The band David Bowie called the “moderate choice” for rock and roll
Not every rock and roll band is for everybody. The entire genre is known to be absolutely unapologetic about everything they play, and that doesn’t always lend itself well to people who simply want to hear something catchy on the radio. And while David Bowie did know how to write a catchy tune when he wanted to, he knew that it would always be more fun to challenge what the status quo was whenever he came out with a new record.
When looking at his career trajectory, none of Bowie’s records were ever meant to follow one set structure. Oh, there may have been characters that disappeared and reappeared throughout his body of work like Major Tom, but they were all done in service to his philosophy of working in new territories rather than relying on the same tired tropes that everyone knew about back in the day.
Even on his first album, he was willing to subvert people’s expectations, even if it was something that no one wanted to hear. The vaudeville crooning that he did on his first record was far from the greatest thing in the world, but as soon as he hit on tracks like ‘Space Oddity’ and ‘Changes’, people knew that he was off to explore new lands far beyond what we thought rock and roll was capable of.
But that’s not where everyone’s head was at the time. The core identity of rock was still based in blues music, and many people were simply trying to piggyback off the genius that Cream and Led Zeppelin had done back in the day. There was some fine talent to come out of there, but then there were some bands that feel like relics of their time now, like Grand Funk Railroad.
While I may be running the risk of disappointing the Homer Simpsons of the world who insist that they were the greatest band in existence, Grand Funk was far from the most innovative band in the world. To their credit, they were never trying to be in the first place, but when looking at the kind of people that were flocking to Bowie for his willingness to be different and provocative for the hell of it, listening to ‘We’re An American Band’ felt like the safe choice by comparison.
Since Bowie was born and bred from the generation focused on underground music, he felt that Grand Funk was the base-level band for people that only mildly enjoy rock, saying, “The truest form of any form of revolutionary left, whatever you want to call it was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, and Ginsberg’s period. That was where it was at. The hippies, I’m afraid, don’t know what’s happening. I don’t think there are any anyway. The underground went really underground. Grand Funk, and all these people, man, are the moderate’s choice of music.”
That’s not to say that both of them couldn’t co-exist at the same time. Grand Funk was more than willing to pay those thousands of people cheering for them when they played stadiums, but when comparing them to visionaries like Bowie, there was a reason why people are still talking about records like Ziggy Stardust while most of the former’s discography has fallen by the wayside.
That’s because Bowie looked at his music the same way that people like Lou Reed and Patti Smith looked at theirs. It may not have been the most commercially acceptable thing to do all the time, but he would go down swinging rather than make something designed to please the masses.
