“I just want to piss Mick off a bit”: the 1974 David Bowie song that perfectly captured the era
Is there a better reason to create a massive anthem of the 1970s than to just wind up one of your mates? David Bowie didn’t think so.
It seems a bit of a flippant way to introduce the pounding, thumping romp that is ‘Rebel Rebel’, but it is also ultimately the truth as to why the song came into existence in the first place. Bowie wanted to bid farewell to glam rock in a broiling blaze of glory, and if it just so happened to annoy Mick Jagger? Well, you didn’t need any more justification than that.
Indeed, more than anything, Bowie really pulled into focus that the ‘70s were not awash with the glam rock way of being for the entire breadth of the decade, much in the same way that the ‘60s had been with psychedelia. Here he was, only four years deep, preparing to say goodbye to the sound that seemingly landmarked the whole era.
And yet, equally, it also spoke to Bowie’s general effervescence and lack of stationaryness in the middle of a world that was changing around him all the time. ‘Rebel Rebel’ was, as its name most obviously suggests, an anthem about going against the grain. But by the same token, that also meant the beckoning of something new.
However, to outline all of this in terms of legacy, it sounds like a gargantuan effort. In reality, the Starman laid down the bones of the track rather nonchalantly. “I’ve got this riff, and it’s a bit Rolling Stonesy, I just want to piss Mick off a bit,” guitarist Alan Parker recalled him saying. If you were approached with that statement, wouldn’t you happily oblige?
As such, Parker said that the pair spent around 45 minutes getting to grips with the riff, and Bowie sorted out the rest, as in the lyrics, and the entire remainder of the song besides the riff, without much difficulty. They made it sound so easy, it’s as if any of us could just churn out a generation-defining tune within a day.
But ‘Rebel Rebel’ represented so much more than just any regular run-of-the-mill piece of work. It was a final farewell to the shiny glamour of the rock scene, the woman with her torn dress and face in a mess acting as the symbol of something that was dying, but at the same time, opening up to a new era in which all those rips and faults were at the front and centre.
There was a good reason that ‘Rebel Rebel’ was also widely considered to be a proto-punk track. During a moment in time in which glam had given its last shimmer, but the real unleashing of punk was still a few years off on the horizon, that song was perhaps the first inclination that something far more raucous and wild was to come.
And to think: all of that was just to piss off The Rolling Stones. In Bowie’s eyes, it was very much a job well done, but the legacy of the track he created around it was worth so much more than just a childish jibe towards a friend. It was the end of glam, and the very beginnings of punk, and he was right at the epicentre of all of it.
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