Who played guitar on the David Bowie song ‘Let’s Dance’?
‘Let’s Dance’ was a revolutionary record, proving that even in the coming age of electronic music, David Bowie could still mix it with the best. The 1983 track takes traditional pop music tropes and references and subverts them in a way only Bowie could manage while experimenting with a sound no one had heard before, even in synth-driven innovations from the likes of Giorgio Moroder and Gary Numan.
It borrows its title from a Chris Montez twist song released two decades previously, its “aahs” from The Beatles’ version of ‘Twist and Shout’, its “shoes” and “blues” from the early rock and roll number written by Carl Perkins and made famous by Elvis, and its mention of “moonlight” from just about every 1950s crooner in town. This is not just moonlight we’re talking about, though, Bowie insists. This is “serious” moonlight.
And he was completely serious about making a brand new piece of music that paid homage to the past at the same time as ushering in the future of dance. This song is no pastiche, and to prove it, Bowie got the best in the business to work on its instrumentation and production with him, as well as on the rest of the album that takes its name.
Just after Moroder revolutionised disco when he brought American funk R&B singer Donna Summer to Munich to sing on his new experimental tracks, another genius of the genre brought things back to one of its home cities, New York.
And he did it with equally inventive instrumental parts on real music instruments, rather than Moroder’s reliance on electronic soundscapes.
Who was this disco wizard, then?
After meeting him in New York, Bowie enlisted Nile Rodgers, the guitarist and mastermind behind East Coast disco outfits Chic and Sister Sledge, to co-produce his next project. “David listened to me,” Rodgers told Yahoo in 2016. “A technique of mine was I always started my songs with the chorus.”
Bowie did just that in ‘Let’s Dance’ before handing over the mixing desk to Rodgers for the song’s full disco makeover. Instead of simply recording his signature guitar sound from ‘Good Times’ or ‘I Want Your Love’, the producer had other ideas. He added delays to each chord he played with a Clearmountain plugin before splicing the notes to create a more synthetic, metallic effect, which he then layered over brass overdubs.
The result is mesmerising. There’s never been a guitar track that’s sounded like it before or since. Another Nile Rodgers masterstroke, combined with Bowie’s instinct for reimagining popular music in new and exciting ways, delivered one of the songs of the 1980s.
But is Rodgers the only guitarist on the track?
Before the song is out, there’s even time for an additional guitar part – a reedy solo acting out a call-and-response pattern with Rodgers’ inimitable rhythm part. Yet it’s not the Chic guitarist overdubbing the solo himself. Instead, Bowie brought in another specialist for those extra 30 seconds of magic.
The musician for the job was Stevie Ray Vaughan, who Bowie had spotted at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland the previous summer. Vaughan was unsigned and had released nothing of note at the time. But he’d go on to become one of the defining guitarists of his generation.
Bowie didn’t just have an ear for what his song needed. He had an eye for talent, too. And it works a treat on probably the most danceable thing he ever put out. Which is only right, given that dance is exactly what it tells us to do.
