Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business. With easy customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there. And integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale-ups. Online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your one-year Oprah month trial at shopify.eu. I started playing guitar in high school. My first electric guitar was an Epiphone Les Paul Custom Black Beauty. Ebony paint, cream binding, and gold hardware. Sure, it wasn't a sunburst 59 Gibson like Jimmy Page played. And he's all I wanted to be at 15 years old. but he was still a Les Paul with two humbuckers and an attitude. Today, though, for the life of me, I can't remember what happened to that guitar. I think the fretboard kind of delaminated. Anyway, I don't think it survives except in memory, but what a potent memory. Rock and roll dreams die hard. There's a reason I've got a band playing with me in my live show. I want to strap on a guitar and make some noise. But rock and roll, well, it's a tough game. You have to be talented. You have to be a showman. have to be smart. To really succeed, you need to be a musician, an actor, a writer, a marketing executive, a PR whiz, and a savvy entrepreneur. And you have to know that all of these roles, all of these personas are part of you, but not the whole of you. You have to be a chameleon. In the history of rock and roll, one of the most successful chameleons of all time was David Bowie. Space alien, spooky monster, debonair gentleman, he's all of them and more. And on today's Saturday matinee, we're bringing you an episode that explores all of Bowie's ch-ch-ch-changes from the podcast Hit Parade. I hope you enjoy. While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow Hit Parade. We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand marketing tools that get your products out there and integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale-ups, online, in person and on the go Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you Sign up for your one euro per month trial at shopify.eu Starting a business can be overwhelming You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine, about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song No. 1 series. On today's show, 50 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. 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. She wants a young American. 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... You make some land, take things over. Synth pop. Ashes to ash and fun to fuck it. We know major talks are junky. To industrial rock. I'm afraid of Americans. I'm afraid of the world. I'm afraid I can't help. But what David Bowie's changeability also meant was that his commercial fortunes waxed and waned. For Bowie, pop success was one more cloak to try on and then discard. Today on Hit Parade, a decade after the passing of the Starman, a.k.a. Aladdin Sane, a.k.a. the Thin White Duke, a.k.a. the Godfather of Change, we will not only chronicle how David Bowie went from this— This is ground control to Major Tom. You've really made the grave. —to this— Never gonna fall for I'm not. Walks beside me. I'm not. Walks on fire. I'm not. 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. Look up here, I'm in heaven. I've got scars that can't be seen. And that's where your hit parade marches today. The week ending January 30th, 2016, when Blackstar, 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 star man become the Black Star? Join us as we turn and face the strange, the freakiest show, and consider the question, was Chart Topper one more of David Bowie's ch-ch-ch-changes? Stick around. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. 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 U.S. hit at the same time Walk on the Wild Side was in the top 40. That man was David Bowie. Take your protein pills 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. Reed at number 19, Bowie at number 21. 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, Reed was influential, admired, and popular to a point. Any time 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. 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 Reed is not a perfect parallel for Bowie. Wild as the wind, you touch me. 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. Neal's went all the way to number one. 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. Help me, I think I'm falling in love too fast. Mitchell scored more hits than Lou Reed or Neil Young, including her one top ten, 1974's Help Me, or my personal favorite among her hits, the number 22 banger, Free Man in Paris. I was a free man in Paris. I felt unfettered and alive. There was nobody called... 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 R.E.M.? This one goes out to the one I love. Like Bowie, R.E.M. 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 tens over three different albums, including The One I Love, Stand, and, of course, Losing My Religion. That's me in the corner. That's me in the spot. But R.E.M. 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 Tesfaye, 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 hitmaker and a pop force. I can feel my face when I'm with you, but I love it, but I love it. Perhaps the closest commercial parallel to David Bowie is the artist we covered one year ago in his own Hit Parade episode, Bob Dylan. Like Bowie, Dylan tried on many guises and sparked many trends. Dylan famously went from acoustic to electric. I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more. He tried changing his singing voice. Lay, lay, lay, play across my big breast bed. And like Bowie Dillon 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 start until deep into the 1970s 70s. 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, 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 shapeshifters 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's scene. The so-called Thin White Duke. Return of the Thin White Duke, throwing darts in lovers' eyes. And the bottle-blonde, pompadored, yuppie persona Bowie became during his 1983 Serious Moonlight tour. Under the moonlight, the serious moonlight. 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 pop, 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 One. 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 B's 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 bluesman Bobby Bland's I Pity the Fool. Fun footnote, the guitar solo for the Manish 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 Who. 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. You've got a habit of leaving me. And you've got a habit of deserving me. 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. What are we going to do if your dad finds out we're in love? 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 four members of the prefabricated TV band The Monkees. Cheer up, sleepy jean What can it mean to a daydream believer and a homeboy? 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. I can't help thinking about me. I can't help thinking about me. I can't help thinking about me. Can't 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 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 Duram 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 David 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 Durham 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. He called the song Space Oddity, and it would change everything, ushering Bowie into his next phase. Bowie Phase 2 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 Birds 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 Gibb were known for heartfelt story songs, like their 1967 hit New York Mining Disaster 1941, an obvious template for Bowie's space oddity. Maybe someone is digging underground, or have they given up and all gone home to bed? 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. I'm floating in the most peculiar way. 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 1967 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. 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. To price, to price, when the man was all gone. 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. Oh, man, wonder if you'll ever know Who's in the best selection? Is there life on Mars? 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 cover 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. Oh, you pretty things Don't you know you're driving You're driving, you're driving 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 Glamrock's gender-bending avatar. Bowie's androgynous identity complimented his persona on hunky-dory cuts like Queen Bitch. By late 72 David Bowie had made headlines everywhere even though he had yet to score a major U.S. 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 band Mott the Hoople. On American Top 40, Casey Kasem counted it down and detailed Bowie's unusual public 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. 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. But he thinks he'd blow our minds There's a star man The Ziggy Stardust LP proved to be David Bowie's image-making breakthrough. In the UK, the album cracked the top ten, and the song Starman made the singles top ten as well. In America, Ziggy Stardust became Bowie's first album to break into the top 100 on the album chart, peaking at No. 75 by early 1973. On U.S. 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 1970's 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 cover. 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 U.S. Top 40 hit. Casey Kasem found him very odd. 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. By the spring and 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 charts 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 Sing. Gene Gene, lives on his back. Gene Gene, loves Jimmy's axe. He's our great ass, he screams and he pours. 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 Sane's lead single, the glam bop Gene Genie, wasn't a big U.S. 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 Sane 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. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Bowie, Phase 3, Soulman Popstar. 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 Ten 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. Rebel Rebel, keep on your dress. Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess. Rebel Rebel. 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' 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. These R&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. 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 9. 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 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 as a kiss-off to his former manager, Tony DeFries, 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. 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 ten albums in this country, but this is his biggest hit single. Moving into the number one position this week, here is David Bowie and Fame. 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. Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight, get down tonight, do a little dance, make a little love. Fame's massive chart success and crossover with Black audiences got David Bowie invited into corners of American culture he'd never experienced before. Great welcome, gang, for the gifted singer, composer, producer, Mr. David Bowie. 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, uh, rather chemically altered. When did you start wanting to do soul music? I mean, you're doing it now. Getting into it, well, back in England, you see. Back in England when I was a teenager. Popping them, you know. It a similar expression of the album On street corners We have street corners in London and we used to go to a lot of clubs And James Brown was very popular in the French clubs 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. Golden Years Golden Years Golden Years Golden Years 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 No. 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 raging 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 four, 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 krautrock, bands like Cannes, Noy, and of course, Kraftwerk. This is their 1977 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 music. Stay with me, be my wife. Sometimes it gets under me. They were remarkably prolific. Among the first things Bowie did was help Iggy Pop record two 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 China Girl. And Lust for Life, whose title track later became a rock radio staple and a favorite movie and TV advert, Needle Drop. Just think, to this day, any time you hear this song on the telly, both Iggy Pop and the estate of David Bowie are getting paid. Well, I'm just a modern guy Look, cause I've had it in my ear before And I'm not so mad But Bowie's main focus in Berlin was on 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 krautrock. Low, 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, Lowe did pretty well on the charts. Released in January 1977, Lowe 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. Blue, blue, electric blue Watch the color of my room Where I will live Blue, blue 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 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 mean 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 received it as a global anthem. Just one day Speaking of well-remembered David Bowie live performances, in the closing weeks of 1977, Bowie appeared on a Bing Crosby Christmas special recorded in London for broadcast in both the U.S. and the U.K. 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. I pray my wish will come true. I've seen you My child and your child 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 Eno-centric recording techniques as Lowe 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 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. I'm a DJ, I wanna play I've got believers Believing in me 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 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 at slate.com slash 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 Melanfey. Thank you. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your 1 euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side.
