The story of how John Lennon convinced David Bowie to sack his manager: “Crap”
I don’t think there are two people better placed to sing about fame than John Lennon and David Bowie.
The pair represented everything great about two of the most studied cultural decades. Their talent, their excess and their liberalism epitomised everything about fame in the late 20th century, making them the most instantly recognisable people in history. But while for the large part that’s celebrated, they were similarly trapped by their global exposure and so learned how to navigate its trappings.
John Lennon, perhaps more so in this case, for his every word was questioned during the height of Beatlemania. The imprisonment of worldwide recognition could be heard all over his music, intensifying throughout the 1960s. What started with a hint of isolation in The Beatles pop hit ‘Help!’ soon became an outright cry for help in his 1970 solo hit ‘God’, which saw the songwriter letting go of all societal constructs that had seemingly held him back.
It put Lennon in a unique position of wisdom come the 1970s. With the music industry exploding into one of unbridled excess, he was well placed to notice the pitfalls certain artists were hurtling themselves towards. With rampant drug use becoming commonplace among musicians, it meant that the sharp claws of bureaucracy were more cleverly disguised, and so many of them had no idea what contractual mistakes they were signing themselves up for.
As a sort of wounded guide, Lennon made himself on hand to any artists needing advice and in the 1970s, there was probably none who needed it more than Bowie. He was catapulting himself to stratospheric heights of fame and, unlike Lennon, didn’t have a trusted troop of bandmates to help him navigate it.
So, Lennon used his studio time to offer Bowie some much-needed guidance. On the aptly titled ‘Fame’, the pair collaborated on a track that would ultimately act as a safety net for Bowie, who could revert to its lyrics whenever fame’s trappings ever reared their ugly head.
Bowie explained, “We’d been talking about management, and it kind of came out of that. He was telling me, ‘You’re being shafted by your present manager.’ That was basically the line. And John was the guy who opened me up to the idea that all management is crap.”
Adding, “That there’s no such thing as good management in rock ’n’ roll and you should try to do without it. It was at John’s instigation that I really did without managers and started getting people in to do specific jobs for me, rather than signing myself away to one guy forever and have him take a piece of everything that I earn.”
It was in 1975, during the release of this track, that Bowie parted ways with his manager Tony Defries. It was Defries who took Bowie from Kenneth Pitt, the man who helped take him from his humble beginnings to the master of charts, namely with Space Oddity. But then Defries came on at a pivotal moment in his career and assisted in his ascent to global stardom.
