David Bowie
Young Americans
(RCA, 1975)

Middling late-career box sets aside, please folks: let’s not take David Bowie for granted. We get so caught up in the hooks of the famous singles from “Space Oddity” and “Ziggy Stardust” through “Golden Years” and “‘Heroes’” that it’s easy to forget the artistic depth this man achieved with his thick catalog of ‘70s albums. Let this be a reminder: 10 original studio albums in 10 years, several of them groundbreaking. Most collectors have copies of Ziggy Stardust (1972) and Low (1977) in their libraries, but how often do they listen to them all the way through, let alone the other stuff like Station to Station (1976) and Young Americans (1975)? While the watershed records mark Bowie’s transformations from spaced-out hippie (The Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory) to rock ’n’ roll alien (Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane) to just plain alienated (the Berlin trilogy: Low, “Heroes”, Lodger), there are fascinating transitional moments tucked into his second-tier ‘70s records and it’s an album like Young Americans that reminds us of Bowie’s creative wingspan.

I won’t even attempt to reconsider Young Americans as one of Bowie’s best works: it just isn’t and never will be. I will posit it, however, as an essential collection of songs, something to eagerly pore over on headphones, to grasp how many radical ideas this man once possessed. Whereas his British rock predecessors in the ‘60s—Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin—have had their wrists routinely slapped for criminal appropriations of black music, there’s nothing suspect about the alien’s invasion of the ‘70s soul sound. This album doesn’t disguise its sources: it fucking devours them. The Thin I-Wanna-Be-Black Duke grazes on a historical buffet of soul singles—a little Motown here, a little Philly there—running it through his quirky psychedelic filters.

There’s no talk of alien rock stars or space travelers falling to Earth but the concept of space—one of Bowie’s favorite themes—reveals itself on this album’s incredibly bloated arrangements. These eight songs are unwieldy: many push right up to or past the five-minute mark. Countless layers of vocals crawl over each other fighting for room in the mix, and let’s face it, no one sings with himself like Bowie does. Behind a legion of crooning Bowies is an array of backing vocals from R&B singers, including none other than Luther Vandross (who co-wrote “Fascination”). Then add in the synths, guitars, wide range of percussion, and an unfettered sax fetish. It’s like the Wall-of-Sound in orbit or Motown-on-Mars; places where everything is almost always over-the-top.

Bowie has so much fun kicking around the studio with his killer backing band—including his first mate, guitarist extraordinaire Carlos Alomar—you really can’t hate on him for not cutting another classic album. I mean, a cover of the Beatles’ “Across the Universe” seems like a bad idea when dipping into one’s white soul phase, but with John Lennon—who also appears on the #1 hit “Fame”—joining him on vocals and guitar, Bowie turns this rock classic into a Joe Cocker meets Phil Spector extravaganza. Elsewhere, an interest in those other groove fanatics, Stax Records (home of Isaac Hayes), creeps up on tracks like “Fascination” and “Somebody up There Likes Me.” Just to hear Bowie sing the line “’Sho ‘nuff!” repeatedly on “Fascination” makes this whole psychedelic soul experiment worthwhile. And there’s no wink-wink “Hey, look at me being black” smirk on his face. Bowie’s impassioned, utterly non-ironic performance imbues the sense that he’s doing this in earnest: he’s not just feeling the groove, his eyebrows are sweat-drenched from fucking the hell out of it with his freaked-out alien, mothership rock ‘n’ roll cock. As one would expect, the heart of this record forever remains intact: the timeless single, “Young Americans”, a rollicking journey through American ‘50s pastiche remixed for a post-Nixon-era ‘70s.

It’s easy to peg this album as a downfall since it doesn’t re-write music history as deftly as a record like Low, but it’s not like Bowie took on white soul and stuck with it, churning out endless sequels to Young Americans. He dipped into the genre for a year, tried on some new clothes, took some notes, and moved on. His sidestep stretched the perceived limits of his stylistic trappings without being a clear “fuck you” to the audience (um, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music anyone?) Most impressively, 30 years down the line, this really feels like an album, a complete and focused trip, reminding us that, even in between the classics, Bowie was capable of making cohesive statements.

On a Saturday afternoon, as you peruse through your record collection, it won’t hurt to give Young Americans’ deep cuts a spin. Hopefully, re-discovering this album will also lead to a re-consideration of other less talked about LPs, like the clinically genius Station to Station and the jam-heavy The Man Who Sold the World. Not to suggest that this guy consistently hit the mark, but at least he was always interesting. Even those people who find Station to Station or Young Americans uneven can’t help but drop their jaws at the title tracks on those respective records. Yet for all of my 1970s Bowie stumping, the lackluster Diamond Dogs (1974)—assuming you’ve got “Rebel Rebel” on a Best Of comp—still might best be left alone to collect its faux-Orwellian dust.

Watch: “Young Americans” [at youtube.com]

» Previously: Peter Lacey’s Permanent Wave