. Like Bowie, Dylan tried on many guises and sparked many trends. Dylan famously went from acoustic to electric. He tried changing his singing voice.
- [15:49]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Play Across My Big breast, man.
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Chris Melanfi
And like Bowie, Dylan took a few years to become a major chart presence. In fact, as we revealed in that Dylan episode, his first number one albums didn't start until deep into the 1970s.
- [16:11]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Tangle up in Blue.
- [16:20]
Chris Melanfi
So, yeah, Bob Dylan is a pretty good parallel to David Bowie. But Dylan didn't reboot his whole Persona the way Bowie did. Bowie didn't Just try new sounds, new genres. He reinvented his whole presentation. And by the way, that also applied to Bowie's commercial presence, his chart profile. More than any of the artists I just mentioned, even Dylan, Bowie tried on pop stardom like it was a costume. Now, I don't want to make this sound too deliberate, as we'll see. Bowie failed as often as he succeeded, but he experimented and scored hits before, during and after the experiments that made him unique for his time. Lou Reed or Joni Mitchell knew that experimenting would make them commercially toxic, whereas Bowie set a new template for shape shifters with pop aspirations. You can see it in later generations who took their cues from Bowie, testing boundaries while scoring hits from Prince. To Madonna. To lady gaga. Much of Bowie's shape shifting legend revolves around his personae. The literal costumes he tried on Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin scene, The so called thin White Duke. And the Bottle Blonde pompadoured yuppie Persona Bowie became during his 1983 serious movie moonlight tour.
- [18:58]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Under the moonlight there's serious moonlight.
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Chris Melanfi
We will touch on these personae, but Hit Parade is a charts show and this episode will be structured around Bowie's commercial phases, which overlap with the personae on the charts. Bowie's hit phases centered around moments he shrouded himself in popular like one of his costumes. It was intentional, but from the start it took David Bowie nearly a decade to find his footing. It even took him several years to find his name. Bowie Phase 1 Finding Bowie. This is Liza Jane, the only single released under the moniker Davy Jones. With the King Bees. It was the first recording to feature the young man born David Robert Jones in Brixton in 1947. Largely raised in the London borough of Bromley, the ambitious Jones, who told his parents he intended to become a pop star, began performing at age 13, learned the saxophone while at Bromley Technical High School and formed his first band at 15. When his high school band proved not as ambitious as he was in 1964 David split and joined the beat combo the King Bees. The King Bees were not destined for greatness. Though promoted by major label Decca Records, Liza Jane sold poorly and Jones left after a few weeks to join a new combo, the Mannish Boys. They weren't destined for much either. Their single with Davey fronting them was a cover of blues man Bobby Bland's I Pity the Fool. Fun. Footnote the guitar solo for the Manish Boy Boys single was by a young hotshot session guitarist named Jimmy Page. Anyway, David Jones was out of the Manish Boys a few months into 1965, at which time he took over frontman duties for a group called the Lower Third, a band strongly influenced by the mod rock sound of the whole. Davy Jones and the Lower Third issued their debut single, you've Got a Habit of leaving a song written by Jones himself in the summer of 65. It was around this time that David or Davy Jones decided to change his name. You see, there was already a semi famous, soon to be very famous British pop singer named Davy Jones.
- [22:47]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
What are we going to do if your dad finds out we're in love?
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Chris Melanfi
They've this Davy Jones by 1965 was mostly known for some minor singles like this recording of what Are We Going To Do? Which actually cracked the Hot 100 in America and appearing in the West End and Broadway productions of the musical Oliver. But by 1966, this Davy Jones would become galactically famous as one of the first four members of the prefabricated TV band the Monkees.
- [23:31]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Cheer up, Sleepy Jeans.
- [23:43]
Chris Melanfi
But well before that happened, our David Jones had already switched his name to David Bowie. Or was that Bowie? David took his new name from American pioneer Jim Bowie, or Bowie, the popularizer of his signature Bowie knife. Eventually the press and even David himself settled on bowie. But in 1965 and 66, the hits were still slow in coming.
- [24:22]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
I Can't Help Thinking About Me. I Can't Help Thinking About Me Can't.
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Chris Melanfi
Help Thinking About Me was not only David Bowie's first song released under that name, it also found Bowie singing with the alien tone of voice he would adopt for most of his career, albeit over a track by the Lower Third Third that still sounded a lot like the who. Bowie's then manager bought up copies of Can't Help Thinking About Me to try to force the single onto the charts. It missed the official British chart, but squeaked onto the Melody Maker chart at number 34. That helped get Bowie signed to a solo contract with the Diram label, where Bowie issued a self titled 1967 debut LP as well as a kitschy novelty single called no Kidding the Laughing Gnome. Neither the single nor the self titled Davis Bowie album made the charts. Bowie had found his name and his voice, he just hadn't found his sound or his image. By 1968 he was dropped by the Diram label and thinking of packing it in. When he went to the Cinema, saw Stanley Kubrick's trippy film 2001 A Space Odyssey and had a brainstorm. A story song about an isolated disappearing astronaut character whom Bowie named Major Tom.
- [26:15]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Ground control to Major Tom, Ground control.
- [26:22]
Chris Melanfi
To Major Tom he called the song Space Oddity and it would change everything, ushering Bowie into his next phase. Bowie Phase two Glam starman David Bowie got his big break by moving away from mod rock toward psychedelic folk. His new sound echoed not only the trippy grooves of folk rock pioneers like the Byrds and Donovan. By Bowie's own admission, the new sound also imitated the narrative of the early Bee Gees. Yes, those Bee gees. In their 60s incarnation, the brothers Gib were known for heartfelt story songs like their 1967 hit New York Mining Disaster 1941 an obvious template for Bowie's Space.
- [27:31]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Oddity maybe someone is digging underground? Or have they given up and all gone home to bed?
- [27:43]
Chris Melanfi
In short, David Bowie was a magpie and he combined his fascination with the 2001 movie, British Folk and Bee Gees style storytelling into Space Oddity, an intoxicating ditty that told the story of a lonely astronaut hurtling through the cosmos.
- [28:05]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
I'm stepping through the dark and I'm floating in the most peculiar way.
- [28:17]
Chris Melanfi
Space Oddity was well timed. It captured the 1969 zeitgeist. After Bowie signed to major label Mercury Records, they rush released the single to capitalize on that summer's excitement over the Apollo 11 moon landing, as well as a second self titled David Bowie album. As if his flop 196067 LP had never happened. The song took a few months to break, but after Bowie made several British TV appearances, Space Oddity climbed to number five on the British chart by the fall of 69.
- [28:59]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Can you hear my.
- [29:13]
Chris Melanfi
In America, the country that actually put that man on the moon, Space Oddity bubbled under the hot 100 at number 124 at a moment when British Invasion rock had faded on the charts. Hold that thought, because the song would return a few years later. David Bowie now finally had a promotable image as rock's quirky space cadet. The only problem was, for a couple of years Space Oddity was all he was known for. Critics regarded it as a novelty hit. Space Oddity was to David Bowie in 1969 what old town Road was to Lil nas X in 2019. The following year, on his 1970 LP the Man who Sold the World, Bowie refined his sound with producer Tony Visconti and rocked harder. But the album was a flop on both sides of the Atlantic, failing to chart in either the UK or us it looked like David Bowie's moment might be over. Hoping to break Bowie in America, Mercury sent him on a U s tour in 1971, where he charmed the press and picked up ideas from new American friends like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. When Bowie returned to England, he began composing on piano rather than guitar, writing songs with the pomp of glam rock and the poignancy of traditional American pop. These songs, including Life on Mars and Changes, would appear on his late 1971 album Hunky Dory, Bowie's debut on the RCA label and the first real evidence of his commercial potential. The LP won favor on U S Rock stations and even cracked the Billboard album chart in early 72, peaking at number 176. Also drawing attention was Bowie's androgynous presentation. He was often seen in dresses. He appeared in a dress on the COVID of the British version of the man who Sold the World LP and on songs like Hunky Dory's oh you, Pretty Things. Bowie played with queer iconography.
- [32:13]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Oh you pretty things don't you know your job and your.
- [32:22]
Chris Melanfi
As we discussed last June in our Pride Month episode of Hit Parade, Bowie came out as bisexual in an early 72 interview with England's Melody Maker magazine, which made him not only an instant LGBTQ icon but also glam rock's gender bending avatar. Bowie's androgynous identity complemented his Persona on Hunky Dory cuts like Queen. By late 72, David Bowie had made headlines everywhere, even though he had yet to score a major US hit. Fun fact Bowie first cracked the Hot 100's top 40 not with one of his own songs, but with a glam anthem he wrote and produced for British bands, Mott the Hoople. On American Top 40, Casey Kasem counted it down and detailed Bowie's unusual public.
- [33:33]
Casey Kasem
Profile, now the first Top 40 hit by the group, whose English producer is a hundred times better known than they are. And he's never been in the top 40. He's the most bizarre and most publicized new artist on the scene today. Can't pick up a publication that deals with popular music without finding his picture plastered all over the place. Time and Newsweek have already done feature stories on him. So it doesn't hurt a new group like this one to be produced by a famous personality, an artist whose fame so far is way ahead of his record sales. But if the critics are right, that'll come too. His name is David Bowie and he not only produced this song, he wrote it. The group is Mott the Hoople and they're at number 37 with all the young dudes.
- [34:21]
Chris Melanfi
Even as Kasem was explaining this Hot 100 conundrum on the Album chart David Bowie was finally making waves. His fifth LP, which landed in the spring of 72, was gradually becoming a sensation by the start of 73, fueled by the new alter ego Bowie had devised for himself. Basically, four years after Space Oddity, Bowie had turned himself into the glam rock alien. His orange haired character was Ziggy Stardust and the album's verbose title was the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
- [35:11]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
In the Sky. He'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds.
- [35:17]
Chris Melanfi
There's a star The Ziggy Stardust LP proved to be David Bowie's image making breakthrough in the UK, the album cracked the top 10 and the song Starman made the singles top 10 as well in America. Ziggy Stardust became Bowie's first album to break into the top 100 on the album chart, peaking at number 75 by early 1973 on US radio. The album's title track and its twin rocker Suffragette City became rock airplay staples. The Ziggy breakthrough sparked a wave of reissues of Bowie's back catalog as RCA capitalized on their new Star A re release of 1970s the man who Sold the World LP reached the billboard album chart for the first time. RCA repackaged Bowie's 1969 self titled LP as Space Oddity the Album and put a newer photo of Ziggy era Bowie on the COVID It broke into the top 20 on the album chart and Space Oddity, the song, as I mentioned earlier in our show, belatedly made the Hot 100 in the winter of 1973, becoming Bowie's first US top 40 hit. Casey Kasem found him very odd.
- [36:56]
Casey Kasem
Here's one of the most interesting artists on the chart. His name is David Bowie and a lot of people have written a lot of things about him. He has his first top 40 record in a tune that is now number 16. It peaked last week at 15. This is Space Oddity. 25 year old David Bowie ground control.
- [37:14]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
To Major Tom.
- [37:19]
Chris Melanfi
By the spring and summer summer of 73, David Bowie was all over the album chart. Space Oddity, Ziggy Stardust and a compilation of his early work called Images were all riding Billboard's top LPs chart simultaneously. And they were joined by a new album that put a twist on Bowie's alien Persona and made his look even more iconic. Aladdin Scene. If you know one Bowie album cover, it's probably this one. Bare chested flame haired David with lightning bolt face makeup a teardrop pooling in his collarbone. Though Aladdin Scene's lead single, the glam bop Gene Genie, wasn't a big US pop hit, topping out at number 71 on the Hot 100, the David Bowie Persona was now so potent his album sold well regardless. Aladdin Scene leapt into the top 20, hitting number 17 by June of 73. Maybe David Bowie was a bit outre for the pop singles chart and AM radio airplay, but make no mistake, a lot of America was watching that man. More in a moment.
- [39:12]
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- [39:42]
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- [40:16]
Chris Melanfi
Bowie Phase 3 Soul Man Pop Star By 1974, David Bowie was regarded as effectively the leading light of British glam rock in America, even though he had only scored one top 40 hit, Space Oddity, and no Top Tens. Bowie had amassed enough notoriety that his 74 studio album, Diamond Dogs, broke into the top 10 on the Billboard album chart in under a month, peaking at number five that summer. The Diamond Dogs album was led by one of Bowie's catchiest singles, the glammy stomper Rebel Rebel. It only reached number 64 on the Hot 100, but quickly emerged as a favorite on AOR radio. If Billboard had had an album rock chart in 74, that chart would not launch until the early 80s. Rebel Rebel surely would have been a rock smash. Good as it was, Rebel Rebel was, in a way, false advertising for where David Bowie was headed next. On the album cover, Bowie was still sporting his Ziggy slash Aladdin scene glam hairstyle but critics noticed that deep on the LP's second side, the track 1984, part of a planned George Orwell stage musical Bowie never quite executed sounded a lot like R B. The Wah wah guitar on 1984 was quite funky, critics said it sounded like Isaac Hayes's theme from Shaft. And on 1984's string arrangement, Bowie later admitted he was trying to emulate the lush proto disco soul of Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra.
- [43:06]
Lowe's Advertiser
Way I feel about you girl I.
- [43:09]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
Just can't live without you.
- [43:13]
Chris Melanfi
These R and B allusions persisted on Bowie's other major LP release of 1974, the Concert Album David Live. It Too cracked the Billboard top 10. And from the photo on the album cover to the live arrangements, Bowie was giving Soul man, preening in a silky suit and vocalizing like an R B crooner. His band rearranged the Ziggy Stardust song Rock and Roll Suicide to sound more like Otis Redding, and Bowie even covered Eddie Floyd's 60s Stax classic knock On Wood.
- [43:59]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
I.
- [44:08]
Chris Melanfi
The pop world would not fully catch on to Bowie's latest phase until 1975, when he released his next studio album, recorded in Philadelphia and New York City for a lead single. RCA released the new LP's title track, and one listen to that song made Bowie's intentions unmistakable. Young Americans remains one of the great stylistic pivots by any artist in rock history. Bowie fully committed to what he called plastic soul, going deep on his love of American R B for the first time since the mid-60s. Among his new collaborators were guitarist Carlos Alomar, saxophonist David Sanborn and a then unknown singer named Luther Vandross, who both sang backup and arranged the vocals on the song Young Americans. It peaked at number 28 on the Hot 100 in the spring of 75, as the album immediately cracked the top 10, reaching number nine.
- [45:46]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
She wants a young american.
- [45:53]
Chris Melanfi
The Young Americans LP also had some improbable Beatles connections. Bowie drops a lyrical reference to the final track from the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album, the John Lennon masterpiece A Day in the Life, Right in the middle of the song Young Americans, vocalized by his Vandross led chorus. But that wasn't the only involvement by Mr. John Lennon. He actually joined joined Bowie in the studio along with guitarist Carlos Alomar and co wrote what turned out to be the LP's biggest hit. Fame was a biting, spiteful song that David Bowie wrote wrote as a kiss off to his former manager Tony DeFreeze, who'd financed a flop Broadway show called Fame, using Bowie's stardom as a financial catalyst. Lennon too had had his share of run ins with rapacious managers. Together they wrote sharp lyrics about the price of fame over a wicked Carlos Alomar funk riff. By the way, the high pitched voice you hear echoing Bowie's voice, the falsetto Fame is John Lennon. Released as the second single from young Americans in the summer of 75, Fame did something no David Bowie single had ever done. It went all the way in America.
- [48:03]
Casey Kasem
Well, it's time now for the new number one song. And it's by the British superstar who made rock glitter. When he first appeared on the rock scene back in the early 70s, he was one of a kind. His hair was dyed a flaming shade of orange, he wore skin tight metallic clothes with sequined pants. And he assumed the identity of a fictional rock superstar when he took the stage. Ziggy Stardust. Well, he's had three top 10 albums in this country, but this is his biggest hit single. Moving into the number one position this week. Here is David Bowie.
- [48:35]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
And fame makes a man take things over.
- [48:44]
Chris Melanfi
Fame even crossed over to Billboard's soul singles chart where it peaked at a respectable number 23. That funky Carlos Alomar riff made it a hit on black radio and on top 40 radio, fame read as de facto disco at a moment when disco was just breaking on the charts in hits by the bee Gees, Van McCoy and Casey and the Sunshine Band. Fame's massive chart success and crossover with black audiences got David Bowie invited into corners of American culture he'd never experienced before.
- [49:39]
Lowe's Advertiser
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- [49:47]
Chris Melanfi
In November of 75, Bowie was invited on Soul Train, the televised dance show hosted by Don Cornelius. Bowie was among the first white performers on the show. Just months after Elton John had appeared, Bowie was interviewed by both Don Cornelius and even the audience. As you can hear, Bowie was delighted to be there, but also rather chemically altered.
- [50:19]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
When did you start wanting to do soul music? I mean, you're doing it now, Getting into it. Well, back in England was here.
- [50:34]
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- [50:34]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
In England when I was a teenager popping them, you know. Similar expression of him on street corners. We have street corners in London and we used to go to a lot of. And James Brown was very popular in the French clubs.
- [50:51]
Chris Melanfi
This would become a theme for Bowie over the next year. A cocaine induced haze that made the mid-70s one long blur for him. While on Soul Train, Bowie took the opportunity to perform the first single from his next album, a track that kept the funk going called Golden Years. Golden years, a number 10 hit in early 76 anchored the album Station to Station, arguably the 70s imperial peak for David Bowie. The album shot to number three on the Billboard LP's chart in just three weeks. It would hold the benchmark as Bowie's highest charting LP for the next four decades. But the slick Golden Years belied just how odd the Station to Station album actually was. The lyrics on the rest of the LP reflected Bowie's growing cocaine fueled paranoia. TVC 15, for example, a number 64 hit was a fever dream about a girlfriend being eaten by a television set. The album cover of Station to Station was a still image from the man who Fell to Earth, a 1976 Nicholas Roeg film in which Bowie starred as a literal alien. Bowie looked especially gaunt at this time. This was the LP where he introduced the aforementioned Thin White Duke character in the lyrics of Station to Station's title track. Bowie later claimed not to remember anything about the album at all, given his Ragin addiction. This finally prompted a personal and career reset for Bowie, and he felt compelled to leave America and even England to change his trajectory. Bowie Phase 4 Berlin boundary pusher. By 1977, David Bowie was ready to discard the costume of pop star. He had also grown fascinated with electronic music and German kraut rock bands like Can Noi and of course Kraftverk. This is their 19701987 hit Trans Europe Express. Needing a change of scenery, Bowie and his friend Iggy Pop from proto punk band the Stooges decamped to West Berlin to both kick drugs and record. Sometimes It Gets unlike they were remarkably prolific. Among the first things Bowie did was help iggy Pop Record 2 back to back solo albums, both released in 77 and both produced by Bowie the Idiot, which contained Iggy Pop's version of the song, And Lust for Life, whose title track later became a rock radio staple and a favorite movie and TV advert. Needle drop Just think, think to this day, anytime you hear this song on the telly, both Iggy Pop and the Estate of David Bowie are getting paid. But Bowie's main focus in Berlin was on his his own work on a series of albums he recorded with Brian Eno, the former Roxy Music keyboardist, producer, arranger and favorite crossword answer. Over the next three years, Eno, Bowie and his regular producer Tony Visconti would turn out three David Bowie LPs that would become known as his Berlin period. Not all of the material was recorded in Berlin, much of it was, but all of it reflected Bowie's yearning to stretch, adopting sounds he'd picked up from electro and kraut rock, BO the first album in the trilogy contained music Bowie originally intended for the soundtrack to the man who Fell to Earth. It bore a heavy influence from electronic music and Brian Eno's ambient sound, as well as post punk guitars on tracks like Speed of Life and Be My Wife. Because Bowie was at the tail end of his mid-70s Imperial, phase of Low did pretty well on the charts. Released in January 1977, Low peaked at number 11 on Billboard's top LPs even though it spawned no major hits. The album's catchiest song, the groovy sound and vision, only got as high as number 69 on the Hot 100. Like his friend Iggy Pop, the Prolific Bowie dropped two albums in 1977. The second in his Berlin trilogy arrived just nine months after Low, and it is best remembered by for its title track. Now one of the most cherished songs in Bowie's discography, but underrated at the time, Heroes. Majestic, histrionic, soaring, ruminative, enigmatic yet regal, Heroes has been called David Bowie's masterpiece. The song's lyrics depicted two lovers during the Cold War on either side of the Berlin Wall, questioning if they can ever connect and what romance and heroism even means in a time of global unrest. The recording, too, was unlike anything Bowie had done before. With an oscillating electronic pulse by Brian Eno and a stately guitar drone by guest guitarist Robert Fripp from King Crimson, producer Tony Visconti rigged up an innovative microphone system to capture Bowie's vocal mics were spaced across the room and gated to turn on one by one as his vocal got louder. It made the song that much more thunderous and anthemic. And yet at the time, Heroes was not a hit. In the UK, the single peaked at a modest number 24. In America, it missed the Hot 100 entirely. The Heroes album, too, was a modest performer, peaking on the Billboard LP's chart at number 35, Bowie's lowest charting studio album since the man who Sold the World. Perhaps in the era of disco, arena rock and punk, Heroes was simply too arty. Even Bowie treated the song with detachment, putting ironic quotation marks around the title. Officially, both the song and the album are called quote, Heroes, unquote. Whatever Bowie meant by this arch gesture, Heroes is now unironically beloved. Nearly a decade later, when Bowie performed it at Live Aid, the crowd in Wembley Stadium conceived it as a global anthem. Speaking of well remembered David Bowie live performances in the close Closing weeks of 1977, Bowie appeared on a Bing Crosby Christmas Special recorded in London for broadcast in both the US and the uk, Bowie was ostensibly there to promote Heroes, and the special did include a video of Bowie singing his song. But the TV producers also asked Bowie if he would sing a holiday duet with Crosby. When they proposed the Christmas chestnut the Little Drummer Boy, Bowie balked, thinking the song unworthy. Before Bowie could leave the studio, however, the producers whipped up a new medley version of the song with a whole new section called Peace on Earth, designed to showcase Bowie's counterpoint vocals. The new duet of Bowie and Bing, Peace on Earth slash Little Drummer Boy, turned out to be the highlight of the special, which poignantly was broadcast just weeks after Bing Crosby died at age 74.
- [62:55]
David Bowie (Singing/Quotes)
I pray my wish will come true. As for my child and your child.
- [63:06]
Chris Melanfi
Too, later released as a single, Peace on Earth, Little Drummer Boy became David Bowie's perennial holiday standard. To this day it receives airplay every Christmas season. Even in the midst of his most arty period, David Bowie could not resist the opportunity to be a showman. Bowie, Brian Eno and Tony Visconti took over a year to follow up the Heroes LP and complete the Berlin trilogy. Lodger was mostly not recorded in Berlin, tracked instead in Montreux, Switzerland and New York City, but it employed the same innocentric recording techniques as Low and Heroes. However, Lodger was less like art rock and more like quirky new wave pop. Released in the spring of 1979, Lodger reached number 20 on the billboard album chart and and spun off a couple of minor hit singles, including the gender bending Boys Keep Swinging and the angular DJ, which bubbled under the Hot 100, just missing the chart at number 106. So over the course of three years, Bowie had cleaned himself up and achieved new artistic goals with the Berlin trilogy, but divorced himself from pop success. Now, at the dawn of the 80s, he was edging his way back onto the charts. Soon he would decide he wanted back in all the way on his terms, and his pivot would help define the next wave of the New Wave. When we come back. Before there was Duran Duran, Madonna, Nirvana or Nine Inch Nails, there was David Bowen, Bowie, who anticipated the video era as well as alternative rock. But as an elder statesman, Bowie experienced pop's highs and lows. He saved his final chart surprise for the very end. Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis. Our supervising producer is Joel Meyer, and the executive producer of Slate Podcasts is Mia lobel. Check out Slate's roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for Part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanfi.
- [67:25]
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- [67:55]
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