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David Bowie on the two musicians who gave “intelligence” to music

Thu 16 November 2023 18:45, UK

Throughout rock music history, David Bowie has covered more ground than virtually any other artist. When working on his glam rock glory period to his final days in the world of free jazz on albums like Blackstar, Bowie was always looking to mess with the usual formula of rock songs, often taking them into strange directions that no one else had seen. While Bowie may have had his mind set on writing unique rock songs for the masses, two artists helped inform his rock and roll framework.

Going through every piece of Bowie’s discography, though, it’s hard even to pinpoint where he found his ideas in the first place. While projects like Young Americans and Let’s Dance wore their influences on their sleeve most of the time, the tracks off of albums like Station to Station and Low practically invented genres of their own, taking the crux of rock and roll and turning it inside out to create something entirely different.

Going against the status quo, Bowie was far from the first to challenge what many perceived to be traditional rock songs. At the time when the British Invasion was sweeping across the world, Bob Dylan was the resident poet of rock and roll, making songs known for condemning those in power. As the 1960s wore on, albums like Blonde on Blonde would showcase the more outlandish sides of rock, with Dylan being unafraid to take the genre into bold new directions.

The music was inspiring, and it resonated with a young New York poet named Lou Reed as well. Becoming a central figure in the art rock scene in ‘The Big Apple’, Reed’s work with The Velvet Underground would go on to become one of the most influential sounds of the era after the fact, with many considering them one of the founding fathers of other grimy genres like punk rock.

When looking at both Dylan and Reed together, Bowie felt that both artists transformed what most people thought of as traditional rock music, saying, “It was Bob Dylan who brought a new kind of intelligence to pop songwriting, but then it was Lou [Reed] who had taken it even further and into the avant-garde”.

While Bowie may have seen the bold advancements that both artists took in their respective fields, his music would be able to put both of their styles under one roof. Across albums like The Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory, Bowie was writing with the same authority as Dylan but with the same nasty aesthetic that came out of The Velvet Underground.

‘The Starman’ would even go so far as to namecheck both artists in the lyrics to his songs as well. Since Hunky Dory contains many songs about Bowie’s various inspirations, tracks like ‘Song For Dylan’ and ‘Queen Bitch’ are subtle thank-yous to the artists that helped shape his world at the beginning of his career.

Then again, Bowie wasn’t looking to play the same style for the rest of his life, eventually dipping his toes into everything from rock to soul to pop to drum and bass, depending on his feelings at the time. Of all the lessons Bowie learned from his idols, it was most important to follow your musical heart before anything else.