David Bowie - Young Americans

Released - February 1975

Genre - Funk

Producer - Tony Visconti; Harry Maslin & David Bowie

Selected Personnel - David Bowie (Vocals/Guitar/Piano); Carlos Alomar (Guitar); Mike Garson (Piano); David Sanborn (Saxophone); Willie Weeks (Bass); Andy Newmark (Drums); Luther Vandross (Backing Vocals); John Lennon (Vocals/Guitar); Earl Slick (Guitar); Dennis Davis (Drums)

Standout Track - Fame

Young Americans stands out within Bowie's discography in a couple of significant ways. Firstly, it's perhaps the most consistently feelgood and irresistibly danceable album he ever recorded. While not every single track is a masterpiece, it's difficult to listen to the whole thing without a smile on your face and is one of few Bowie albums to never once dip into introspection or paranoia. Even songs with darker lyrical themes, like "Fame," are just too catchy to really harm the album's party vibe. It's also the first time Bowie did a complete about-turn within his music, cementing his reputation as one of music's great chameleons, shifting between different personae and borrowing different musical styles. Admittedly, by 1975 he had already moved from psychedelic folk to hard rock to glam rock and taken on alter-ego pseudonyms including Ziggy Stardust and Hallowe'en Jack, but every single change had seemed like a natural evolution from what had come before. The glam rock of the Ziggy years was a natural enough combination of the fey psychedelic pop of Hunky Dory and the hard rock of The Man Who Sold The World. Young Americans was the first time Bowie offered not a single olive branch to those who had enjoyed his earlier work. A couple of songs on 1974's Diamond Dogs had pointed towards some of the soul and funk influences Bowie had picked up during his American tour, but that album had still principally been dominated by the glam thrash familiar from the Ziggy-era albums. This time, Bowie's old fans were completely forgotten and he decided to throw himself completely into making a Philadelphia-styled soul record.

Since Diamond Dogs, Bowie's prominence in the US had been rising, and the dream of making it in America that he'd harboured for years was closer to coming true. Although his personal life was disintegrating - his marriage to Angie Bowie falling apart, and his growing cocaine dependency becoming ever more devastating to his health due to the constant access to the drug he had while living in LA - his American tour was a huge success, accompanied by a lavish stage production choreographed by Toni Basil. David Live, an album documenting that tour released in '74, is a fairly wooden and uninspiring artefact that does little to sell the excitement of that show, but sold in its thousands. As he launched into making a new album, Bowie threw himself entirely at the American market, refusing to make an album about his personal struggles or with any trace of his musical roots. Many fans castigated Bowie for making what seemed to be a concerted effort to win American fans, regardless of what his fans back in Britain may have thought. To Bowie's credit, he easily achieved his aims, with his first US Number One single in "Fame," and Young Americans is an album that, while it may have aggravated die-hard Bowie fans at the time, has come today to be regarded as one of his very best.

On Diamond Dogs, Bowie had been reunited with his former producer Tony Visconti, who would go on to be Bowie's closest collaborator and musical ally over the subsequent forty years. Visconti had mixed the strings on that earlier album, and now was called in to produce a Bowie studio album for the first time since The Man Who Sold The World five years earlier. Also recalled from his earlier recordings was pianist Mike Garson, who Bowie had met in America in '72 on his first visit. Besides those two old allies, the lineup on Young Americans consisted on Philadelphia session musicians with plentiful experience working on soul and funk recordings, including Andy Newmark of Sly and the Family Stone, a young unknown singer named Luther Vandross, and guitarist Carlos Alomar, who would also become one of Bowie's most frequent collaborators over the subsequent thirty years. The result is an album that sounds totally unlike anything else Bowie had ever recorded - even the familiar, avant-garde jazz stylings of Garson are totally absent, with his playing kept rather restrained and low in the mix. Instead, there's the rubbery bass of Willie Weeks, the languid guitar playing of Alomar, the lush strings and gospel-styled backing vocals, and of course the fluid sax of David Sanborn, a million miles from Bowie's own more asthmatic and amateurish abilities with the instrument on older recordings. Bowie described the music as "plastic soul," and it feels like an apt description - there is something oddly synthetic and crystal-clear about the sound hear, one that must have shocked British fans used to the crunchier, muddier sounds of the Spiders From Mars. And at the centre of it all is Bowie's usual thin, mannered vocals. On occasion Bowie tries a little too hard to impersonate a more conventional soul singer style, as on the otherwise brilliant "Somebody Up There Likes Me," but vocally he's more impressive here when not trying to disguise the highly mannered sound of his own voice, such as on his theatrical performances on the title track or "Fame."

Quite what these songs must have sounded like before they were developed in the studio by such capable soul musicians is difficult to say - here, they soar and swing so much on the lush arrangements and the stellar contributions of the likes of Sanborn and Alomar that it's difficult to imagine an original solo performance on just guitar or piano, but certainly this feels like a band that gelled together well and took Bowie's compositions into really stellar territory. "Young American," from that opening, clattering drum fill and squawking sax, is a classic party anthem. While its lyrics tell of the uncertainty and anxiety of a newlywed couple, its sound is totally joyous, and one of the most relentlessly feelgood songs Bowie ever wrote. "Fascination" was co-written by the young Vandross, who was some years off solo success himself, but it's telling that it sounds the most like a genuine funk song of all the songs here, rather than sounding like funk and soul filtered through Bowie's own mind. It has an infectious riff, and Bowie really enjoys himself with the looser role of funk band leader, as opposed to true frontman or lead singer. His call-and-response vocals with the backing singers are masterfully done, and the most authentic soul music moment on the album. "Win" is a plaintive ballad with one of Bowie's most interesting lyrics - "You've never seen me so naked and white," presumably a reference to his own constant need to obfuscate his true self with personae and performance, and ironic that it was to come a year before the most starkly personal and vulnerable record of his career.

"Somebody Up There Likes Me," for my money, suffers slightly from a slightly wooden vocal performance from Bowie, but the band has so much fun on it that it can't help but be a hugely enjoyable song, if only for Sanborn's scene-stealing sax. "Can You Hear Me?" is a really beautiful song, and perhaps the only point on the whole album where the party atmosphere drops for a while. It's a desperate plea for communication and for understanding set to a particularly stirring string arrangement from Visconti. Finally, there's the masterpiece that is "Fame," a late addition to the album. After the entire record had been mixed, Bowie happened to encounter John Lennon in New York and set about recording some material with him and Alomar. One song they recorded was a truly tedious cover of the Beatles' "Across The Universe." I've not heard the original so have no idea if it's just an awful song, or if Bowie and Lenonn's version does it a terrible disservice. It's a real shame it ended up on the finished album, as one of the songs cut to make room for it is the wonderful "Who Can I Be Now?" But the other song recorded was a new one based on a guitar lick by Alomar and co-written by Bowie and Lennon entitled "Fame." That central, distorted guitar riff is one of the most confidently, sassily cool moments Bowie ever captured on record, and the lyrics, angrily spat out by Bowie and Lennon, are a savage, biting attack on celebrity culture ("Fame - what you like is in the limo, fame - what you get is no tomorrow.") That this lyric came five years before Lennon's own murder at the hands of a fan, the ultimate example of rock & roll idolisation gone too far, makes it all the more striking. That they managed to make such a cynical, angry song also so eminently danceable and such a huge hit is also a massive testament to their musical prowess.

"Across The Universe" and "Fame" were snuck onto the finished album, and the success of the latter helped Young Americans to be Bowie's breakthrough album in America. It's easily one of Bowie's most purely enjoyable albums, but perhaps the only thing counting against it is its lack of authenticity. Considering the personal and mental anguish Bowie was in at the time of its recording, it's surprisingly upbeat (to its musical credit, admittedly), but Bowie himself has been critical of the album in retrospect, dismissing it as "phoney." At the end of the day, Bowie concertedly put his own personal problems to the back of his mind in order to focus on winning new fans, and to his credit, he achieved that in spades. Regardless of the fact that he rarely strays into true autobiography or soul-baring honesty in his music, there's still a sense with Young Americans that something is being held back. As his drug dependency took an even greater hold on him, and his mental health began to deteriorate, this would all change. In 1976 Bowie would release Station To Station, an album that emerged from the same soul and funk influences as Young Americans but was injected with all the paranoia, megalomania and vulnerability he had refrained from letting into view on the earlier album. To this day, I still consider Station To Station to be the best album he ever made.

Track Listing:

All songs written by David Bowie except where noted.

1. Young Americans

2. Win

3. Fascination (David Bowie & Luther Vandross)

4. Right

5. Somebody Up There Likes Me

6. Across The Universe (John Lennon & Paul McCartney)

7. Can You Hear Me?

8. Fame (David Bowie; Carlos Alomar & John Lennon)