Where did David Bowie get “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am!” from?
By the summer of 1972, David Bowie had finally found his niche. Following eight years of commercial floundering, jumping between psychedelic folk, satin-dressed hard rock, and a novelty cut about a laughing gnome, Bowie took notes from T Rex’s glitter spark that glammed up the UK charts and dreamed up his alien rock messiah.
Released in June, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars proved to stand as the enduring glam archetype, a rock opera exploring an extraterrestrial popstar’s warning to humanity before succumbing to the trappings of ego and fame, his fifth LP’s anthemic hits and the striking androgyny of Bowie’s new look set a standard of exotic sophistication the likes of Mud or The Sweet never went near.
One of the record’s most dizzying cuts was nearly given away. Originally offered to Mott the Hoople, Bowie instead handed them their defining ‘All the Young Dudes‘ and kept the proto-punk ‘Suffragette City’ as Ziggy’s dizzy penultimate stomper, an accelerated garage surge borrowing 1950s rock ‘n roll and The Velvet Underground’s sardonic fuzz.
“‘Suffragette City’ was just balls to the wall and go for it,” Spiders bassist Woody Woodmansey revealed in 2016. “It’s one of those funny grooves: you listen to it, and you think, ‘Is that all there is to it?’ but when I tried different beats, the song was diminished. Somehow, the beat that is on there keeps the listener involved and doesn’t let up. You are in there until the end.”
In addition to its god-given riff and ARP 2500 synth stabs, ‘Suffragette City’ packs a versed lyrical punch. Alongside A Clockwork Orange‘s Nadsat-slang, the immortal “wham bam, thank you, ma’am!” before its false ending is arguably one of the album’s most memorable lines. Another example of Bowie’s cultural deep dive and lyrical collage of music and art, the innuendo-laden refrain, was inspired by the records of his past.
So, where did Bowie get “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am!” from?
“I remember being at Haddon Hall when he first played ‘Suffragette City’,” artist and school friend George Underwood revealed in 2017. “And at the end of the performance – he just played it on a 12-string – I shouted out, ‘Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am!’ which was a song from a Charlie Mingus album, Oh Yeah. And it obviously ended up on the record.”
Mingus’ jazz cut had scored his schoolboy days frequently taking advantage of Medhurst department store’s record section in his Bromley hometown, afforded uninterrupted listening time in the shop’s ‘sound booth’ playing Eddie Cochran and Ray Charles albums while canoodling with the young customer assistant.
One key record etched in his psyche was Mingus’ 1961 jazz LP for the Atlantic label. Oh Yeah is an album filled with colourful song titles such as ‘Eat That Chicken’ and ‘Oh Lord Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me’, but ‘Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am’ hits a perfect irreverent spot during ‘Suffragette City’s skidding-breaks finale.
It wasn’t the first time Underwood had gifted Bowie with his creative development. Following a schoolyard fistfight, Underwood knocked his left eye into its permanent pupil dilation, an aesthetic asset to his alien poster boy mystique, reportedly thanking him for being granted his “enigmatic, otherworldly look”.
