There's no persona attached to Young Americans. Even the visage, the spiky mullet of the Ziggy years has softened to a white '70s nightclub ghost. The eyebrows haven't grown back yet but give them time. What is different is that this album was the one that broke him in America. It and the lead single Fame made him mainstream radio fodder and assured his place permanently in the music firmament in pop music's biggest and most central market. That said, this is the one that nobody calls favourite, if they remember it's in the line up at all. So what's wrong?
First, it just doesn't sound like him. The title track kicks off with a tom tom flourish and a shambling groove with soprano sax garnishes. Bowie sounds like he's singing in a Donovan style tremolo but it might be delay. From the off he's telling us something crucial about the exercise: he's not trying to sound black. He loved soul from his mod days and planned a music genre forward album, not a passport to the Apollo. This means that, like his flirt with metal in Man Who Sold the World, Bowie made a Bowie album that absorbed influences to enhance his songwriting. Fine, but does it work?
Not always. But the kick off Young Americans is an amiable shuffle through a series of scenes underneath the American Dream, stories of disappointment and struggle as the big women's chorus brightly chimes in with all night and alright and breezy supports of the line Young American. A light and cokey energy drives the track and it's almost over before you realise there hasn't been a note of guitar before you get a little on the home stretch. It almost needed the cover sticker, "contains no rock music".
Win is a kind of ballad with its floaty phased guitar, distant women backing vocals and bedroom vocal. The chorus flashes to life with wailing guitars and crashing cymbals. Underneath this is a lyric telling of a relationship based on power as much as love. When his almost whispered vocal ends the chorus with, "all you've got to do is win," it sounds equally that it is a condition for lifelong success and a more intimate interpersonal victory. It could easily be an expansion of the opening track.
If you hear Fascination and wonder at Bowie's sudden aptitude for funk, know that it is Luther Vandross's music that Bowie wrote words to (and credited Vandross properly). Treated bass and wah wah guitah start the groove before Bowie enters in falsetto until the chorus comes in with a call and response between him and the backing singers. It's a testament of lust examined as physical sensations adding up to the arresting state of the title. After two verses and choruses the song stretches out in a jam to the fade.
Right enters with a languid funk groove before a sax starts in with some tasteful ninth harmonies. After some taut vocals the interplay with the backing singers allows all the voices to form more of a texture than bearers of statements. Nevertheless, the repetition of never turning back and doing it the right way could be sexual or relevant to some of the substance abuse Bowie was going through at the time. But the groove is all with this one, despite the seriousness of the fragmented voices, and the groove rules us until the fade at the end of side one.
The most Bowie sounding of all the tracks, Somebody Up There Likes Me, might remind you of When You Rock and Roll With Me. A forward thrusting full band arrangement strides to the verses which seem to be about a public figure who might be a Kennedy or a Christ. Very rich backing vocals include blissful intervals and some perky falsetto oohs flown in from Sympathy for the Devil. Through all the joy of the music (which could easily be ironically so) there is a warning of the big pollie smile hiding rapacious corruption.
Across the Universe is the Beatle song covered with none of the panache that Bowie had applied (not always successfully) to the songs that inspired his youth on the Pin Ups album. This outing is a grimacing travesty. It sounds like Bowie came in one morning and was played this cover that he'd forgotten recording and he had a take recording it with as many vocal tricks as he could muster. No one has ever covered this song well. Bowie's attempt is not a rule breaker.
Can You Hear Me? Starts with the confident groove of a Son of a Preacher Man but cruises instead as a breezy love song. The brass and strings is the closest the album gets to the classic Philly soul sound he was trying for. The big brassy choruses and outro with its perfect vocal harmonies are a joy.
Fame is a collaboration with John Lennon and one of the few hard funk songs I actually like. Also, it got him on to Soul Train. Fame begins with a flourish of guitar textures like a billowing cloud before it ticks into a hard funk workout. Bowie's vocal is anguished and nervous. As he sings fame in a downward portamento, Lennon rasps it with an upward motion. The arrangement was concocted from several sources including a cover of Footstompin' that Carlos Alomar added to with the essential riff as well as the style rather than the substance of other music. James Brown later lifted this arrangement whole for his song Hot (there's a tribute!). This scarring song about dodgy management was Bowie's first American number one, an edgy funk workout produced after all the big singalong songs he'd already done. A chiming piano chord repeatedly reminds us of a constantly ringing phone. A middle eight with both Lennon and Bowie in full scream mode impresses and Bowie's old friend the varispeed comes in for a descent on the word fame form chipmunk high to baritone low. The thump and growl moves us into the fade. Game over.
After acquainting myself with it in the past few weeks for this blog more than I have ever listened to the whole album, I can say that I like it much more than I used to. The only skip track is the Beatles cover and the last song is one of Bowie's killers. Is it good? Is it bad? It's effective. Bowie extracted himself from the grammar and routine of rock music and lived up to a self-imposed challenge. What he gave up is songs that stadium crowds and shower balladeers could sing. There are catchy hooks throughout the two sides but nothing to jog the memory into putting this on for that special number. Fame is a go to but I defy any casual home singer to tackle Young Americans.
That said, this record got him through. After it was over, the tour that it parasitised from Diamond Dogs was done and he had a couple of real American hits on his hands, this one was quietly allowed to rest in the shade of Dogs, before it, and the mighty Station to Station, that came after. There are funk workouts on the follow up (including the sublime Golden Years and the far less interesting Stay) but that was it for outright honking grooves. After that it was the Berlin albums to the end of the decade and then it was stadium pop Bowie. But, back o'er the years, in 1975, this was the latest (and who knows, last) album by the weirdo star man who really did fall to earth with such identifiably street level sounds. His look on the cover is like the pod people in Bodysnatchers stopped mid transition where the features are only just recognisable and give you the creeps to see. There are real concerns in these songs and some inventive music that used the flavours of untried traditions to forge something rich and strange. It's just such a pity it's so hard to remember.
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