[An edited version of this story was initially published by Music Week.]
By
Emmanuel Legrand
David Bowie may have sung "I'm afraid of Americans" in 1997's Earthling, the United States became his country of choice. He spent the last two decades of his life in the US, until his death on January 10, 2016, surrounded by his family in New York.
By the time I got to New York
I was living like a king
David Bowie - Lazarus
David Bowie may have sung "I'm afraid of Americans" in 1997's Earthling, the United States became his country of choice. He spent the last two decades of his life in the US, until his death on January 10, 2016, surrounded by his family in New York.
Like
many British youngsters in the late 1950s, Bowie was fascinated and
influenced by American rock'n roll pioneers Elvis Presley, Chuck
Berry and Little Richard. But unlike many teenagers of his time, he
also had a fixation for the likes of John Coltrane, who inspired him
to play the saxophone, Miles Davis or Eric Dolphy.
Over
the years, the US became a major market for his music. Overall, Bowie
had 25 entries on the Billboard Hot 100, 39 albums on the Billboard
200 chart, including seven in the Top 10. According to Nielsen Music,
through week ending 1/7/2016, David Bowie has sold a total of 7.4
million albums in the US since 1991 (when Nielsen SoundScan began
tracking music sales). His total US digital tracks sales reached
6.7million, plus an additional 2 million digital tracks of Under
Pressure, the single he recorded with Queen. US on-demand streams
through December 31, 2015 reached 207.8 million.
In
1996, Bowie was inducted in the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame and ten
years later, in 2006, Bowie
was bestowed with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, in recognition of
his contributions to music. Neil
Portnow, President/CEO of Grammy's organiser The Recording Academy,
said that David
Bowie "was truly a Renaissance man and visionary artist with
extraordinary talent as a singer, songwriter, performer, actor and
producer, and was a musical hero to millions."
Bowie's
American adventure only started in the early 1970s, when he signed to
RCA, then owned by General Electric. The deal was engineered by his
manager Tony DeFries, who was keen to break his protégé in the US,
and knew that a US label would be key to achieving this goal. Before
he embarked in his groundbreaking so-called "Berlin trilogy"
would have spent most of the 1970s focusing on the American market.
“In
1974, I became bewitched by the USA. I have always been drawn to
American literature and American music, but never made the jump. You
can only fall in love with the US when you come from England,” said
Bowie in an interview published in 1993 by French magazine Les
Inrockuptibles.
After
he disbanded the Spiders from Mars, Bowie set sights on the US
market. He moved to New York in 1974, the year RCA released his last
glam album, Diamond Dogs. He started touring the US in 1974 with a
new band -- which included Michael Kamen on keyboards, Earl Slick on
guitar and David Sanborn on sax -- for the Diamond Dogs Tour, which
would morph halfway through into the Soul Tour.
A
set of gigs from the tour would be recorded at Philadelphia Tower
Theatre on July 14-15, 1974 and subsequently released as David Live,
a album that captures Bowie's growing interest in R&B,
exemplified by the track Knock on Wood, released as a single. The
tour was captured in a documentary, Cracked Actor, which featured a
less than healthy Bowie, more 'Think White Duke' than 'Ziggy'.
Crucial
to his conquest of the US market was the album Young Americans, his
first true post-Ziggy album, recorded in America with US musicians
such as Carlos Alomar, and with a little help from friends such as
John Lennon, who co-wrote Fame. Young Americans included sessions in
January 2015 at Electric Lady (where Bowie cut a cover of the
Beatles' Across the Universe) and Record Plant studios in New York,
but some of it was recorded in Philadelphia at the Sigma Sounds
Studio.
The
stopover in Philadelphia reflected Bowie's new fascination for the
R&B sound that was created there by Huff & Gamble. It would
inspired songs such as Fame, which was going to become Bowie's first
major hit in the US, breaking through R&B radio stations, and
opening the doors to a performance on the much coveted TV show Soul
Train.
Following
the release of Young Americans, Bowie relocated to Los Angeles in May
1975 and started working on Nicholas Roeg's movie The Man Who Fell To
Earth. Around the same time, Bowie starting legal proceedings to move
out of the contractual relationship with Mainman, De Fries's
management company, which controlled Bowie's management, publishing
and recordings, a move that was successful but reportedly cost Bowie
a large share of his earnings.
While
in LA, he began recording at the Cherokee Studios what would become
Station To Station, which he co-produced with Harry Maslin. The
end-result -- with tracks such as TVC15 and Stay -- leaned as much on
R&B as it did on krautrock, as if Bowie was already setting the
stage for his next musical move. Following the release of Station To
Station, Bowie embarked on yet another US tour, but also visited
Europe.
Bowie
left the US in 1976 and moved to Switzerland and then to Berlin.
Subsequent recordings -- Low, mostly recorded in France at the
Chateau d'Hérouville, Heroes and Lodger -- re-set his creative aura.
It was only after Scary Monsters in 1980, and its hit Ashes to Ashes,
that Bowie re-acquainted with the US, this time as a stage performer
for the Broadway production of the play The
Elephant Man.
His
contractual obligations towards RCA being fulfilled, Bowie eventually
signed with EMI in 1983. As part of the legal process against Mainman
was Bowie's desire to reclaim the rights to all his recordings, which
he eventually did -- at a cost. He then managed to ship around his
catalogue to EMI, but also to Ryko, which did the first substantial
re-release of all his recordings on CD (the Sound + Vision series).
He also used his catalogue as a collateral to issue bonds, raising
$50m in the process, which he used to fully buy back from DeFries his
masters.
In
the early 1980s, after picking Chic's creative force Nile Rodgers as
producer, he started recording Let's Dance, an album that would
become his biggest success in the USA (although not reaching No.1 in
the Billboard Albums chart) and in the world, selling over seven
million units, and leading to a massive stadium tour which
established him as one of the main concert draws in the country. His
recording and performing career in the 1980s was dominated by his
stint with Tim Machine, whose absence of commercial success led to a
split with EMI.
It
was only in 1992 that David Bowie finally settled in New York,
following his marriage with model Imam Abdulmajid. From New York, he
would continue to record and tour throughout the 1990s. He would also
get involved in local activities like joining the board of the
Archives of Contemporary Music in the late 1990s. Speaking from San
Francisco, Bob George, the Director of ARC, recalls, "In the
late 90s David joined our Board of Advisors in support of an idea. We
had no real prestige or power. Initially brought to us by Nile
Rodgers who was already a big supporter, Davis saw the value in
preserving the work of all musicians, regardless of their success in
the business. When we needed help he was there, without an ounce of
stardom, but plenty of stardust..."
At
the turn of the Century, he signed to Sony Music's imprint
Columbia,via his own company ISO. The first release through this deal
was 2002's Heathen, followed by the Heathen Tour, followed by Reality
in 2003, and his last proper global tour. Rick Dobbis, former
President of Sony Music International, recalls that he was in Sydney
when Donnie Ienner, who was the head of Sony Music North America,
called him in Australia and said, “We can sign David Bowie, will
you split the cost?”. A thrilled Dobbis responded, “Are you
kidding, of course”.
"Music executives hope for the opportunity to combine their professional responsibilities with their fandom. This was one of those moments," Dobbis tells Music Week. "As a fan of music and a person fortunate enough to work on behalf of artists I always anticipated a new Bowie release or tour with the knowledge that the boundaries would be moved, that he would challenge and delight and that everyone who cared about music would be moved just a bit forward."
He
continues, "When he made the Tin Machine albums I was lucky to
have a small part in bringing them to market. For an artist who was
otherwise always front and centre it was fascinating to see him be a
support player working to bring another talent he supported to the
forefront."
Dobbis also recalls that a few years later he was asked to MC a tribute to Lou Reed that Syracuse University was hosting. "We had both graduated from that school," he says. "Lou, with Honours. It was a fabulous night with lots of wonderful artists in attendance. I was handed a note to read from the stage, a beautiful tribute to Lou that was credited to David Bowie. Bowie was in attendance but did not want to take the stage. I wasn’t going to read a quote attributed to him without clearing it with him. I walked over to his table and showed him the quote. He said, 'I don’t know if I have actually said that before, but I am happy to have it said tonight.' An interesting moment for a man who created so much."
In
2004, as he was touring Europe, Bowie complained about pain in the
chest and had to go through an emergency angioplasty. During the
following years, he significantly reduced his activities, recording a
few tracks for movies such as Shrek 2, and appearing on stage with
Arcade Fire during the CMJ Music Marathon in 2005.
The
Next Day, his first album since Reality, was recorded in New York
with Tony Visconti album and released in 2013, to coincide with his
66th anniversary. He closed his US recording cycle with his last
output, Blackstar, recorded in New York at The
Magic Shop and Human Worldwide Studios,
again with Tony Visconti. Ironically, Blackstar became Bowie's sole
No.1 album in the US.
US
performing rights society BMI, which represented some of his works in
the United States, paid tribute to "a visionary" who was
"the incarnation of media and musical prowess, always on the
forefront of art, spurring us on to explore with him the angst,
questions, and possibilities that come with everyday life."
