The song Luther Vandross wrote with David Bowie
Following his rise to global acclaim as the extraterrestrial glam-rocker behind The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, David Bowie became notably fluid with his associative genre. As indicated first in songs like ‘Sweet Thing’ on Diamond Dogs, Bowie embraced a penchant for soul music in the mid-1970s as he emerged from the glam era.
Seeds sown in Diamond Dogs had grown into a sturdy soul product by 1975 with the arrival of Young Americans. The divisive album heard Bowie’s vocals at their most soulful and the instrumentals at their funkiest. Danceable rhythms may well have ousted some of Ziggy Stardust’s artistic intricacy, but the record certainly had its moments, including the unlikely John Lennon collaboration, ‘Fame’.
Besides ‘Fame’ and the catchy title track, which together comprised the album’s single release quota, other highlights included ‘Right’, ‘Fascination’ and a cover of Lennon’s Let It Be contribution, ‘Across the Universe’. Intriguingly, liaisons with a former Beatle eclipsed another collaboration with a young Luther Vandross.
Before Vandross broke through as a solo act in the early 1980s, he became revered as a backing vocalist for Chaka Khan, Ben E. King, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand and more. Vandross also crossed paths with Bowie during his time as an ancillary act.
On the second day of recording for Young Americans at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia in November 1974, Bowie’s session guitarist Carlos Alomar invited his wife Robin and old school friend Vandross to the studio. Bowie heard one of Vandross’ song ideas titled ‘Funky Music (Is A Part Of Me)’ during the visit and asked if he could adapt it for his album. Vandross duly agreed and earned his first-ever songwriting credit for ‘Fascination’.
“I started making little vocal arrangements and showing them to Robin,” Vandross told The Black Collegian Magazine in 1982. “I didn’t know that Bowie had overheard all this. He was sitting right behind me at the board, and he said, ‘That’s a great idea. Put that down.’ So I put it down, and next thing you know, one thing led to another, and I was doing the vocal arrangements for the whole album.”
“I wrote one of the songs on the album,” he added. “Bowie overheard it and said, ‘I want to record that. Do you mind?’ When I did it, it was called ‘Funky Music’. Bowie changed it to ‘Fascination’. He said he didn’t want to be so presumptuous as to say ‘funky music’ since he was a rock artist. He said, ‘Do you mind?’ And I said, ‘You’re David Bowie, I live at home with my mother, you can do what you like.’”
Vandross released his original song, ‘Funky Music (Is A Part Of Me)’, as a single on the eponymous debut album of his early band Luther in 1976. Sadly, the song wasn’t such a major hit for Vandross, whose career would finally ignite in 1981 with his solo debut album, Never Too Much.
Listen to David Bowie’s ‘Fascination’ and Luther Vandross’ ‘Funky Music (Is A Part Of Me)’ below.
