This ain’t Rock ‘n’ Roll…
Not too many months after the beautiful and exciting culture shock that was Young Americans, The Daily Mirror in the UK reported that Bowie had already forsaken Soul Music and that his next album was going to be Rock ‘n’ Roll.
I have to be honest and say that the statement terrified me. You have to remember that genre-hopping was something that Bowie was already associated with and to my fourteen-year-old brain this news signalled an altogether more unsettling switch.
I knew Bowie had recently been working with John Lennon who had released his own album entitled Rock ‘n’ Roll in January 1975 and I thought the influence must have rubbed off. I wasn’t happy.
To my ears, Bowie’s Soul vision had already taken a few plays to get used to after the Rock Music of Diamond Dogs, despite hints on that album that a change of direction was on the horizon…not to mention the clues on David Live. Bizarrely, Knock On Wood didn’t even seem incongruous to me.
But Rock ‘n’ Roll?! It was bad enough that it was the awful music that occasionally ruined otherwise good discos…Danny and The bleedin’ Juniors, Old Bill Haley and his decrepit Comets! At The Hop and Rock Around The Clock?! I think not.
Surely the forward-looking Bowie wasn’t going to follow in the footsteps of all the other dull revivalists poisoning the charts: Mud, Showaddywaddy and their ilk. It just didn’t make sense.
At least Bowie’s own look back at the records that informed his musical past via Pin-Ups a couple of years earlier didn’t go back too far and it sounded like a thoroughly modern record too.
My distress was short-lived. By the time Golden Years was released in November 1975 my relief was palpable and once I got Station To Station playing on my music centre, thirty five years ago today, I was a very happy teenager indeed. I hadn’t realised that Rock ‘n’ Roll could mean Rock Music too.
Thankfully, my musical palate quickly matured enough to be excited by a wider range of tastes that included most genres, though I’m still not ready for Mud or Showaddywaddy just yet.
Wouldn’t it be great if David Bowie made a Rock ‘n’ Roll album.
Anyway, sorry for the long diversion…come back on Monday (Ooops…meant Tuesday) for your chance to win a Deluxe Station To Station box that includes a signed booklet, with lots of runner-up opportunities including more signed booklets, T-shirts and a few of the Special Edition too.
If you need to re-familiarise yourself with either of the editions’ content, don’t forget the