V&A ANNOUNCES NEW DAVID BOWIE CENTRE DETAILS

“I had to cram so many things, To store everything in there…”

As you know, the David Bowie Centre will be opening at V&A East Storehouse ( @vam_east ) on 13 September 2025.

Admission will be free, but a timed ticket will be required. Tickets available soon, sign up here for details and updates:

We’ll be focusing on some of the exciting content in the lead up to opening day.

Meanwhile, watch how excited The Last Dinner Party were to be given exclusive access to some of the items from the archive here.

Keep reading for the full press release.

#DavidBowieCentre #DavidBowieArchive

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FRIDAY 4 JULY 2025

From guest-curated displays to unrealised projects, the V&A announces new details on the David Bowie Centre – opening at V&A East Storehouse on 13 September 2025

• A new home for David Bowie’s archive – V&A East Storehouse’s David Bowie Centre – gets visitors closer to Bowie’s creative process and legacy than ever before

• Nine displays include unrealised projects and newly uncovered revelations, plus, visitors can book one-on-one time with items from the archive

• Award-winning musician, producer, songwriter and David Bowie collaborator Nile Rodgers and Brit Award-winning indie rock band The Last Dinner Party guest curate a display

• Access to the David Bowie Centre is free and ticketed, with tickets released here https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/david-bowie-centre later in the year

• The David Bowie archive was acquired by the V&A through the generosity of the David Bowie Estate, the Blavatnik Family Foundation, and Warner Music Group

Today, the V&A announces its David Bowie Centre, opening 13 September 2025 at V&A East Storehouse, will feature an exclusive guest-curated display by Multiple award-winning musician, producer, songwriter and David Bowie-collaborator, Nile Rodgers, and Brit Award-winning indie rock band, The Last Dinner Party. These intimate selections from Bowie's archive offer new perspectives on one of the most iconic creatives of all time and sit alongside a series of other mini curated displays and installations exploring Bowie’s creative legacy and lasting influence.

Visitors to the David Bowie Centre, the new free-to-access working store and permanent home for David Bowie’s archive, can also book one-on-one time with their own selections from the 90,000+ items in his archive. The David Bowie archive was acquired by the V&A through the generosity of the David Bowie Estate, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group. It joins over 1,000 archives from creative luminaries including Vivien Leigh, the House of Worth, and The Glastonbury Festival Archive.

Nile Rodgers, who produced Bowie's hugely successful single and 1983 album, Let's Dance, as well as 1993's Black Tie White Noise, has written, produced, and performed on records that have sold more than 750 million albums and 100 million singles worldwide. He has curated items reflecting what he calls his and Bowie’s shared ‘love of the music that had both made and saved our lives.’ His selections include:

• A bespoke Peter Hall suit worn by Bowie during the Serious Moonlight tour for the Let’s Dance album

• Chuck Pulin photographs of Bowie, Rodgers and guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan recording Let's Dance in New York

• Personal correspondence between Bowie and Rodgers about the 1993 Black Tie White Noise album

• Peter Gabriel images of the recording sessions with backing vocalists Fonzi Thorton, Tawatha Agee, Curtis King Jr, Denis Collins, Brenda White-King, Maryl Epps, Frank Simms, George Simms, David Spinner, Lamya Al-Mughiery and Connie Petruk recording Black Tie White Noise.

Nile Rodgers, said:

“My creative life with David Bowie provided the greatest success of his incredible career, but our friendship was just as rewarding. Our bond was built on a love of the music that had both made and saved our lives.”

The Last Dinner Party is a Brit award-winning band, whose electrifying performance style draws inspiration from their shared love for Bowie. They have selected objects mostly from the 1970s that illustrate how Bowie continues to inspire generations of artists to ‘stand up for themselves and their music’ and ‘steal and reinterpret’ to create something unique. Their selection includes:

• Mick Rock photos showing Bowie in intimate recording studio moments

• Bowie’s elaborate handwritten lyrics for ‘Win’ from the 1974 album Young Americans

• Writings and set lists for the Station to Station tour, aka Isolar - 1976 Tour

• Bowie's Electronic Music Studios (EMS) synthesiser user manual. The ‘suitcase synth’ was used on the albums Low, Heroes and Lodger, the so-called ‘Berlin’ trilogy.

The Last Dinner Party on Bowie’s influences and their new discoveries

Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland, Abigail Morris, Aurora Nishevci and Emily Roberts of The Last Dinner Party, said:

“David Bowie continues to inspire generations of artists like us to stand up for ourselves. Bowie is a constant source of inspiration to us. When we first started developing ideas for TLDP, we took a similar approach to Bowie developing his Station to Station album – we had a notebook and would write words we wanted to associate with the band. It was such a thrill to explore Bowie’s archive, and see first-hand the process that went into his world-building and how he created a sense of community and belonging for those that felt like outcasts or alienated – something that’s really important to us in our work too.”

Curated displays

The V&A East curatorial team consulted with 18–25-year-olds from the four Olympic Boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest through London Legacy Development Corporation and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’s Elevate Youth Voice. The resulting displays delve into various elements of Bowie’s archive and creative legacy, encompassing everything from private photographs to handwritten lyrics, self-portraits, his own artist’s palette, sketches, costumes, and designs.

Nine rotating displays reveal aspects of Bowie's extraordinary creative capacity, including ideas for projects that were never realised. Highlights include an idea to adapt George Orwell's 1984 and unrealised Young Americans and Diamond Dogs films.

Other displays explore Bowie’s creation of his iconic personas including Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane and look at his embrace of technology, futurism and science fiction, plus his legendary 1987 Glass Spider tour and concert at the Berlin Wall. Others spotlight Bowie’s creative collaborators including Gail Ann Dorsey, and the creation of the 1975 Young Americans album, alongside his wide-spread creative influence and legacy.

Madeleine Haddon, Curator, V&A East said:

“Bowie embodied a truly multidisciplinary practice—musician, actor, writer, performer, and cultural icon—reflecting the way many young creatives today move fluidly across disciplines and reject singular definitions of identity or artistry. His fearless engagement with self-expression and performance has defined contemporary culture and resonates strongly with the values of authenticity, experimentation and freedom that we celebrate across the collections at V&A East Storehouse. This archive offers an extraordinary lens through which to examine broader questions of creativity, cultural change, and the social and historical moments during which Bowie lived and worked. In the Centre, we want you to get closer to Bowie, and his creative process than ever before. For Bowie fans and those coming to him for the first time, we hope the Centre can inspire the next generation of creatives.”

For more information on The David Bowie Centre and to sign-up for updates, please visit: vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/david-bowie-centre

What to expect in the David Bowie Centre

As well as a new visitor experience, first and foremost, the David Bowie Centre is a working archive and store for Bowie’s paper-based archive with reading and study rooms. The Centre is brought to life with a series of small, curated areas including a new film showcasing a selection of performances from across Bowie’s career, and an interactive installation tracing the wide-spread impact of Bowie on popular culture from the sit-com Friends to Issey Miyake fashion and musicians from Lady Gaga, Charli XCX, Janelle Monae, and Kendrick Lamar. A series of rotating mini displays exploring different themes and elements of the archive shows approximately 200 items at one time.

A central space for facilitated object handling and exploring facsimile topic boxes also includes overhead rails of hanging Tyvek bags storing some of Bowie’s most iconic fashion and costume. These range from Freddie Burretti’s Ziggy Stardust looks to Agnes b’s Heathen ensembles, and Bowie’s 1992 Thierry Mugler wedding suit. These costumes can be ordered for closer looking as part of one-on-one appointments by using the V&A’s Order an Object service.

The David Bowie Centre is part of V&A East Storehouse at East Bank in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Access to the David Bowie Centre is free and ticketed, with tickets released closer to opening.

About the David Bowie archive

The David Bowie archive encompasses 90,000+ items tracing Bowie’s creative processes as an innovator, cultural icon, and advocate for self-expression and reinvention. Items range from 414 costumes and accessories to a series of set models, nearly 150 musical instruments, amps, and other sound equipment, 187 awards, as well as life masks, framed art, merchandise including tour t-shirts, posters, Bowie’s own desk, props and scenery for concerts, film and theatre. Paper-based material includes notebooks, diaries, lyrics, scripts, correspondence, project files, writings, unrealised projects, cover artwork, designs, concept drawings, fan mail and art. Most of the paper-based material is made up of photographic prints, negatives and transparencies, numbering over 70,000 items.

Highlights include stage costumes such as Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane ensembles designed by Freddie Burretti and Kansai Yamamoto (1970s), lyrics for songs including Fame (1975), Heroes (1977) and Ashes to Ashes (1980), as well as examples of the ‘cut up’ method of writing introduced to Bowie by the writer William Burroughs.

Cataloguing the David Bowie archive is ongoing and one of the largest V&A cataloguing projects to-date. The V&A aims to complete the cataloguing process by the end of 2026.

One-to-one bookings

Bookings to see 3D items from the David Bowie archive, including costumes, musical instruments, models, props and scenery, can be made through the V&A’s new sevenday-a-week Order an Object service. Visitors can book up to five items per visit at a time that suits them. Bookings require at least two weeks’ notice and Bowie items will begin to go live for advance booking from September.

Once the Centre opens, paper-based items including sketches, designs, writings, lyrics, press cuttings, and photographic prints, negatives and transparencies can be consulted through scheduling advance appointments with the Archives team.

Design approach

The David Bowie Centre is designed by London and Paris-based design company, IDK, and celebrates the unique environment of V&A East Storehouse and the extraordinary character of David Bowie himself. Balancing storage with stagecraft, the Centre is a dynamic space to explore Bowie’s life, work and legacy offering a deeply personal insight into Bowie’s world.

Built using V&A East Storehouse’s existing utilitarian ‘kit of parts’ system, the Centre features a mix of permanent and rotating displays, a dedicated study room, and an object handling space. Open and inclusive, IDK’s design approach is inspired by Bowie’s own creative method of cutting up and rearranging ideas — bringing together different elements to form something new, surprising, and alive.

Supporters

V&A East Storehouse opened on 31 May 2025. It is supported by Garfield Weston Foundation, The Foyle Foundation, Frédéric Jousset, David and Molly Lowell Borthwick, the Wolfson Foundation, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, Clore Duffield Foundation and many other generous supporters.

Opening on 13 September 2025, V&A East Storehouse’s free to access David Bowie Centre will be the new home of David Bowie’s Archive, made possible thanks to the David Bowie Estate and a generous donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group.

About V&A East Storehouse

• V&A East Storehouse immerses visitors in over half a million works spanning every creative discipline from fashion to theatre, streetwear to sculpture, design icons to pop pioneers. A busy and dynamic working museum store with an extensive self-guided experience, visitors can now go behind the scenes and get up-close to their national collections on a scale and in ways not possible before.

• Diller Scofidio + Renfro are lead architects for V&A East Storehouse, with support from local architects, Austin-Smith:Lord. IDK are the designers of The David Bowie Centre. Fieldwork Facility are the wayfinding and interpretation designers. We Not I are the external signage designers.

• V&A East Storehouse is open 10:00-18:00, seven-days-a-week, with late night openings every Thursday and Saturday to 22:00. Late nights include access to the V&A’s revolutionary new Order an Object service, curated self-guided experience and displays, special events, and café, e5 Storehouse.

• Visitors can order objects stored at V&A East Storehouse at a time that suits them via the V&A’s Order an Object page.

• V&A East Storehouse is the first of V&A East’s two new cultural destinations to open in east London. The second, V&A East Museum, is scheduled to open in spring 2026, and celebrates making and creativity’s power to bring change.

About East Bank

• East Bank is the UK’s newest cultural quarter at the heart of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The place where everything happens – entertainment, inspiration and discovery – and open to everyone who visits, lives and works in East London.

• East Bank represents the biggest ever cultural investment by the Mayor of London, with support from HM Government and the four Olympic boroughs.

• East Bank is made up of BBC Music Studios; London College of Fashion, UAL; Sadler’s Wells East; UCL (University College London); V&A East Museum & Storehouse.

• London College of Fashion, UAL, and UCL East (University College London) opened the doors of their new campuses in Autumn 2023 and Sadler’s Wells East opened in February 2025. V&A East Storehouse opened on 31 May 2025, V&A East Museum is scheduled to open in spring 2026, and BBC Music Studios in late 2026/early 2027.

• A powerhouse for innovation, creativity and learning in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, East Bank is rooted in the diverse communities of East London and is a reflection of the creative spirit and the legacy of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

About the Blavatnik Family Foundation

Led by Sir Leonard Blavatnik, founder of Access Industries, the Blavatnik Family Foundation promotes innovation, discovery, and creativity to benefit the whole of society. Through the Foundation, the Blavatnik family has contributed over $1.3 billion globally to advance science, education, arts and culture, and social justice.

www.blavatnikfoundation.org

About Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group (WMG) brings together artists, songwriters, entrepreneurs, and technology that are moving entertainment culture across the globe. Operating in more than 70 countries through a network of affiliates and licensees, WMG’s Recorded Music division includes renowned labels such as Atlantic, Elektra, Nonesuch, Parlophone, Reprise, Rhino, Sire, Warner Records, Warner Classics. WMG’s music publishing arm, Warner Chappell Music, has a catalog of over one million copyrights spanning every musical genre, from the standards of the Great American Songbook to the biggest hits of the 21st century. Warner Music Group is also home to ADA, which supports the independent community, as well as artist services division WMX. Follow WMG on Instagram, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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BOWIE TRIUMPHS AT THE BBC RADIO THEATRE 25 YEARS AGO TODAY

“Came to London Town...”

On 25th September 2000, the BBC showed an hour of David Bowie’s exclusive appearance at the BBC Radio Theatre in London, which was recorded three months earlier on 27th June 2000.

The full 22-song set was originally performed in front of an intimate gathering of celebrities and BowieNetters and featured the band that played Glastonbury just two days earlier and who also started recording the TOY album shortly afterwards.

However, just the following 11 songs from the show were broadcast by the BBC:

01 - Wild Is The Wind

02 - Ashes to Ashes

03 - This Is Not America

04 - Absolute Beginners

05 - Little Wonder

06 - The Man Who Sold The World

07 - Fame

08 - Stay

09 - Hallo Spaceboy

10 - Cracked Actor

11 - I’m Afraid Of Americans

The BBC rebroadcast the show last week and it’s still available for another three weeks or so to those of you who can access the BBC iPlayer.

Two songs not shown at the time, The London Boys and I Dig Everything, are available on the official David Bowie YouTube channel.

The audio of twenty tracks from the show is available as the expanded version of BBC Radio Theatre, London, June 27, 2000 included in the Brilliant Adventure box.

#BowieAtTheBeeb #BowieBBCRadioTheatre #Bowie2000

GLASTONBURY 2000 25 YEARS AGO TONIGHT

“One magical moment…”

“Not only the greatest Glastonbury headline performance but the best headline slot at any festival ever” - NME

Bowie first played Glastonbury in June 1971 to a small but appreciative crowd, giving him the confidence to return twenty-nine years later to a somewhat larger and a considerably more appreciative audience. That return to Glastonbury was twenty-five years ago this evening.

Today’s lyric quotation from Station To Station was a sentiment clearly shared by Glastonbury co-organiser, Emily Eavis, who commented in 2018: “I often get asked what the best set I've seen here at Glastonbury is, and Bowie's 2000 performance is always one which I think of first. It was spellbinding; he had an absolutely enormous crowd transfixed. I think Bowie had a very deep relationship with Worthy Farm and he told some wonderful stories about his first time at the Festival in 1971, when he stayed at the farmhouse and performed at 6am as the sun was rising. And he just played the perfect headline set. It really was a very special and emotional show”.

Emily’s father Michael, the founder of the festival who first met David at Glastonbury in 1971 said “He’s one of the three greatest of all-time: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and David Bowie.”

Those of you who subscribe to our David Bowie Mailing List will have already seen this email with a link to preorder a repress of the Bowie Glastonbury 2000 triple vinyl set in simplified packaging, due on 1st August.

Go here for a few of BlamSnap’s images taken at rehearsals, backstage and during the show itself:

📸 @BlamSnap 2000/2025

#BowieGlasto2000 #Bowie2000

DANCING IN THE STREET - 40th ANNIVERSARY WHITE VINYL 12” - JAGGER SPEAKS

“When people stared in Jagger’s eyes and scored, Like the video films we saw...”

The headline says it all but keep reading for the press release and a few words from Sir Michael Philip Jagger himself, along with a link to the upgraded 4k video.

#BowieLiveAid #BowieJaggerDancing #BowieJaggerDITS

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DAVID BOWIE & MICK JAGGER - DANCING IN THE STREET

40th ANNIVERSARY - LIMITED EDITION REMASTERED WHITE VINYL 12”

AVAILABLE 29th AUGUST 2025 ON PARLOPHONE HERE

WATCH THE UPGRADED 4K VIDEO NOW HERE

‘’We had such a laugh doing Dancing in the Street with both the song recorded in the studio and the video done in one day. Remarkable how we pulled it off really. The video is hilarious to watch now. We enjoyed camping it up and trying to impersonate each other’s moves, making it up as we went along. It was the only time David and myself collaborated on anything, which is a real shame.” Mick Jagger, June 2025

LONDON, 10TH JUNE 2025 - 40 years ago today, Live Aid, the benefit concert organised by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise further funds for relief of the famine in Ethiopia, was announced with a press conference on the pitch at Wembley Stadium. The show was held simultaneously on Saturday, 13th July 1985, at Wembley and John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. One of the day's highlights was the surprise duet of the Motown classic, 'Dancing In The Street', between David Bowie and Mick Jagger.

The video for the track, which, like the song, had only been recorded and filmed in thirteen hours, only fourteen days earlier, was shown at 7 pm in the UK (2 pm in Philadelphia), just before Bowie took to the stage at Wembley Stadium. The single version of the song was released on 27th August, with all the proceeds benefiting famine relief. It topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks and reached No. 7 in the United States on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the track, a limited edition white vinyl 12" will be released on 29th August, 2 days after its anniversary, bringing together all of the song's mixes for the first time. 30% of the retail price from the sale of this single will be donated by David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Parlophone Records to The Band Aid Charitable Trust (Charity Number 292199).

The original plan for Live Aid was to perform the track together live, with Bowie at Wembley Stadium and Jagger at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. It soon became apparent that the satellite link-up between the two countries would mean a half-second delay, rendering the plan impossible. Instead, the pair convened at Westside Studios in London on 29th June, where Bowie was working with producers Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley. The duo went directly from the studio to Spillers Millennium Mills in the East End to shoot the video with director David Mallet, who had previously worked with Bowie on the groundbreaking Ashes To Ashes video. The video has been upgraded to high resolution to celebrate the anniversary using the original film negative.

Speaking about the song and video at the time, Bowie said “We thought about it on a Thursday night and we just went through a bunch of old songs and thought that ‘Dancing’ was one we both knew very well and then we went into the studio between 7 and 11 on Saturday night and then we went over to the Docklands and shot the video for the rest of the night so we did the whole thing in ten hours, it was great.” He also talked about the spirit of Live Aid, saying, “Everybody out there who sent money in, you’re the real heroes because it’s easy for me to go up there and sing some songs, but it’s much harder for you to give money and not be recognised. Good on ya!”

DAVID BOWIE DAVID BOWIE & MICK JAGGER

DANCING IN THE STREET 40th ANNIVERSARY WHITE VINYL TRACKLISTING

SIDE ONE

Dancing In The Street (Clearmountain Mix) (3.11)

Dancing In The Street (Instrumental) (3.17)

Dancing In The Street (Steve Thompson Mix) (4.42)

SIDE TWO

Dancing In The Street (Edit) (3.24)

Dancing In The Street (Dub) (4.43)

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R.I.P. SIMON HOUSE

“I hear the sound of mandolins...”

It's turning out to be a very sad Sunday, with the news now that Simon House has died at the age of 77.

Simon had a long and illustrious career starting out as violinist and keyboard player with High Tide alongside Bowie’s fellow Turquoise member, Tony Hill. It’s possible that this is when Simon and David first met as they were on the same bill when David was a member of Hype. Bowie certainly had wonderful things to say about High Tide later.

Following a few years with Hawkwind, Simon joined the ISOLAR 2 band for The 1978 World Tour. He also contributed to the Lodger album, which has its 46th anniversary today.

Today’s lyric quotation is a reference to the fact that he also played mandolin alongside violin on Lodger.

Simon’s live work can be heard on the various official live releases from the 1978 tour, such as Stage, Welcome To The Blackout and Live in Berlin.

Our thoughts are with Simon’s friends and family.

#RIPSimonHouse #Bowie1978 #BowieStage

R.I.P. ALAN YENTOB

Sad to learn of the passing of Alan Yentob, the long-serving BBC arts broadcaster and documentary-maker, who has died aged 78.

Bowie fans became aware of Yentob's fifty-minute BBC 1 Cracked Actor documentary, when it first aired fifty years ago in January 1975.

Yentob interviewed Bowie again for a follow up documentary in 1997: An Earthling at 50.

Our thoughts are with his friends and family.

#RIPAlanYentob #BowieCrackedActor

SPACE ODDITY AT THE IVORS 55 YEARS AGO TODAY

“You’ve really made the grade...”

On May 10th, 1970, David Bowie performed Space Oddity to an audience at The Talk of The Town in London and broadcast live around the globe.

The event was the Ivor Novello Awards and Bowie received the Special Merit Award for Originality.

Perhaps he was just very happy to be there, but it did seem at times like our man was rather amused by the whole affair.

And we’re not suggesting for one second that it was the musical contribution of the Les Reed Orchestra that may have tickled Bowie...no, he was clearly just overwhelmed by the occasion, probably.

Watch the performance, complete with special trousers, here.

#BowieSpaceOddity #BowieIvorNovelloAwards

LEGACY AND ★ IN TOP TEN OFFICAL UK VINYL CHART OF LAST DECADE

“I’m not a popstar...”

The UK’s Official Charts Company have today announced just how much UK Bowie fans enjoy a slab of vinyl.

Both Legacy and Blackstar have made the list comprising 10 years of the Official Vinyl Chart: Official biggest vinyl new releases of the past decade 2015-2025:

Our man has fared well alongside the youngsters of today, and it’s all thanks to you.

Here’s the full top ten...

#01 - MIDNIGHTS - TAYLOR SWIFT

#02 - THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT - TAYLOR SWIFT

#03 - HARRY’S HOUSE - HARRY STYLES

#04 - 1989 (TAYLOR'S VERSION) - TAYLOR SWIFT

#05 - LEGACY - DAVID BOWIE

#06 - FINE LINE - HARRY STYLES

#07 - DIVIDE - ED SHEERAN

#08 - BLACKSTAR - DAVID BOWIE

#09 - WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP WHERE DO WE GO - BILLIE EILISH

#10 - CURRENTS - TAME IMPALA

© Official Charts Company 2025

Blackstar was also THE bestselling vinyl album of 2016 in the UK.

FOOTNOTE: to date, the #1 album Blackstar has spent 38 weeks on the official UK Album Chart, while the top five Legacy compilation boasts a staggering 437 weeks on the same.

#BowieVinyl #BowieBlackstar #BowieLegacy #BowieOCC

CHANGESBOWIE AT #1 IN UK 35 YEARS AGO TODAY

“Ch, ch, ch, ch, changes...”

Best of collections are a valuable entry point for casual listeners wanting to dip a toe into the work of artists they’re curious about.

In the UK alone, there were three important Bowie best of releases before the 1990 RYKO/EMI CHANGESBOWIE.

CHANGESONEBOWIE was released by RCA in 1976. The Best of Bowie was issued by K-Tel in 1980, with CHANGESTWOBOWIE following soon after on RCA in 1981.

The CHANGESBOWIE best of compilation LP hit the top spot in the UK 35 years ago today, promoted by Bowie’s SOUND + VISION World Tour which kicked off in Quebec, Canada, on 4th March, 1990.

Released on Monday 12th March 1990 by EMI in the UK (with three extra tracks on the 21 track LP & cassette), the 18-track US version was issued by RYKO on Friday 16th March 1990.

CHANGESBOWIE collected together songs chronologically that had previously appeared on both CHANGESONEBOWIE (11 tracks) and CHANGESTWOBOWIE (4 tracks) with other hits released after CHANGESTWOBOWIE and a couple of live favourites thrown in for good measure.

The album was released in several formats, including CD, Double Vinyl LP, and cassette, with RYKO releasing limited editions on Clear vinyl and a CD and cassette bundle with a free CD rack! Ryko’s gold numbered Au20 CD wasn’t made available till 1996 and EMI’s Minidisc version arrived in 1998.

It could be argued that the compilation was UK-centric as it included 16 UK Top 20 hits, of which 10 were Top 5, while also containing 6 US Top 20 hits of which 2 made the Top 5.

Either way, the album's sales were very healthy, attaining Platinum status in the US where 1,000,000 copies were shipped, and Platinum in the UK and France where 300,000 were shipped in each country. CHANGESBOWIE was also Gold status in many other countries.

#CHANGESBOWIE #BowieFame90 #BowieSOUNDandVISION

FAME 90 RELEASED 35 YEARS AGO TODAY

“Fame. What’s your name?”

Fame 90 was released as a single in the UK on 26th March 1990, on the very day that David Bowie’s SOUND + VISION World Tour continued its globe trot with a 3-day stint at the London Arena.

CHANGESBOWIE, the best of compilation LP from which the track came, was at #2 on the official UK album chart that day, reaching the top spot later that week.

Fame 90 was released on the following formats in the UK: • 7" • Cassette • 7" Limited Edition Changes Envelope Pack with three prints • 12" • 12" Shrink Wrap Pack • CD • 7" picture disc.

Despite the formats and different mixes, not to mention a brand-new video, the single only just scraped into the Top 30.

Watch the Fame 90 (Official Video) over on the David Bowie YouTube channel:

#BowieFame90 #BowieSOUNDandVISION

DAVID AND TINA’S LIVE 'TONIGHT' DUET IS 40 TODAY - SONG STORY By Jason Draper

‘Tonight’: How Iggy Pop’s Meditation On Mortality Became David Bowie’s Swansong For Doomed Lovers

Originally recorded for Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life album, ‘Tonight’ would unite David Bowie and Tina Turner on record in the mid-1980s.

By Jason Draper

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When David Bowie and Iggy Pop made their second trip together to Berlin, in April 1977, they sought to continue the rehabilitative lifestyle they’d embarked upon the previous year, while also building on the creative partnership that had seen Bowie help the former Stooges frontman establish himself as a solo artist. Just as the recording of Pop’s debut album, The Idiot, was followed swiftly by sessions for Bowie’s Low, at the famed Château d’Hérouville facilities, in a village in the north of France, Pop’s follow-up record, Lust for Life, provided a warm-up of sorts for Bowie’s “Heroes”, recorded in the fresh surroundings of Hansa Tonstudio, in West Berlin.

Worked up during Pop’s first solo tour, and completed during the Lust for Life sessions, was a song called ‘Tonight’, in which Pop reflected on one of the more desperate passages in a life lived on the edge following the implosion of his first band. One of many Pop co-writes that Bowie would return to later in his career, the song would be given a very different interpretation by Bowie when he re-recorded it as a duet with Tina Turner. That version, which would lend its name to Bowie’s 1984 album, would be received by Rolling Stone magazine as “one of the most vibrantly beautiful tracks he’s ever recorded”. But before that, ‘Tonight’ took listeners on a trip into Pop’s darker past, on an album which Bowie described as being “far more like the old Iggy than anything he’s done for a long time”.

Iggy Pop’s version: “This is a song about my girlfriend, who’s dead”

Recorded in the summer of 1976, Pop’s debut album, The Idiot, was finally released the following March, a little under three weeks into a tour Pop had launched to promote the record. For Pop’s solo shows, Bowie, who’d been instrumental in revitalising his friend’s career, first as producer of The Stooges’ third album, 1973’s Raw Power, and now as creative lead on The Idiot, cheerfully settled into the role of sideman, providing keyboard and backing vocals as part of a group that also included Low guitarist Ricky Gardiner and the straight-up rock’n’roll rhythm section of sibling duo Tony (bass) and Hunt (drums) Sales.

Looking healthier than he had in years, Pop confidently mixed Stooges classics with highlights from The Idiot, and even previewed ‘Tonight’ during some of the tour’s early shows. “This is a song about my girlfriend, who’s dead!” he told a hometown Detroit crowd on 25 March, before the wailing vocals of Bowie and the Sales brothers set the scene for Pop’s startling declaration: “I saw my baby/She was turning blue/I knew that soon, her young life was through/And so I got on my knees/Down by her bed/And these are the words/To her I said…”

As the Sales clattered into action and Bowie added elegiac keyboard lines on top, Pop moved from despairing bellow to his newly developed croon, seeking to console his doomed lover – and possibly also himself – with the assertion that “everything will be alright tonight”.

Having been honed on the road, ‘Tonight’ was quickly captured on tape in Hansa, where Bowie, Pop and their crew settled after finishing the tour in April. Again, Bowie was content to play support, reprising his role as backing vocalist during the wordless intro, and harmonising with Pop’s alternately anguished and imploring vocals on a recording that finds a meeting point between the loose-limbed rock instincts of Pop’s rhythm section and the considered New Wave of Bowie’s Low and “Heroes” aesthetic. For his part, Pop pulled round-the-clock shifts in order to outpace his creative partner and reach this balance. “During that album, the band and Bowie’d leave the studios to go to sleep, but not me,” he admitted. “I was working to be one jump ahead of them for the next day… See, Bowie’s a hell of a fast guy. Quick, quick. Very quick thinker, very quick action, very active person, very sharp. I realised that I had to be quicker than him, otherwise whose album was it gonna be?”

David Bowie’s version: “I really wanted to work with Iggy again”

From its stark description of a fatal overdose to its resigned acceptance of the dangers of drug use, there was no mistaking that ‘Tonight’ was the work of Iggy Pop. “It’s out of that specific area that I’m not at home in,” Bowie would tell NME, shortly after recording his own version of the song. “I can’t say that it’s Iggy’s world, but it’s far more of Iggy’s observation than mine.” And yet, seven years on from the Lust for Life sessions, Bowie had sought to bridge those two worlds when he recorded the follow-up to his gargantuan Let’s Dance album.

“What I suppose I really wanted to do was to work with Iggy again,” he explained, while also acknowledging that, without having too much new material to hand, he appreciated taking “a chance, like Pin Ups did a few years ago, to do some covers that I always wanted to do”. Indeed, five of Tonight’s nine songs would be covers, and, of those, three would be Pop co-writes, with Pop also receiving a credit on two of the album’s original numbers, ‘Tumble and Twirl’ and ‘Dancing with the Big Boys’.

A new approach: “I guess we changed the whole sentiment around”

Years later, Pop would call Bowie “a benefactor” who “went a bit out of his way to bestow some good karma on me”, and Bowie’s decision to include so many Pop co-writes on Tonight has been seen as an attempt to shore up some funding for Pop at a time when his career had hit a low point. Travelling companions once again, Bowie and Pop had spent time together in Bali and Java ahead of sessions for what would become Tonight, and Pop was only too happy to see what happened when they decamped to Le Studio, in Morin-Heights, Quebec, to begin work on the album. Fired up by the return of his old creative foil, Bowie recorded a reggae-fied version of ‘Tonight’, complete with marimba solo by Guy St. Onge, in a nod to the gamelan music that had captivated him while travelling through Indonesia.

In a collaborative mood, Bowie also extended an invitation to Tina Turner, whose presence would make for another radical alteration to this new version of ‘Tonight’. Now framed as a duet between lovers, the song could be heard as a cautious plea for reconciliation as much as it was a reckoning with mortality – an interpretation encouraged by Bowie’s decision to remove Pop’s opening pronouncement from his version. “That was such an idiosyncratic thing of [Iggy’s] that it seemed not part of my vocabulary,” Bowie told NME. Adding that he didn’t want to “inflict” the original overdose narrative on Turner, he noted, “I guess we changed the whole sentiment around. It still has that same barren feeling, though.”

Issued as a single on 26 November 1984, two months on from the release of its parent album, ‘Tonight’ was singled out for particular praise by Rolling Stone’s Kurt Loder, who, in his review of the album, called the song “an inspired and blessedly spare reworking of an old Iggy-and-Ziggy collaboration” on which Turner provided “grit and sinew” as a counterpart to one of the “sweetest and most human” vocals of Bowie’s career.

The live duet: “Says everything about our feelings together”

Bowie had been thrilled to have Turner guest on his album. “As iconic as he is, he wanted this to be an amazing experience for her,” Carlos Alomar, who’d played guitar on both the Lust for Life and Tonight versions of the songs, later told Uncut magazine. Joining Bowie and Turner for dinner after the recording, Alomar and his wife, Robin Clark, would note that Bowie “wanted all things covered. ‘Let there be no stone unturned to make this woman feel at home.’”

Bowie had long been a fan of Turner: the powerhouse performer on vintage soul hits such as ‘River Deep – Mountain High’ and ‘Proud Mary’ was, he’d told Capitol Records execs, his “favourite singer”, an appraisal that all but led a stampede of label heads to see her perform at New York City’s Ritz club in early 1983. Turner would forever consider Bowie’s support to have been “very special and significant”, and the reason that she got a record deal at a make-or-break stage in her career. She would acknowledge her return respect by recording one of Bowie’s Diamond Dogs songs, ‘1984’, for Private Dancer.

It was ‘Tonight’, however, which “says everything about our feelings for each other”, Turner later wrote in her memoir My Love Story. At an arena-filling peak of her own in 1985, Turner invited Bowie on stage to perform the song with her during her two-night residency at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, across 23 and 24 March, as she rode the unstoppable wave of Private Dancer’s success. Released on the Tina Live: Private Dancer Tour video, the 23 March performance, which was followed by a jubilant run through Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’, made clear the close bond that had formed between the two stars – not least when Bowie, looking, in his white tuxedo, every inch the elegant suitor to Turner’s leather-clad rock siren, leaned in mid-song to whisper something that made Turner howl with laughter. “They got on really well; they were very comfortable with each other,” Paul Cox, Turner’s photographer on the tour, told this writer for the liner notes to the 40th-anniversary deluxe-edition reissue of Private Dancer. “Her energy was such that all those people looked at her and went, ‘I want to be a part of that.’ She always pulled people along.”

For Turner, the feeling was mutual. “He’s got so much knowledge,” she would say of Bowie. “He really is like the man who fell to Earth, for me. You can’t put your finger on David… I’ll be ever thankful to him.”

Buy the ‘Private Dancer’ 40th-anniversary deluxe-edition reissue.

YOUNG AMERICANS AT 50 A TRACK-BY-TRACK GUIDE

“Never been known to fail...”

David Bowie’s ninth studio album, the Bowie/Visconti/Maslin produced Young Americans, was released fifty years ago on this day in 1975.

A top ten album in both the US (#9) and the UK (#2) it also furnished Bowie with his first ever #1 US single in the shape of the Bowie/Lennon/Alomar composition, Fame.

Young Americans still sounds a remarkable work today and Jason Draper’s enthusiasm for it shines through in his latest epic, posted below: ‘Young Americans’ at 50: A Track-by-Track Guide to David Bowie’s “Plastic Soul” Album.

The image here is from the shoot for the Young Americans TV advert.

#YoungAmericans50

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‘Young Americans’ at 50: A Track-by-Track Guide to David Bowie’s “Plastic Soul” Album By Jason Draper

Full of slick grooves and sparkling riffs, the eight ‘Young Americans’ songs gave life to David Bowie’s vision of “plastic soul”.

David Bowie had been edging towards soul music as early as 1973, when he opened his US TV special, The 1980 Floor Show, with a new funk-indebted song, ‘1984’. With wah-wah riffs slicing their way through the following year’s Diamond Dogs album, a wholesale reinvention as a blue-eyed soul singer seems, in retrospect, like a natural development for Bowie – although the pace at which he was evolving remains staggering. As proven by this guide to all eight songs on Young Americans, his immersion in the music coming out of Black America in the 60s and 70s – not least the floor-filling sounds of Philadelphia International Records – made for one of the biggest creative about-turns of his career. Slick, soulful and full of daring, Young Americans is vintage Bowie.

‘Young Americans’: A Track-by-Track Guide to Every Song on the Album

‘Young Americans’

The time: 1975. The place: A downtown discotheque in Anywheresville, USA. A crack of drums, and the band slide into the slinkiest groove yet heard on a Bowie record, with David Sanborn’s in-your-face saxophone calling hormone-fuelled adolescents to the floor. “My Young American was plastic, deliberately so,” Bowie said of the inner-city characters he placed at the centre of Young Americans’ title track, opening his love letter to Philadelphia soul with a narrative of nervy newlyweds seeking to find their way through mid-70s North America, with all its capitalist traps and political murk. Doing for his target audience of soul boys and soul girls what ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ had done for the burgeoning glam scene of the early 70s, ‘Young Americans’ was an astute clarion call that truly broke Bowie stateside when it went Top 30 on the Billboard Hot 100. “It worked in a way I hadn’t really expected,” Bowie later said of the song. “Because while my invention was more plastic than anyone else’s, it obviously had some resonance.”

‘Win’

“Plastic” may have been Bowie’s preferred descriptor for the eight songs that make up Young Americans, but ‘Win’ reveals how malleable the concept could be. Twinkling guitar and reverbed sax characterise this impassioned ballad, whose fluid time signature, slipping seamlessly between 6/8 and 4/4, reject any notions of uneasy rigidity in the material. “The chord structures are much more of a European thing than an American thing,” Bowie once said of this slow-rolling triumph. “But it imbued the muscular qualities of soul music pretty accurately, and I got these pretty heavyweight American musicians working on it. It gave it some sound of a kind of a fake authenticity to it.” Emotionally, too, the song marks a triumphant early high point on the album. Calling it “a ‘get up off your backside’ sort of song”, Bowie gave ‘Win’ some of the most affecting lyrics found on Young Americans. Seemingly a shot across the bows of all those who would sit and hope – in vain – for Bowie’s failure, ‘Win’ hits the mark and then some.

‘Fascination’

After making a casual comment about ‘Young Americans’’s backing vocals, a fledgling singer by the name of Luther Vandross found himself thrust into the role of arranger, leading Ava Cherry and Robin Clark, wife of guitarist Carlos Alomar, through harmonies on many of the album’s tracks. Then only 23, the future ‘Never Too Much’ hitmaker also displayed his nascent songwriting chops, loaning Bowie an original tune he’d penned, titled ‘Funky Music (Is a Part of Me)’. Rewriting it as ‘Fascination’, Bowie had his band dig deep into the song’s groove, with plenty of squelchy low end sitting beneath elliptical lyrics that speak of desire. “He said he didn’t want to be so presumptuous as to say ‘funky music’, since he was a rock artist,” Vandross later explained of Bowie’s lyric changes. “He said, ‘Do you mind?’ And I said, ‘You’re David Bowie, I live at home with my mother, you can do what you like.’” Two years later, when recording the self-titled debut album by his own band, Luther, Vandross re-cut the song under its original title and using his own lyrics.

‘Right’

Reflecting on the Young Americans recording sessions in the BBC documentary David Bowie: The First Five Years, Robin Clark explained the difficulties of capturing the call-and-response vocals that elevate Right from a strong groove – what Bowie described as “putting a positive drone over” – to one of the most distinctive songs on the album. “That was so hard,” she said. “David had like a puzzle. He brought this paper to us, and he said, ‘This is how I want you to sing this.’ It wasn’t a straight, ‘Just sing it linearly and melodically.’ It was, ‘I want it to jump in here, and I want you to jump out there, and jump back in here.’ That, too, was the first time I’d ever seen anything like that in my life.” The vocal acrobatics he teased from his trio of singers during the song’s mid-section were almost impossible to replicate live. On record, however, they goad Bowie on as he redefines himself yet again: “Never no turning back,” he sings. “Never been known to fail.”

‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’

With it’s gospel-tinged uplifts and softly crooned backing vocals, ‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’ masquerades as a slow-dance number (“He’s so divine, his soul shines”), but it harbours more urgent concerns. It was a “Watch out, mate, Hitler’s on his way back” song, Bowie told NME shortly after the release of Young Americans, adding, “It’s your rock’n’roll sociological bit.” He had already walked the line between rock idol and messianic leader on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, and, with a prescient eye on the ways in which politicians manipulate the media to their own ends, Bowie ensured that lyrics such as “He’s got his eye on your soul, his hand on your heart” carried altogether more sinister undertones. Building in intensity over its six and a half minutes, ‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’ sounds like a rise to supremacy in itself, as requested by Bowie in his handwritten notes to producer Tony Visconti: “The sound throughout this [last] section should become more and more Spectorish and powerful.”

‘Across the Universe’

Originally recorded by The Beatles for their final album, Let It Be, the John Lennon-penned ‘Across the Universe’ had always been a favourite of Bowie, who would call it “a portrait of the spiritual heart of where Lennon was at”. After befriending Lennon in New York City, Bowie invited him to Electric Lady Studios in January 1975, specifically to cut a cover of ‘Across the Universe’ during what would be one of the final Young Americans recording sessions. “I thought, Great, because I’d never done a good version of that song myself,” Lennon told Melody Maker the day after the album’s release. Dropping the Sanksrit mantra of Lennon’s original (“Jai guru deva om”) and upping the intensity with his own rich vocals and layered guitars, Bowie, by his own estimation, “hammered the hell out of” the track. He would go on to remove three songs from the album’s planned tracklist – ‘John I’m Only Dancing (Again)’, ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’ and ‘Who Can I Be Now?’ – in order to make room for this cover, plus an original number worked up with Lennon in a flash of inspiration that would provide the album’s unforgettable closing track.

‘Can You Hear Me’

Originally cut with Lulu for an aborted project with the Scottish singer, ‘Can You Hear Me’ is, like ‘Win’, another deeply emotive Young Americans song that belies the album’s “plastic” tag. An early Bowie version – later released on the “lost” album The Gouster – is a sparse soul ballad with Bowie’s vocal front and centre. In its final guise, ‘Can You Hear Me’ floats on conga and Visconti-scored strings, the fullness of the arrangement doing nothing to deter Bowie from delivering a delicately poised performance. “This is a real love song. I kid you not,” he told NME, although he refused to say who it had been written for.

‘Fame’

It’s perhaps no surprise that one of Bowie’s most enduring songs dealt with one of his life-long preoccupations: celebrity and its artifice. Developed from a riff on ‘Foot Stomping’, an old R&B number by The Flares, and reflecting conversations that Bowie had had with John Lennon (“We spent endless hours talking about fame, and what it’s like not having a life of your own any more,” he later told Musician magazine), ‘Fame’ takes an acerbic look at life lived under the media’s glare, where “what you get is no tomorrow” and “what you need you have to borrow”. Recorded immediately after committing ‘Across the Universe’ to tape, ‘Fame’ features Lennon on piano, acoustic guitar and backing vocals, although the former Beatle’s biggest contribution, as Bowie later put it, “was the energy, and that’s why he got a credit for writing it. He was the inspiration.”

Indeed, ‘Fame’’s distinctive guitar riff is unmistakably the work of Bowie’s latest recruit – and soon-to-be crucial collaborator – Carlos Alomar, while its cut-up, fuzzed-up deconstruction of fame could only have come from Bowie’s brain, his pitch-shifted vocals seeming, by turns, mocking and disorientating as they cascade towards the ultimate snub for a “sleb”: “What’s your name?” His first-ever US No.1, the song cemented Bowie’s profile stateside, and its stock would remain high throughout his career, appearing in his setlists right through to the tour for the Reality album. With covers by artists as diverse as Duran Duran, Scott Weiland and Smashing Pumpkins, samples in tracks by Public Enemy and Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and syncs in TV and cinema, ‘Fame’ – which Bowie himself would revisit in a ‘Fame ’90’ remix – has spoken to everyone who’s found that having a public profile isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. “There’s very little about it that anybody would covet,” Bowie told Q magazine in 1990. “I still have my favourite times when I’m not recognised, or at least left to my own devices.”

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Buy the ‘Young Americans’ 50th-anniversary vinyl reissues and merch at the David Bowie store.

YOUNG AMERICANS 50TH ANNIVERSARY OUT NOW

Purchase here.

#YoungAmericans50

RIP DAVID JOHANSEN

Following our post on 12th February, we are sad to learn that David Johansen has now passed at the age of 75.

Our thoughts are with his wife Mara Hennessey, daughter Leah and anyone else that knew him.

Here follows a tribute posted on his fund page yesterday...

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David Johansen passed away peacefully at home, holding the hands of his wife Mara Hennessey and daughter Leah, in the sunlight surrounded by music and flowers.

After a decade of profoundly compromised health he died of natural causes at the age of 75.

David and his family were deeply moved by the outpouring of love and support they’ve experienced recently as the result of having gone public with their challenges. He was thankful that he had a chance to be in touch with so many friends and family before he passed.

He knew he was ecstatically loved.

There will be several events celebrating David’s life and artistry, details to follow.

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FOOTNOTE: Our picture is a snap of the two David’s in New York in February 1973 from our archive. The original is signed by Johansen, who had also mischievously drawn a moustache on Mr Bowie.

#DavidJohansenFund #NewYorkDolls

YOUNG AMERICANS SONG STORY BY JASON DRAPER

Young Americans: Behind David Bowie’s Generation-Defining “Plastic Soul” Anthem

Surpassing even its creator’s own expectations, Young Americans was the song that proved David Bowie could master any musical genre he chose.

By Jason Draper

Ever since his first visit to the US, in January 1971, David Bowie had been fascinated with the country. “I focused all my attention on going to America,” he later admitted, adding that he was drawn to what he called the “subculture” of the place: everything from the late Hollywood icon James Dean to rock’n’roll music and Beat Generation writers such as Jack Kerouac and William S Burroughs. Channelling this fixation into an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative in the song ‘Young Americans’, Bowie would seek to express the world view of a new generation of US youth in the same way that he’d waved a flag for the “pretty things” of the UK’s queer underground in the early 70s.

“My Young American was plastic, deliberately so,” Bowie later reflected. “We worked really hard to make that record come alive.” Ushering in a whole new era for Bowie, and leading the charge for a breed of white pop singers with soul music in their hearts, ‘Young Americans’ served notice of the ever-changing star’s most radical reinvention to date.

The backstory: “I was through with theatrical clothes”

Bowie had long drawn upon US culture for his music: avant-garde rock experimentalists The Velvet Underground had informed his Hunky Dory track ‘Queen Bitch’, while the experience of touring The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars across the States in the autumn of 1972 coursed through the wired paranoia of the following year’s Aladdin Sane. Yet it would be the Diamond Dogs Tour of 1974 that set Bowie on the path towards the Young Americans album and its impassioned title track.

A move in this soulful new direction had been clearly signposted. Bowie had opened his revue-styled TV special of 1973, The 1980 Floor Show, with a funk-fuelled new song, ‘1984’, whose frenetic wah-wah guitar sliced through the latter half of the Diamond Dogs album. Now, in the summer of 1974, while touring Diamond Dogs with an ambitious theatrical stage show, he sported sculpted shorn hair and blasted everything from roof-raising Aretha Franklin numbers to the slick dancefloor grooves of the Philadelphia International Records hit machine from his car stereo as he cruised through the States between shows.

Fitting, then, that his first-ever live album, David Live, would be recorded in Philadelphia. Hitting the shelves that October, it featured an image of Bowie looking every inch the soulful crooner on its sleeve. “I’d got this thing in my mind that I was through with theatrical clothes and I would only wear Sears & Roebuck, which on me looked more outlandish than anything I had made by Japanese designers,” he later told Q magazine, referring to the muted suits he came to favour over the brightly patterned kimonos he’d worn as his Ziggy Stardust alter ago. The Ziggy-era’s songs were also given makeovers, with the dramatic album closer ‘Rock’n’Roll Suicide’ re-emerging as a Southern soul ballad. Soon, Bowie would set up camp in the ‘City of Brotherly Love’, taking over Philadelphia International’s recording base for his next creative leap.

Rock 'N' Roll Suicide (Live)

The recording: “That’s a great idea. Put that down”

Booking Sigma Sound Studios, where PIR’s house band, MFSB, had laid down many of the label’s classic cuts, Bowie spent a break between tour legs recording much of what would become his Young Americans album. Having written the album’s title track before entering the studio, Bowie launched straight into it on the first day of the sessions, 11 August 1974. Right behind him was a brand-new band featuring former James Brown sideman Carlos Alomar, whose fluid guitar work would be crucial to Bowie’s seamless switch from rock god to strutting soul boy.

In a move he would repeat 40 years later, when bringing saxophonist Donny McCaslin in to underpin his surprise 2014 single, ‘Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)’, and, later, the sessions for his final album, ★, Bowie enlisted a hotshot young jazz saxophonist, David Sanborn, to play a style of music outside of his established realm. Setting the scene for Bowie’s tale of wary lovers, Sanborn’s saxophone glistened like a mirror ball. And while the group polished their performance across a week’s worth of sessions, another newcomer listened on from the control booth, ready to put his distinctive stamp on the song.

“What if there was a phrase that went, ‘Young American, young American, he was the young American – all right!” a 23-year-old singer named Luther Vandross, brought to the studio by Alomar, said to Alomar’s wife, Robin Clark. “Now, when ‘all right’ comes up, jump over me and into harmony.” Overhearing the conversation, Bowie told Vandross, “That’s a great idea. Put that down.” Before long, Vandross, Clark and backing singer Ava Cherry were singing Vandross’ parts not only on Young Americans’ title track, but also on most of the album’s songs, among them ‘Fascination’, a number Vandross himself had written under the original title of ‘Funky Music (Is A Part Of Me)’.

Fascination (2016 Remaster)

The vocals: “A lot of David’s vocals were live because of this wacky idea”

With bass from recent Donny Hathaway and Randy Newman collaborator Willie Weeks, and drums and percussion from Andy Newmark (Sly And The Family Stone, Carly Simon, Rod Stewart) and Larry Washington (MFSB, Salsoul Orchestra), respectively, Bowie ensured that his excursion into blue-eyed soul would cross as easily into the white pop market as he himself had transitioned into the world of Black music. Alongside the newcomers he’d brought in, regular Bowie pianist Mike Garson underpinned the recording with Latin-tinged piano (“I was playing straighter because his music was not was weird as it was in the Aladdin Sane period,” Garson later said) while producer Tony Visconti was back at the helm for his first full project with Bowie since The Man Who Sold The World.

Visconti arrived at Sigma Sound a few days after the Young Americans sessions started. Earlier in the year, he’d helped Bowie mix ‘Rebel Rebel’ for inclusion on Diamond Dogs, but now, jet lagged and severely sleep deprived following a months-long engagement working on Thin Lizzy’s Nightlife album, he was ill-prepared to launch himself into another intensive stint at the controls. Nevertheless, Bowie had his old friend get straight to work solving a technical challenge: how to capture Bowie’s vocals live in the studio while avoiding having his microphone pick up sound from the musicians surrounding him.

“I applied a special technique that was only described to me but I had never used before,” Visconti recalled in the liner notes to the 2016 box set Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976). “I put up two identical vocal mics, one in front of his mouth and the other in front of his neck. They went through identical channel paths except one was switched out-of-phase on purpose.” Betting that the two microphones would cancel out the sound of the band on the vocal track, Visconti hoped that Bowie’s vocals, picked up by the mic placed in front of his mouth, would come through clearly on the recording. “Damn it, it worked!” Visconti wrote. “A lot of David’s vocals in the final mixes were live because of this wacky idea.”

Young Americans (2016 Remaster)

The lyrics: “It’s about a newly-wed couple who don’t know if they really like each other”

The producer also had an indirect influence on the ‘Young Americans’ lyrics, with Bowie referencing a theatre trip the pair had taken together in the song’s opening line, “They pulled in just behind the fridge.” While many listeners puzzled over why Bowie’s young couple would seek a tryst under cover of a kitchen appliance, the “fridge” in question was actually a nod to Behind The Fridge, a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore show that Bowie and Visconti had been to see in London’s West End the previous year.

The remainder of the song’s lyrical touchstones are, however, undeniably North American. Shifting his focus from the hazardous ghettos of Diamond Dogs’s Hunger City to the metropolises of the United States, Bowie has his references tumble into one another like so much cultural detritus. A Barbie doll, Afro-Sheen hair-care products, the soul-music TV show Soul Train and makes of car (Cadillac, Ford Mustang, Chrysler) all provide the backdrop to – and, perhaps, distraction from – a world in which civilians go about their day under the watchful eye of an intrusive government. “Have you been the un-American?” Bowie asks, referencing the anti-communist House Un-American Activities Committee. “Do you remember your President Nixon?” he probes further, in a lyric written just days after the disgraced commander-in-chief’s resignation.

“It’s about a newly-wed couple who don’t know if they really like each other,” Bowie told NME of the meaning behind ‘Young Americans’. Considering the “predicament” he’d put his couple in – an anti-climactic opening encounter (“It took him minutes, took her nowhere/Heaven knows, she’d have taken anything”) leads to ruminations on ageing and the civil-rights movement – Bowie added, “Well, they do, but they don’t know if they do or don’t.”

No wonder. With ‘Young Americans’ Bowie created a world in which truth and cynicism collide, and emotional fulfilment is scarce. “I heard the news today, oh boy,” Vandross, Clark and Cherry sing at one point, in a canny lift from The Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’, although the effect is less a tribute, more resigned acceptance that an era of peace-and-love optimism has long since faded. Turning from his couple, Bowie directly addresses the listener in a near-breathless outpouring that ends with the band dropping out as he makes a final pained entreaty: “Ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?”

Young Americans (Live in Detroit)

The release: “Bowie’s most commercial sound to date”

Hysteria of a different type took hold when Bowie invited a small group of fans into Sigma Sound to hear his work-in-progress. Dubbed the ‘Sigma Kids’, this most committed set of devotees had been hanging outside the studio ever since word had spread of Bowie’s presence in the building, and their reaction to the Young Americans material was unequivocal: it spoke directly to the needs of Bowie’s burgeoning US fanbase.

That fanbase gathered to welcome him back to the stage in September, as the Diamond Dogs Tour morphed into The Soul Tour for the remainder of the year. And a nationwide TV audience would be introduced to ‘Young Americans’ when Bowie performed it on The Dick Cavett Show. Filmed on 2 November 1974 and aired on 5 December – more than two months ahead of the song’s release as a single – Bowie’s appearance on the late-night talk show underscored the confidence he had in his new direction. Opening his musical segments with Diamond Dogs’s ‘1984’, he closed the show with a souped-up version of The Flares’ 1961 R&B cut ‘Foot Stomping’, a track which would inspire his John Lennon co-write, ‘Fame’, and followed that with a performance of another Young Americans highlight, ‘Can You Hear Me?’, which was left out of the final broadcast.

All this hard graft on North American soil paid off. Released in a single edit in the US, backed with his David Live version of Eddie Floyd’s Stax Records stormer ‘Knock On Wood’, ‘Young Americans’ would hit No.28 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Bowie’s first US hit since a Ziggy-era reissue of ‘Space Oddity’ broke the Top 20. Not that his homeland wasn’t listening. After the full album-length version of ‘Young Americans’ hit UK stores on 21 February, fans took it to No.18 on the charts, the transatlantic success underscoring Record Mirror’s observation that the song boasted “Bowie’s most commercial sound to date”.

Knock on Wood (Live)

The legacy: “It worked in a way I hadn’t really expected”

Half a century on from its release, ‘Young Americans’ barely seems to have aged. Routinely hailed as one of the best David Bowie songs, it has also appeared in Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’ list (No.204 in its 2024 update) and Pitchfork’s survey of the 200 best songs of the 70s (No.44). Deeming it the seventh-best Bowie song of all in a Guardian countdown, music critic Alexis Petridis affirmed that “Young Americans represents the point in Bowie’s career where it became apparent he could take virtually any musical genre and bend it to his will”.

Much more genre-bending would follow as the 70s unfolded. But Bowie would return to his “plastic soul” template in 1983, for the world-conquering Let’s Dance album, produced by Chic’s disco architect, Nile Rodgers. Reprised during that era’s Serious Moonlight Tour, ‘Young Americans’ would also get airings throughout the Glass Spider Tour of 1987 and Bowie’s career-spanning Sound+Vision Tour of 1990, before being put to bed for good – to the chagrin of some of his longtime band members, who, in the words of bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, “would just die and go to heaven” for the chance to play the song again.

David Bowie - Young Americans (Live, 1983)

“It worked in a way I hadn’t really expected,” Bowie would say of his Young Americans era. “It made me a star in America, which is the most ironic, ridiculous part of the equation. Because while my invention was more plastic than anyone else’s, it obviously had some resonance. Plastic soul for anyone who wants it.”

Buy the ‘Young Americans’ 50th-anniversary vinyl reissues and merch at the David Bowie store.

DAVID BOWIE BY DENIS O’REGAN DUE IN JULY

“Photograph king, watches you go...”

Denis O'Regan has kindly given us the opportunity to share some of the images and details from his upcoming David Bowie by Denis O'Regan hardback book.

See the images over on the Instagram version of this post.

Available at all the usual outlets, you can register your interest for the slipcase edition and more at ACC ART BOOKS as they become available here.

We’ll be posting more exclusive content in the run up to the publication on 22nd July 2025 along with details of a contest to win signed copies.

Keep reading for the official blurb.

#BowieByDenisORegan #DavidByDenis

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David Bowie by Denis O'Regan

Official photographer to David Bowie, Denis O'Regan presents his superb collection of photographs of the music legend, from the 1970s through to the 1990s

Denis O'Regan has photographed Bowie more than any other photographer

Stunning photographs taken across two decades at over 200 concerts worldwide

O'Regan captures David behind-the-scenes as well as David Bowie the showman

O'Regan provides a first-person account to accompany each chapter of his photographic journey

Official photographer to music legend David Bowie, Denis O’Regan presents a personal edit from his unrivalled collection of photographs. Accompanying Bowie on two world tours and enjoying a decades-long relationship with the star, no one photographed Bowie more than Denis O’Regan.

As Bowie himself once remarked, ‘Denis, Rock ‘n’ Roll is in your blood’.

From the door of Olympic Studios, where Bowie recorded Diamond Dogs in 1974, to live stadium shows in the 1990s, Denis’s full archive is at last opened and many unseen images revealed for the first time.

David Bowie by Denis O’Regan tells Bowie’s musical story in pictures, with O’Regan’s own words relaying his experience of documenting that incredible journey.

Author of the hugely successful Ricochet: David Bowie 1983 (Particular Books, 2018), O’Regan has toured with the biggest stars from The Rolling Stones and Queen to Pink Floyd and Duran Duran, to name a few. But it is his photographs of David Bowie, taken over two decades at over 200 concerts worldwide, that he is best known for. David Bowie the showman and David behind-the scenes, O’Regan has captured it all in this showcase of one of the world’s most talented performers.

Denis O’Regan documented the punk explosion of the mid 1970s, toured Europe with the Rolling Stones on their only tour of the eighties and covered David Bowie’s entire Serious Moonlight world tour. In the nineties, Denis shot Pink Floyd’s final tour, and into the 21st century was commissioned as the official photographer to the Coachella, Download and Glastonbury festivals.

He has been published and exhibited globally and produces limited edition books and fine art prints, which are available at his London gallery. His Ricochet: David Bowie boxset is featured in the Victoria & Albert’s permanent collection.

Denis’s other books include Ricochet: David Bowie 1983 (Particular Books, 2018) and Duran Duran: Careless Memories (ACC Art Books, 2022).

David Bowie by Denis O'Regan

9781788842846

ACC Art Books

Hardback

325 mm x 285 mm

276 Pages - 110 color, 61 b&w

Publish date 22nd Jul 2025

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📸 Denis O'Regan

#BowieByDenisORegan #DavidByDenis

HEAR AND SEE NEW KILLER STAR FROM READY, SET, GO!

“I discovered a star...”

As outlined in our previous post, READY, SET, GO! (LIVE, RIVERSIDE STUDIOS' 03) will be released on 12th April 2025, for Record Store Day.

Listen to and watch the live version of NEW KILLER STAR, the opening song from the show, here.

#BowieRSD #RSD2025 #BowieReadySetGo #NewKillerStarLive2003

READY, SET, GO! (LIVE, RIVERSIDE STUDIOS ’03) FOR RSD 2025

“I got a better way, Ready, set, go!”

Parlophone Records is proud to announce the release of a David Bowie limited double vinyl LP and CD: READY, SET, GO! (LIVE, RIVERSIDE STUDIOS' 03) which will be released on 12th April 2025, for Record Store Day.

Keep reading for the full press release.

#BowieRSD #RSD2025 #BowieReadySetGo

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DAVID BOWIE - READY, SET, GO! (LIVE, RIVERSIDE STUDIOS ’03)

LIMITED 14-TRACK VINYL DOUBLE ALBUM & CD

RELEASED BY PARLOPHONE EXCLUSIVELY FOR RECORD STORE DAY 12th APRIL 2025

Parlophone Records is proud to announce the release of a very special David Bowie limited double vinyl LP and CD READY, SET, GO! (LIVE, RIVERSIDE STUDIOS' 03) which will be released on 12th April , 2024, for Record Store Day.

On 8th September, 2003, David Bowie made history at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London, with the biggest ever live and interactive music satellite event the world had seen to that point. The special one-off live concert was beamed simultaneously to fans in 86 cinemas in 26 countries, from Hong Kong to Helsinki, and 14 screens in Paris alone were dedicated to the show.

Bowie and his band unveiled the first-ever live performance of his new album REALITY, released a week later. Now, for the first time, the eleven-song main set, the REALITY album in its entirety, plus three previously unreleased tracks from the encore, will be available on double vinyl and single CD exclusively for Record Store Day 2025.

The event marked many firsts in technological terms; it was the biggest ever non-TV satellite broadcast, the first ever interactive cinema event via a Q&A element hosted by Bowie fan and broadcaster Jonathan Ross and the first live satellite event in 5.1 DTS surround sound, which was overseen by longtime collaborator, Tony Visconti.

The precedent-setting event also went live across Asia a day later with a live Q&A between David and fans in Japan, Australia, Singapore, and Southeast Asia. The event was also beamed to North and South America, and Canada the day the album was released, with David doing brand new live Q&A sessions for those broadcasts.

DAVID BOWIE - READY, SET, GO! (LIVE, RIVERSIDE STUDIOS ’03)

2LP

Side 1

New Killer Star

Pablo Picasso

Never Get Old

Side 2

The Loneliest Guy

Looking For Water

She’ll Drive The Big Car

Side 3

Days

Fall Dog Bombs The Moon

Try Some, Buy Some

Reality

Side 4

Bring Me The Disco King

Hallo Spaceboy

Cactus

Afraid

CD

New Killer Star

Pablo Picasso

Never Get Old

The Loneliest Guy

Looking For Water

She’ll Drive The Big Car

Days

Fall Dog Bombs The Moon

Try Some, Buy Some

Reality

Bring Me The Disco King

Hallo Spaceboy

Cactus

Afraid

Produced by David Bowie and Tony Visconti.

Vocal, Guitar: David Bowie

Keyboards: Mike Garson

Bass, Vocals: Gail Ann Dorsey

Guitars: Earl Slick

Guitars, Vocals: Gerry Leonard

Drums: Sterling Campbell

Keyboards, Guitar, Vocals: Catherine Russell

DAVID BOWIE - READY, SET, GO! (LIVE, RIVERSIDE STUDIOS ’03)

LIMITED 14-TRACK VINYL DOUBLE ALBUM & CD RELEASED BY PARLOPHONE EXCLUSIVELY FOR RECORD STORE DAY 12th APRIL, 2025

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