Five times David Bowie covered his heroes
Unlike many other artists, David Bowie was refreshingly open about the musicians and creatives who inspired him. His influences were vast and eclectic, spanning avant-garde experimentalists to mainstream pop icons, reflecting his boundless curiosity and artistic hunger. Bowie always made an effort to give credit where it was due, acknowledging the creative giants who shaped his own transformative body of work.
It’s an age-old tale that one of Bowie’s greatest tricks was weaponising the brilliance of other musicians when it came to writing, recording, and producing his music. Still, drawing upon the talents of others wasn’t just confined to when he needed to bring his myriad creative visions to life. He also took direct creative cues from his list of heroes, which is a key reason he was able to adapt to constantly changing times and tastes and have a more eclectic back catalogue than arguably anyone of his status.
Whether it was crafting a narrative akin to The Who’s Tommy with Ziggy Stardust, channelling the raw, unflinching social commentary of The Velvet Underground on that same album, or immersing himself in the groundbreaking artistic movements of late-1970s Germany, Bowie’s inspirations were always evident. Yet, it’s a testament to his genius that he managed to reimagine and reinterpret these influences, creating something uniquely his own in a way that felt fresh and original within his own context.
Bowie never took his debt to those who inspired him for granted. In addition to frequently lauding his heroes, he also covered a wide range of their music in his time, from the most prominent to the more leftfield ones.
Today, we’ve listed the five best, and they pay fitting tribute to such figures.
The five best David Bowie covers:
5. ‘Across the Universe’ – The Beatles
Bowie was always open about his love of The Beatles and even continued adoring them after he was rejected by Apple Records in 1968. Later, after making his mark on music and rising as one of the world’s biggest stars, he became friends with John Lennon, who features on 1975’s blue-eyed soul outing, Young Americans.
Although Lennon most famously appears on the hit ‘Fame’, he’s also included on the cover of one of his greatest ever compositions, ‘Across the Universe’. This rendition might not have been well received at the time of release, but it has aged well, with Bowie putting a more upbeat and oddball spin on the airy Beatles effort. Furthermore, with Lennon on guitar and backing vocals, this reworking from his post-Fab Four era serves as a reminder of how hard he was striving to put the memories of the band behind him.
Unsurprisingly, then, Lennon was a big fan of this cover. Despite once saying ‘Across the Universe’ was amongst his finest efforts, he asserted in one interview that Bowie’s was better: “I thought, great, because I’d never done a good version of that song myself. It’s one of my favourite songs, but I didn’t like my version of it.”
Bowie agreed, describing The Beatles’ song as “very watery”. He stated his intention was to “hammer the hell out of it”. That’s precisely what he did.
4. ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ – The Rolling Stones
Another group that made an indelible impression on Bowie was The Rolling Stones. Their exuberant hedonism and rollicking R&B grooves were two crucial influences on glam rock coming to the fore, and, in his Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane periods – when Bowie had also committed himself to the delights of hard living – he channelled their sound into his work.
While 1967’s single ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ has always been one of The Rolling Stones’ most energetic songs, with Mick Jagger’s sexually suggestive lyrics topping this off, Bowie put an even more frenetic twist on it on Aladdin Sane.
Carting along at breakneck speed and more bawdy than the original, Bowie also added shimmering synthesisers to the mix and added his own words in the finale: “They said we were too young / Our kind of love was no fun / But our love comes from above / Let’s make … love”.
3. ‘I Can’t Explain’ – The Who
The Who did more for music than they are often given credit for. Not only did they create their generation’s defiant rallying cry in ‘My Generation’, the definitive anthem about refusing to give into the demands of tradition, but they also expanded rock music’s scope by fusing it with many different genres and mastering the rock opera.
According to The Who creative director Pete Townshend, his band’s 1969 masterpiece, Tommy, inspired David Bowie significantly because it told the fictional tale of Tommy Walker and his path to becoming a messianic figure. Allegedly, when he was still languishing as the hopeful star David Jones, Bowie even told Townshend after a 1969 performance of Tommy in London that he would pick up where he left off with the album.
Townshend recalled: “He wasn’t anybody, he was a guy called David Jones … and he came back and he said: ‘That’s what I’m gonna do, I’ve now seen that I can create characters’. He ran away and started doing it.”
In truth, though, Bowie had been closely following The Who since they broke out, with him a former mod. That meant that when producing his 1973 covers album Pin Ups, he included two Who renditions, ‘I Can’t Explain’ and ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere’. It is the former that takes the crown, though. It puts an appropriately glam rock twist on the cool R&B rhythm of the original, featuring Bowie’s expressive vocals, the clang of the piano, Mick Ronson’s gritty distorted tone, and the climactic rumble of brass instruments.
2. ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ – The Velvet Underground
While Lou Reed and David Bowie were close friends, it’s no secret that Reed and The Velvet Underground had a transformative impact on the former. Their fusion of rock with avant-garde and transgressive lyrics would lay the foundations for his approach and the glam rock scene he made his name at the forefront of. For Bowie, 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico represented the absolute pinnacle of music.
Discussing the impact of ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’, Bowie told New York Magazine in 2003: “The first track glided by innocuously enough and didn’t register. However, from that point on, with the opening, throbbing, sarcastic bass and guitar of ‘I’m Waiting For The Man’, the linchpin, the keystone of my ambition was driven home. This music was so savagely indifferent to my feelings. It didn’t care if I liked it or not. It could give a fuck. It was completely preoccupied with a world unseen by my suburban eyes.”
Bowie loved the song so much that he performed it extensively and recorded it on numerous occasions. He even recorded it a handful of times for BBC live sessions, but the best came in 1972, as heard on Bowie at the Beeb, which features a stellar guitar solo from Ronson.
1. ‘See Emily Play’ – Pink Floyd
Bowie tried his hands at seemingly every genre under the sun, but psychedelia is something you wouldn’t necessarily associate him with. Although he would eventually become a deeply conceptual artist in the late 1970s, even his glam rock masterpieces, which examined the dark side of life and transgression, were firmly rooted in the real world and not in the spacey fantasy of psychedelia. However, one of his ultimate idols was original Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett, a psychedelic pioneer and one of the most singular artists in the annals of music.
“Syd was a major inspiration for me,” Bowie said of Barrett shortly after his death in 2006. “He was so charismatic and such a startlingly original songwriter. Also, along with Anthony Newley, he was the first guy I’d heard to sing pop or rock with a British accent. His impact on my thinking was enormous.” He added: “A major regret is that I never got to know him. A diamond indeed.”
That’s why the highlight of Pin Ups is Bowie’s take on Pink Floyd’s ‘See Emily Play’. More muscular than the original’s whimsical brilliance, it sees Bowie heighten the bizarreness with strange effects added to the layered vocals while still paying respects to his hero by not overdoing it with added musical components. It’s a suitably exceptional re-working through the prism of the ‘Starman’.
