I just watched a very informative and interesting documentary on David Bowie’s peak years of popularity. It focused heavily on the creative process and had many insights from the musicians and producers who worked on Bowie’s most iconic records. One thing that irritated me, however, is that they managed to discuss his album Let’s Dance without once mentioning that Stevie Ray Vaughn played the lead guitar on the record.
What’s so interesting about Let’s Dance is that in retrospect it feels like such a commercial effort. In reality, though, it was thoroughly innovative. Nothing had sounded like it before. It’s true that Bowie self-consciously wanted ‘hits’ and hired Chic‘s Nile Rodgers to produce it specifically for that purpose, and that was understandable considering the oceans of money he had just received from EMI. He wanted to justify their investment, and he couldn’t do that by putting out something totally avant-garde. But I don’t think anyone could have predicted that a song like China Girl would be a bigger pop hit than songs like Fame or Fashion. Of course, the latter two songs had John Lennon and Robert Fripp ripping some of their most unlikeliest guitar riffs.
It was always Bowie’s genius to take brilliant musicians and put them in a place to do something completely outside their comfort zone. Certainly, Steve Ray Vaughn never did anything like the work he did on Let’s Dance either before or after that recording. Luther Vandross never did anything like the work he did on Young Americans either before or after. For that matter, Lou Reed was never better than when he was being produced by Bowie.
What’s sad and somewhat frustrating is that Let’s Dance was so commercially successful that it kind of ruined Bowie’s self-confidence. He was so self-identified with the kind of counterculture represented by Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground that he felt like a phony when he became a true megastar. He tried to satisfy all these new mainstream fans, but he didn’t understand what they wanted.
Still, it’s hard to even understand the breadth of Bowie’s genius. He’s probably the most underrated lyricist of all time, mainly because he deliberately talked over the heads of his audience and mocked their intelligence. But his lyrics are such a small part of his overall creative repertoire. From his costumes to his personas to his brilliance in finding and directing talent, he has no peer in the history of rock and roll.
I’ll agree with much of what you have to say, but:
“…Lou Reed was never better than when he was being produced by Bowie.”
That’s just wrong, IMHO. Transformer (the only Reed album that Bowie had anything to do with) was certainly a game-changer in many regards, but Lou’s work with the Velvets remains the unimpeachable high point of his career. And there are many who would point to his later Arista and Sire albums (from Street Hassle through New York) as being far better than Transformer. (I’m not one of them, but to each his/her own.)
The Velvet Underground were sui generis, and Bowie himself drew heavily on them-there are a few versions of him doing cover versions of “Waiting For The Man”, one of them in a pre-Spiders From Mars band.
BTW, it’s a shame that the US didn’t broadcast this on PBS, and that it took approximately a year for it to make it to Showtime. BBC Four put it out in May 2013, but then BBC Four is a national treasure-they’ve put out more wonderful musical documentaries (many about American music) than PBS will ever dream of doing.
One response is that I meant Lou Reed as a solo artist, because that’s really what I meant.
But, actually, I don’t think anything Lou Reed ever did was better than Transformer. His earlier work was more important and influential, but it wasn’t a showcase for his full talents.
Well, if you’re referring to Bowie’s talents in producing Lou, then yes, “Transformer” was pretty great. But it was pretty much Lou just putting himself in Bowie/Ronson/Ken Scott’s hands and letting them produce him. The end result came out sounding more like a Bowie or Ronson album than anything Lou did before or after. Yes, some good/great (and mediocre, too) songwriting on Lou’s part, but nothing to equal the best of the Velvets. “Perfect Day” has been a perennial UK favourite, with cover versions aplenty and a pub singalong standard, but again, if Bowie had done the lead vocals, there wouldn’t really be anything to identify it as a Lou Reed song, what with the lush Ronson orchestrations…as opposed to “Sunday Morning”, “White Light/White Heat”, “Beginning To See The Light”, or “Rock And Roll”, the song you quote.
Do I like “Transformer”? Yes. Do I think that he did better before or after? Definitely. “Berlin”, for one, was far more a Lou Reed album, despite being drenched in Bob Ezrin, than “Transformer”. The only artists that Bowie “produced and/or mixed” that managed to break through the Bowie (so to speak) were the Stooges on their “Raw Power” album, where Bowie wisely stepped aside and didn’t try to give them a “Bowie” gloss.
The song I quote is Sweet Jane.
My bad. It was late. And I know that women never really faint, and that villains always blink their eyes. 🙂
Stevie played on the song “Let’s Dance.” Not the whole album. I’m not a Bowie fan, but he does deserve a lot of credit for understanding immediately the impact that Stevie would have.
In addition, SRV played on “Putting Out Fires ” and also “China Girl.”
see this article for relevance:
http://www.guitarworld.com/top-five-studio-guest-appearances-stevie-ray-vaughan?page=0,4
Good analysis. Are your talents truly endless?
Anyone else here know the story of how he gave Mott the Hoople the song “All the Young Dudes”?
It’s soooo Bowie.
That guy can/could write songs like few other people.
Didn’t know the story and always thought it was Bowie. It sounds just like him…for obvious reasons.
I saw him do his “Let’s Dance” tour at Madison Square Garden, and he was simply amazing!
You could feel his energy and stage presence the
second he walked out.
The audience was putty in his hands.
It is too bad that David Bowie had self doubts. I would of enjoyed seeing what he could of continued to accomplish if he had not went this route. I have enjoyed his music for numerous years.
The documentary sounds fascinating. Thanks for the point-out.
I’m going to be a little skeptical about self-confidence explaining much, as the musical zeitgeist had changed. The 1980s were not a time for complexity, and Bowie was nothing if not complex. Plus, Let’s Dance was Bowies’s 15th album– and how many artists keep being creative at that point? His run of musical styles and personae from Hunky Dory to Heroes was astounding. Can we really expect more from one person?
I saw Bowie’s “Serious Moonlight” show in the ’80’s which cemented in my mind the level of professionalism he exhibits. Virtually ALL of the songs I had listened to religiously, he breathed new life into on stage. Each number had this funky drive to it that somehow made all those old songs seem new.
While Bowie is certainly all of the things you say he is, he is definitively a showman like no other.
There was a bio of Peter Frampton a while back, in which he laments being asked to play guitar with Bowie. Now, to Frampton, playing for some other dude was the epitome of career failure. But that’s not what Bowie had in mind, as he only chose the best.
With the exception of Stevie Ray’s guitar work on Let’s Dance, the album doesn’t represent ground breaking work. It’s a cash cow sell out. Unfortunately for Generation X’ers who were in junior high school, high school, and college, it was their first exposure to Bowie.
Bowie’s most important work was the flood of album releases in the 70’s. As one British critic put it succinctly a few years back, “in the midst of Van Morrison going through a midlife crisis and the Stones descending into drug addiction, Bowie really mattered. He was important for pop music.”
I think he peaked with Brian Eno’s production and collaboration on “Low” and “Heroes” which Philip Glass covered with an orchestral tribute and springboard for his own study of Bowie and Eno.
The telltale sign that Let’s Dance is lackluster is the inclusion of recycled material. The Cat People anthem “Putting Out Fire With Gasoline” has a much better sound in collaboration with Giorgio Moroder. The Let’s Dance version is over the top Bowie vocal theatrics.
Then there’s China Girl which is Iggy Pop’s song, not Bowie’s. They co-wrote it along with Bowie’s top axe man Carlos Alomar but it had already been released close to five years earlier.
True, Let’s Dance is exciting with its bombastic sound courtesy of Stevie Ray’s guitar work which is absolutely inspired, and Bowie made good use of the new MTV video promotional vehicle to showcase songs from the album, but it was a repackaged Bowie presenting himself as Mr. Well Adjusted and comfortable to be a crooner in his middle years. Gone were the cocaine fueled freakouts in limousines in Manhattan which Bowie recreated for a scene in “The Man Who Fell To Earth” by Nicholas Roeg. And gone were the intimate songwriting magic with top notch guitarists and other session musicians. Bowie was still very good in the 80’s and 90’s, but somewhat less luminous as a Rock God!
This kind of thing is interesting to me because even when its pointed out to me I just never notice nuances of music. I have neither the musical chops nor the interest to delve into music on a level deeper than ‘I like this’ or ‘sounds like every other pop song’ but I find the glimpses into the world of people who can and do, fascinating.
I measured the reach of Bowie by the frenzy that accompanied the “Next Day” album release last year. People went positively apeshit because the cover was weird and it was his first disc in a decade and it wasn’t terrible and it turned out he was hale and healthy and not a museum piece. “The Stars Are Out Tonight” was a fun single & video, too. I know it’s all basically the latest conscious persona/presentation he’s chosen to show (much like Dylan since 1997) but I don’t care. Bowie is Bowie and I will lap that stuff up.
I loved that documentary. Have already watched it twice. I especially enjoyed the insight into Bowie’s creative process–how the songs developed and how he managed every aspect of production.
Looks like it will be re-airing tonight at 7PM ET/PT.
I recorded it this time. It contains some of the best anecdotes about how a creative work is pulled together that I have ever heard or read.
To your point about his brilliance in “finding and directing talent”:
I saw him play Madison Square Garden in 1977. Most bands really sound like crap in that place. I didn’t really know his music too well at the time, I was just a kid and he seemed a little weird at the time; this was before gender-bending was a mainstream notion.
But I was really blown away. Not just the Music: The band was just about the tightest best playing band I’ve ever seen. Directing talent indeed.