The singer David Bowie and John Lennon both called the greatest: “My patron saint”
David Bowie and John Lennon almost seemed like kindred spirits whenever they played together.
Neither of them wanted to take the conventional route whenever they made a pop tune, and even when they did enter the mainstream, they always wanted to make the charts bend to their will rather than trying to make whatever cookie-cutter version of pop was happening at the time. Because when you look at how both of them were brought up, none of their heroes were used to taking the conventional routes, either.
Because looking through ‘The Starman’s career, every single one of his inspirations were about breaking down the norms of what rock and roll was supposed to be. Lou Reed and Iggy Pop had been turning anarchy into performance art every single time they performed, and Bowie wanted to be anywhere near this kind of artsy approach to rock and roll when he took to the stage with his ‘Ziggy Stardust’ character.
A lot of his greatest tunes were catchy, no doubt, but there were also tunes that were almost designed to shock people. The biggest names in music would have been appalled to think that someone dressed up like some humanoid alien was becoming one of the biggest names in music, but that’s how Bowie always saw himself. He was an outsider from the word go, but the biggest names in rock and roll were already outsiders.
No one seemed to want what Elvis Presley was doing when he first crash-landed on the charts, but it took the right amount of energy to get everyone invested in what ‘The King’ was doing every time he shook his hips. But long before Presley set foot on the stage, Little Richard was screaming his throat raw every single time he sang, and Bowie felt that that approach to rock and roll was what he was aiming for.
He didn’t have the voice to sing like Richard, but he felt that the level of showmanship he had made him one of the best singers he had ever come across, saying, “He was my patron saint when I was a kid. I nicked all of his [records]. Of course, they played fast, but I played them slowly. He was the one that influenced me the most, mainly because of the dynamics of his energy and the lineup that he had with saxophones.”
Lennon was already one of the biggest fans of Presley in the world, but even he felt that there was no one who had the same kind of energy that Richard did, saying, “When I heard it, it was so great I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to leave Elvis, but this was so much better. We all looked at each other, but I didn’t want to say anything against Elvis, even in my mind. How could they both be happening in my life?”
And while Richard’s influence is evident on both of their records, Lennon and Bowie seemed to take different lessons from him whenever they sang. Paul McCartney was the one who could really belt out Richard tunes with The Beatles, but Lennon would eventually get the courage to scream as Richard did on ‘Mother’, while Bowie ended up adopting the larger-than-life persona that he had every single time that he performed.
But even if Richard had a fair degree of theatricality to everything that he did, his greatest lesson to rock and rollers always had to do with being yourself. No one was going to completely copy what Richard did, but their only hope was to be able to make songs that hit with the same force that he did whenever he sang ‘Long Tall Sally’.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.