Bowie released his soul album, Young Americans, in 1975.
Bowie met John Lennon in '75, before he released Young Americans. They became good friend and even wrote a song together - Fame (with Carlos Alomar), the only #1 Bowie hit single in the U.S. Bowie also recorded a cover version for the Beatles song Across The Universe. Both of these songs were released on Young Americans. He also sang Imagine on stage three years to the day of Lennon's death, December 8th, 1983 (in Hong Kong). There's a rare Bowie/Lennon single that supposedly includes Let's Twist Again performed by them, believed to be a fake.
Bowie claims that if you play the song Young Americans backwards, it will sound like a Tibetan, Buddhist song.
In 1975 he met Bruce Springsteen when he recorded his own version to Springsteen's song It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City. Bowie: 'It never moved further then the demo. Springsteen came down, to hear what we were doing with his stuff. He was very shy. I remember sitting in the corridor with him, talking about his life style, which was very Dylanesque, you know, moving from town to town with a guitar on his back, all that kind of thing. Anyway, he didn't like what we were doing, I remember that. At least, he didn't express much enthusiasm. I guess he must have thought it was all kind of odd. I was in another universe at the time. I've got this extraordinarily strange photograph of us all. I look like I'm made out of wax'.
Bowie recorded the song later that year during the Station To Station sessions with Rolling Stone Ron Wood (guitar), Aynsley Dunbar (drums), and Mike Garson (piano).
In November, he appeared on the Cher Show and sang his song Can You Hear Me, and the medly Young Americans/Ain't No Sunshine (by Withers)/ Blue Moon (by Rodgers and Hart)/Da Doo Ron Ron (by Specter, Greenwich, and Barry)/Day Tripper (by Lennon and McCartny)/Maybe Baby (by Holly and Petty)/Only You (by Ram and Band)/Song Sung Blue (by Diamond)/Temptation (by Freed and Broan)/Wedding Bell Blues (by Byro)/Youngblood (by Leiber and Stoller) with her as duets (available on the bootleg The Thin White Duke).
In 1975, he supported Nietzsche's philosophy.
In Victoria's railroad station he tried to entertain his fans by saluting in Nazi fashion. He later explained: 'I was just waving bye-bye'.
Reference in writings by Joseph Goebbels led him to make some remarks about Hitler. In a Playboy interview from 1975 he said: 'Hitler was the first rock star. He staged a whole country'. There's also another quote 'When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star. It certainly wasn't his politics. He was a media pop star ... Hitler was a terrible military strategist. But his overall objective was very good. He was a tremendous morale booster'.
Jews in Britain were furious and called to boycott Bowie. He also got an enormous attack from the British press.
In March 1976 he said: "The right wing politics thing was just bullshit, something I said off the cuff. Some paper wanted me to say something and I didn't have much to say so I made things up. They took it all in."
Bowie also once said he was a logical choice for a dictator of England. That comment, however, was humourous.
To his shows around the world he used to take a library that he built all by himself. He took that library together with his 1000 book collection to the set of Nicolas Roeg's film The Man Who Fell To Earth, in which he had a big part portraying an alien.
The Man Who Fell To Earth includes full frontal nudity on Bowie's part. (Bowie later on also appeared nude in his video clip of China Girl. Most TV stations broadcast a censored version of this video. But I've seen the uncensored version myself on MTV/Europe. I don't know about other MTVs ).
The movie The Man Who Fell To Earth is based on the novel by Walter Tevis (by the same name), published 1963, and still in print! (the movie edition, however, isn't). Walter Tevis is best knows as the writer of the Scorseze movie, The Colour Of Money.
In 1976 Bowie adopted a new persona: The White Duke. With this new persona, he released Station To Station.
Rumours say Bowie originally wrote Golden Years for Elvis Presley, who didn't want the song. Golden Years was the only hit single from Station To Station, and it reached #10 on the charts.
Station To Station additionally included a cover of Wild Is The Wind, a ballad by Johnny Mathis. Bowie: 'I'm a sucker for a very romantic song'.
Bowie: 'I was really trying to push my musicians into experimental music. I really didn't succeeded that much, except that I got some quite extraordinary things out of Earl Slick. I think it captured his imagination to make noises on guitar, and textures, rather than playing the right notes. Station To Station was really the rock-format version of what was to come Low and Heroes. I was at the time well into German electronic music - Con, and all that. And Kraftwerk had made a big impression on me. I thought they were quite wonderful'.
The Station To Station tour begun on February '76.
Bowie: 'I wanted to go back to a kind of Expressionist German-film look. A feeling of a Berlinesque performer-black waistcoat, black trousers, white shirt, and the lighting of, say, Fritz Lang, or Pabst. A black-and-white-movies look, but with an intensity that was sort of aggressive. I think for me, personally, theatrically, that was the most successful tour I've ever done'.
After the tour, he moved to Switzerland. Around this time, he was using drugs quite heavily.
In Paris, he co-wrote with Iggy Pop his (Iggy's) album The Idiot.
Bowie: 'Poor Jim [Jimmy Osterberg is Pop's real name], in a way, became a guinea pig for what I wanted to do with sound. I didn't have the material at the time, and I didn't feel like writing it all. I felt much more like laying back and getting behind someone else's work, so that album was opportune, creatively'. Bowie also co-wrote with Iggy some of the songs in Lust For Life. Both of these albums were released in 1977. See section 3.8 for details. He used a few of the songs on these albums later on in his '80s albums. The most famous covers are for Tonight and China Girl.
Two of the band members on Lust For Life (the Sales brothers, Hunt and Tony) formed Tin Machine (with Bowie and Reeves Gabrels) many years later.
In October '76 Bowie and Iggy moved to Berlin. Bowie: 'I thought I'd take the stage set, throw it away, and go and live in the real thing'.
In Berlin, Bowie met Brian Eno (Brian Eno was Roxy Music's keyboard player prior to that), today's most important (according to music critics) and rich (fact) producer in the world. In the years 1977-79 Bowie collaborated with him in a trilogy of albums: Low, "Heroes", Lodger, knows as the synthesizer trilogy, or the Eno trilogy. (note: lately, they renewed this collaboration)
Bowie: 'One day in Berlin, Eno came running in and said "I've heard the sound of the future" and I said "Come on, we're supposed to be doing it right now". He said "No listen to this", and he puts on I Feel Love by Donna Summer. Eno had gone bonkers over it, absolutely bonkers. He said "This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years" which was more or less right'.
Yet another quote: 'I guess I should mention that on Low, "Heroes", and Lodger, Brian and I utilized his "Oblique Strategies" cards quit a bit. I mean, if we got to an impasse, we'd just turn over one of his cards, and whatever the instruction said on it, we'd obey-which led to some hilarious musical insights. We would write out arbitrary chords and then put them up on a board, and then Eno would point to a different chords on the wall and the band would have to follow them. We just did everything we could to break the rules of what playing rock music was supposed to be about'.
Low, released January '77, included poppy songs and ambient tracks. The album Low was originally supposed to be called New Music Night And Day. The cover of Low is a visual pun. The picture is of Bowie in profile, so the cover reads low profile. When Low came out an interviewer asked Bowie the significance of the title. He sorta gotta bit cross, as if it was obvious, his play on words: i.e. he was keeping a low profile, hence the picture.
Nick Lowe, a singer, thought that the title Low was his name with the 'e' dropped and promptly produced an EP called Bowi. (get it? Bowie with the 'e' dropped)
Bowie played the piano on the Iggy Pop 1977 tour.
He returned to Berlin to record "Heroes". On "Heroes", Robert Fripp, the leader of King Crimson, appeared as a guest playing a clarion guitar. The album included tributes to American performance artist Chris Burden (Joe The Lion) and Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider (V2-Schneider).
In September Bowie returned to Britain to appear on the Marc Bolan show, (and play the song "Heroes"). For the Marc Bolan show, Bowie and Bolan rehearsed two songs they wrote together: Sleeping Next To You and Madman. Eventually, only a small part of the former was transmitted, but these songs can be found on several bootlegs, including Alarm, Sleeping Next To You, and Ziggy 2.
In 1977 Bowie sang Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy (written by Gorssman, Fraser, Kohan-Simeone, Onorati, Davis, and Shawnee) as a duet with Bing Crosby. It was released as a single in 1982, and in many Christmas compilations. Between the recording and broadcast of both shows (with Marc Bolan and Bing Crosby), they both died!
In 1978 he toured again (the name of the tour was Heroes), with Roger Powell of Utopia on synthesizers, and Adrian Belew. He released Stage, a life performance from the tour.
The same year, Bowie and Lou Reed had a fight in a restaurant and Reed hit Bowie. They are not friends since then. Bowie's next album, Lodger was recorded in various cities: New York, London, Zurich, and Berlin. On one track Boys Keep Swinging, guitarist Carlos Alomar played drums and Tony Visconti played bass.
In 1979 Angie Bowie got depressed, and tried to commit suicide. David saved her. They broke up at the end of the year. Angie sued Bowie for 30,000 pounds when they broke up, then for another million.
Bowie had a big drug crisis in the late seventies. He claims he was saved only because of his son Zowie, who used to look at him strangely as he (Bowie) was crawling on the floor. He DIDN'T USE DRUGS AS A CURE TO A MENTAL ILLNESS HE HAD, as opposed to what some people think (and post).
Bowie: 'I suppose I've been knocking on heaven's door for about eleven years now, with one sort of high or another. The only kinds of drugs I use, though, are ones that keep me working for longer periods of time. I haven't gotten involved in anything heavy since '68. I had a silly flirtation with smack then, but it was only for the mystery and enigma of trying it'. (1979)
Bowie wrote and recorded two tracks with John Cale. Piano La and Velvet Church. They weren't released on any official album. (only on the bootleg single Two Gentlemen In New York).
In December, Bowie appeared in Saturday Night Live and played The Man Who Sold The World, TVC15, and Boys Keep Swinging. These versions can be found on the bootlegs Naked And Wired and 1980 Floor Show.
The alternative (1979) version of Space Oddity was presented on The Kenny Everett show, January 31st 1979. It starts off with Bowie sitting on a stool with a guitar. In the silence when the takeoff happens, he puts down his guitar, strolls across to a padded cell, sits down and sings the rest.
He had the lead role in the Broadway show The Elephant Man.
Bowie commented about mental breakdowns he had had in LA. That was around 1980 (the comment, not the breakdowns).
Bowie: 'What can I say? I'm bored and I'm retiring for good' (circa 1981 interview). I haven't heard a good explanation for this one.
Bowie and Queen recorded a song called Under Pressure together. The bass line from this song later became a hit in America when Vanilla Ice used it in his song Ice Ice Baby. Bowie also participated on a Queen outtake Cool Cat that can be found on Queen's The Ultimate Collection- Rarities, Oddities And Cover Versions.
In 1981 he changed his style and image. He stopped using drugs and any homosexual relations (recently, he said that he had returned to using drugs for a while after that, and that he drank fairly heavily during the 80s). He also drew back from his declarations about socialism. All music critics agree that it was also a change from sophistication and quality to commercial poppy music. In the last years he returned to quality. Bowie, lately admitted himself, that he wasn't creative for most of the eighties.
He broke with RCA in 1982 and signed with EMI. Let's Dance, released in 1983 is his best seller (produced by Nile Rodgers). Bowie had a fight with Tony Visconti, the producer of his seventies albums. Visconti said that he originally was supposed to produce Let's Dance, but that without notifying him Bowie suddenly decided that he preferred Nile Rodgers. He also said he had lost a big sum of money because of that. Bowie has said in an interview it was because Tony made remarks about his family to the press. According to Tony's wife (who sometimes posts to the newsgroup): They invited Bowie to their wedding but he declined. Tony is unclear as to why David has not spoken with him and has tried to reach him a number of times. It was not a bitter break, just a break without a word from David.
The working title of the album Let's Dance was Vampires Of Human Flesh.
A very succesful world tour (Serious Moonlight) followed the release of Let's Dance. Bowie was in a hotel in Osaka, Japan, when an earthquake started. He hysterically ran down 22 floors. This happened during the Serious Moonlight tour. David joked that it was EMI's promotion for Shake It.
Bowie has a world record for being the singer who got the biggest sum of money for only one performance - He earned one and half million dollars in 1983 for the concert he did at the Regional Park in California, in a festival.
Bowie: [not an exact quote]: 'I was a cult artist, never really in the mainstream ... having said that, it was a very [big] cult ... these songs show I can make good pop songs'. (in an interview, around the Let's Dance release)
In '84 he released Tonight. The album includes a duet with Tina Turner (Tonight). The first version of Tonight (on Iggy's album) included the lines: 'I saw my baby, she was turning blue
I knew that soon, her young life was through
And so I got down on my knees, down by her bed
And these are the words, to her I said'
When Bowie sang the song with Tina Turner, he removed these lines. One of the advertisement planes for the album Tonight crashed on a house.
In 1985, Bowie participated in the Live Aid concert. He sang on the finale Do They Know It's Christmas. He also appeared on the single B-side, in a song called Feed The World. Both songs were written by Geldoff and Ure. For the event, he also recorded a cover version of Dancing In The Streets (written by Ivy Jo Hunter, William Stevenson and Marvin Gaye) with Mick Jagger.
Bowie dated the ballet dancer Melissa Harley a couple of years. The official break-up reason: Melissa got hurt from stories Angie told about her married life with Bowie.
In 1987 he released Never Let Me Down. An album that critics simply HATED.
He originally wrote Girls, that appeared on the album, for Tina Turner (in 1986).
A world tour, Glass Spider, followed. Because Pepsi sponsored the Glass Spider Tour, Bowie did a commercial for them. The music of the song Modern Love was used (with altered lyrics). In the TV commercial, a man (Bowie) is falling asleep in front of his computer, and the song is playing, then a woman (Tina Turner) appears and gives him a Pepsi.