David Bowie on how John Lennon influenced his writing style
As one of David Bowie’s less critically revered chapters, it’s easy to forget that ‘Fame’, the figurehead of the 1975 soul-inspired album Young Americans, was a collaboration with John Lennon. The song took a sharp turn from much of Bowie’s prior work and was a far cry from anything with which Lennon would be ordinarily associated. Alas, by 1975, the two had become close friends and decided to write a rather funky tune together.
In 1975, while in the studio with Lennon and James Brown’s former guitarist Carlos Alomar, Bowie remembered a riff from one of Alomar’s songs and considered creating a new track around it. In a 1978 interview featured in Bowie on Bowie: Interviews and Encounters with David Bowie, the Starman discussed the origin of ‘Fame’.
“It was, in fact, Carlos’ riff to ‘Footstompin’,” Bowie recalled. “I wanted to do ‘Footstompin’,” and I said, ‘Carlos, that is such a good riff. I’m going to take it away from that song, and let’s do something with that.’ And then Lennon came in and said, ‘That’s fuckin’ great, that! Wotta great riff that is!’ And then John stood in his spot and made sounds, and it sounded not unlike ‘fame.’”
Lennon’s strange, nonsensical sounds while mimicking the guitar riff were clearly deformed enough to spark Bowie’s idea for the lyrics to accompany Alomar’s funky riff. “You know, one often just makes sounds, and those sounds become words, and then you think, ‘Gotta word. Now out of that word, let’s create a subject and evolve that subject – things often start like that,” Bowie explained.
This nonsensical word association is just one way in which Lennon inspired Bowie’s songwriting. In 1983, during his Serious Moonlight Tour stop in Australia, Bowie was asked about his changing style, from the avant-garde musings of the late-70s Berlin Trilogy to the pop-focussed Let’s Dance era. “The Bowie of the eighties is very relaxed,” they observed.
“I’m actually really sort of reorganising what I do and trying to make it constructive and positive, and that’s been and will continue to be the hardest thing,” Bowie said in response. “I’ll never forget something John Lennon told me; we were talking about writing, and I had always admired the way he used to cut through so much of the bullshit, just come straight to the point with what he wanted to say.”
He added: “He said: [in an uncanny John Lennon impression] ‘It’s very easy — all you have to do is say what you mean, make it rhyme and put a backbeat to it’, and I keep coming back to that principle as a writer.”
Asked whether ‘Fame’ came about in the same way, Bowie said: “Yes, absolutely. I mean, it was so easy. John had incredible charisma that made you cut through things. I can see the effect that he must have had on McCartney. I would imagine McCartney sorely misses that now.”
Listen below to David Bowie’s John Lennon collaboration, ‘Fame’.
