Bruna. 28. Bisexual. Brazil. I've got a film degree.
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Track 107: All the Young Dudes (Mott the Hoople guide vocal version)
Here is a wonderful curiosity: Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes with Bowie on vocals rather than singer Ian Hunter. In January of ’72 Bowie had sent the Hoople a demo of a new song called Suffragette City (now lost, I believe). The success of the Ziggy Stardust era was still but a dream, so Bowie was doing what he’d been doing for years, writing songs for other bands (the classic example being Oh! You Pretty Things for Peter Noone – see trackbytrack 76). They didn’t like the song and said they were splitting up anyway. So Bowie did two things: recorded Suffragette City for the Ziggy Stardust album (can you imagine…?); and set about writing the Hoople a song they couldn’t refuse, that would make them think again about breaking up, and that would give them a hit! Enter All the Young Dudes! Hoople’s bassist Pete Watts recalled: ‘Bowie played me this song… on his acoustic guitar. He hadn’t got all the words but the song just blew me away. Especially when he hit the chorus.’ Drummer Dale Griffin added: ‘I’m thinking: he wants to give us that? He must be crazy!’. It was recorded on 14 May with Bowie producing, and even laying down some guide vocals for Hunter. And that’s what you have here. The completed version was released 28 July hitting #3 in September, the song going on to be a defining glam-rock hit of the 1970s. Bowie himself – as we will see – would revisit the song a number of times in the future…
‘All the Young Dudes
(Mott the Hoople guide vocal version)’: Recorded 14 May 1972. Unreleased. Written by David Bowie. Available on All The Young Dudes: The Anthology(1998).
In September 1971, Bowie flew over to New York to sign a new contract with RCA (negotiated during the successful Bowpromo trip by manager Tony Defries – see trackbytrack 83). While there, it was arranged for Bowie to meet pop artist and cultural icon Andy Warhol. Hunky Dory was in the can, and Bowie brought along a test pressing in order to play the track Andy Warhol to its inspiration. ‘He absolutely hated it’ remembered Bowie. Warhol apparently left the room. ‘He was cringing with embarrassment. I think he thought I really put him down in the song, and it really wasn’t meant to be that – it was a kind of ironic hommage to him. He took it badly, but he liked my shoes’. After the shoe-based conversation had run its course, Warhol and his team shot some film of Bowie miming an evisceration; and further footage exists of both entourages milling about (see more stuff below). Warhol and Bowie appear almost to avoid each other, sticking to their opposite ends of the room, barely appearing in the same frame together, except for a fleeting moment when both - ignoring each other - turn away from the camera’s blurry gaze. Bowie – of course – would go on to play Warhol in the film Basquiat (1996); but their relationship begins with the Hunky Dory track, which famously kicks off with faked studio chatter… How do you pronounce Warhol? (How do you pronounce Bowie?) Then the dueling acoustic guitars kick in – almost a pre-echo of the encounter between the two artists. The track has a stunning riff. It is heavy, and almost impossible to believe it is just two acoustic guitars. Written for Dana Gillespie (see trackbytrack 81), the song premiered in June ‘71 with Gillespie on vocals for a live BBC session (trackbytrack 80); and was then recorded by Bowie at another radio session in September – although it was never broadcast (trackbytrack 82). In the wake of the album release, it would become the B side of the Changes single in early ‘72; and then be included in one of the five Ziggy era radio sessions of that year.
‘Andy Warhol’: Track 8 of the Hunky Dory album. Released 17 December
1971. Written
by David Bowie. Available on Hunky Dory (1971).
Track 105: I Feel Free (Live at Kingston Polytechnic)
I Feel Free is a song by late ‘60s psychedelic-blues legends, Cream. Bowie and the Spiders covered the tune during the early gigs of the first UK leg of the Ziggy Stardust tour (29 January – 18 July ’72). A version exists on the earliest recording of we have of the show, a tape of the Kingston Polytechnic gig from 6 May (more of which a bit later) and this track eventually appeared on RarestOneBowie. The Spiders version is killer – and Ronson, Woodmansey and Bolder take centre stage for a wild and riotous jam. Ronson rips it to shreds. The solo screams and soars, growls and roars over the manic and freeform trajectory laid down by the rhythm section. This interlude will – in later shows – be incorporated into The Width of a Circle, which will replace I Feel Free. This cover, however, will return some twenty-one years later on the Black Tie White Noise album, again featuring Ronson, playing with Bowie for the first time since 1973…
‘I Feel Free’: Track 12 of
Live at Kingston Polytechnic. Recorded 6 May 1972. Written by Pete Brown and Jack Bruce. Available on RarestOneBowie.
She’s Got Medals - track twelve of David Bowie - is a real blast. An absolute monster of a
tune: drums and bass bounce this track along at some pace; with guitar, piano
and woodwind weaving a real catchy melody and hook. Then there is the lyric. Not
only is this Bowie’s first song with a pansexual outlook; but at one and the
same time it’s his first exploration of transformation and change. The tone is one of wry affirmation and proud validation, telling of a breaking of gender codes, lesbian encounters, and
fluid identities (Mary becomes Tommy – becomes a ghost! – becomes Eileen).
The hand claps during the final bars just make it somehow perfect. A really
important track in the Bowie discography.
‘She’s Got Medals’: Track 12 of the David Bowie album. Written by David Bowie. Released 1 June 1967. Available on David Bowie [(1967): Deluxe Edition].
Track 103: Five Years (Old Grey Whistle Test version)
Five Years on the Old Grey Whistle Test is one of the most iconic moments in the Bowie corpus. Kicking off with that solo drum beat, the camera captures Woody Woodmansey from various angles before the lights come up, and there is Bowie. Hair shorn to a rough cut, in a black and grey jumpsuit with his acoustic guitar. A slow strum and the line ‘Pushing through the market square…’, behind him revealed Mick Ronson at a grand piano and Trevor Bolder on bass. Stunning. The show was named – so the legend goes – after an apocryphal Tin Pan Alley story: a song would be a hit if after hearing it only once the aged doorman in a grey suit was heard whistling it. OGWT was a show known for serious music, filmed live without an audience and with complex camerawork: zooms, fades, tracking shots. This TV performance by Bowie is the first of the Ziggy era, and the earliest footage existing of Bowie in a studio except for Space Oddity at 4-3-2-1 Musik Fur Junge Leute (1969) and the Ivor Novello Awards (1970) (see trackbytrack 47). Five Years was also accompanied by two songs from Hunky Dory: Queen Bitch and Oh! You Pretty Things (the latter taped twice and neither originally broadcast) (see more stuff below). The show went out on 8 February 1972, a couple of days before the Ziggy Stardust tour kicked off…
‘Five Years‘: 1 of 2 tracks broadcast (and 3 tracks recorded) for the
Old Grey Whistle Test. Recorded and broadcast 08-02-72. Written by David Bowie. Available on The Best of Bowie DVD.
