In The Studio with Redbeard

Tag: “Rebel Rebel”

  • David Bowie- Young Americans

    David Bowie- Young Americans

    “I was terrified of being trapped in that Ziggy Stardust character for the rest of my career,” David Bowie solemnly confessed to me In the Studio. So in early March 1975, Bowie executed a musical and visual image hard left turn, in homage to the vibrant soul music with which he had fallen in love while living in New York City then. The resulting albumYoung Americans contained the sweeping “Win”; the soulful “Somebody Up There Likes Me”, featuring the budding sax star David Sanborn (d. 2024) steaming like a Junior Walker acolyte; the huge hit with the John Lennon cameo, “Fame”; and the dance-floor flooding “Young Americans”. The late David Bowie from the In the Studio  classic rock interview archives marks the all-important career landmark Young Americans.

    By 1975 David Bowie had abandoned the Glam Rock he had virtually invented in the guise of the ego-tripping tragicomic fallen rock star Ziggy Stardust, first as New York City blue-eyed soul man, then the LA decadence of his Thin White Duke persona. David Bowie was rock’s Full Moon, irresistible in his pulling power, while the rest of the rock world was like the tide, following inexorably yet always lagging behind. But with Bowie’s mid-decade Young Americans  album with the #1 hit “Fame” and its John Lennon cameo pointing directly toward Disco’s dominance a mere two years later, hindsight clearly shows that the tide was rising quickly.

    Arguably, the sound of the Seventies may have dawned as early as August 1971 with Who’s Next,  or as late as April 1973 with Dark Side of the Moon. But with David Bowie’s June 1972 The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, not only did the exaggerated stereo and dry close-miked perspective make the sound of The Spiders seem to threaten to pierce the invisible barrier of your speakers, but Bowie’s hair, makeup, cross-dressing, and outrageous onstage behavior looked and acted like nothing we’d ever seen outside of a Frederico Fellini film festival. David Bowie took my assessment of the Seventies’ line of demarcation one better: “The Seventies really felt like a new century. The Sixties were a coda to the rest of the (20th) Century,” David stressed. “I think the Seventies showed conclusively that we live on a thread of rationality, that in fact the cosmos is far more complex and non-understandable than we had perceived. That everything we know is WRONG!” –Redbeard

  • David Bowie- Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust…- the late David Bowie, Mick Ronson

    David Bowie- Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust…- the late David Bowie, Mick Ronson

    In Summer 1972, London lad David Bowie’s extra-terrestrial album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars invaded the rock and roll world like Orson Welles’ notorious Halloween broadcast thirty-three years earlier. And while the reaction may have been not as swift, the impression that was left certainly was astronomically wider. Even with the thousands of popular albums which have been released since the fourth David Bowie album landed in June 1972, Rolling Stone editors still rank The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars at #40 on their Top 500 Albums of All Time. That places Ziggy Stardust… ahead of Led Zeppelin IV, Born in the USA, Who’s Next, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers, Achtung Baby, Dark Side of the Moon, Hotel California, The Doors, The Band, Guns’n’Roses Appetite for Destruction, AC/DC Back in Black, Meet the Beatles and Let It Be.  Are you feelin’ me?

    The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars  by David Bowie in 1972 sounded unlike any album before it, and precious few ever since. As you will hear in this classic rock interview  with Bowie  and the late guitarist/arranger Mick Ronson, the irony in the David Bowie back story is that Ronno points out that the Ziggy Stardust… album and U.S. tour in Summer 1972 did not sell very well, at least not initially, which Ziggy Stardust… producer Ken Scott confirms in his 2012 memoir Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust.  “While many of the initial dates were indeed successful, Bowiemania had not taken hold in all parts of the country, as dates in Houston and Oklahoma City were cancelled due to lack of ticket sales, and a concert in St.Louis had attendance so small (only 180 in an 11,000-seat hall) that David gave what amounted to a private show. But as the tour progressed, so did the buzz. By the second time back in cities such as Philadelphia and Cleveland, he (Bowie) was selling out 10,000-seat venues,” Scott writes in Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust.

    In the Studio writer emeritus and New York Times contributor Joe Rhodes opines that “this album is a more successful combination of the elements of rock and theater than had ever been attempted. As rock fable, the story of stardom and its capacity for self-destruction, Ziggy Stardust… worked much better than The Who’s Tommy”, with the late David Bowie changing the trajectory of rock music, fashion, and gender social issues in the ensuing fifty years in just 38 minutes. – Redbeard