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A lyrical interpretation
by Jonathan Greatorex
Young Americans
RCA RS 1006
March 1975
Diamond Dogs had been released on April 24th, 1974 and Bowie was anxious to get the concept on tour as soon as possible. Montreal's Forum was decided upon as a suitable opening venue. Bowie had been planning the presentation almost a year before. The original intention was that of a Broadway type show, with Jules Fisher working on Lighting; Mike Karmen orchestrating; Toni Basil as choreographer and Mark Ravatiz working on set design.
Ravatiz opted for a partly destroyed cityscape in keeping with the album's general theme. His inspiration for the set had come from Fritz Lang's expressionistic film, 'Metropolis'.
Bowie vetoed the idea of having the Ziggy/Aladdin motif used as a surrogate swastika. rising and falling throughout the show. The press statement was released by MainMan:
`Bowie will be playing his largest US tour ever beginning in June...each stage he plays on will be transformed into a vision of a ruined city. The set is in pieces and is designed to fit onto any stage, no matter how small. On it David will sing and dance his depressive vision of the future, as well as his songs of the past which catapulted him to stardom.'
From June 14th, in Montreal, to December 2nd at Tuscaloosa in Alabama, Bowie performed 83 concerts, his largest ever tour. This included seven nights at Radio City's Musical Hall in New York, and five at the Tower theatre Philadelphia, where the 'David Live' album was cut.
The problems of organisation were immense. There were fifteen permanent roadies, supplemented by local union crews in each city played, often working a 21-hour day. The stage set consisted of four, forty-foot scaffolding towers that took the scenery flats. Six fifteen-foot platforms were erected in the auditorium to cater for the P.A. system. A bridge with an electric-motor system was used to lower Bowie from the sky, and a thirty-foot steel joist, capable of extending to forty-five feet, was mounted on the side of one of the rear towers, in order for Bowie to be lifted over the city-scape and extended ten rows into the audience, (Angie's idea)
This contraption was used for the rendering of 'Space Oddity' where Bowie would sing into one of the 45 separate microphones, disguised as a red telephone.
For 'Time' he would utilise a motorised 'Jewel Module' that was of a mirrored perspex construction on wheels. It opened in a similar manner to an Easter egg, revealing the singer against a mirrored interior and surrounded by fluorescent tubes.
It has been estimated that 25% of the sound equipment had to be replaced daily due to explosions during the performances. Problems were also forthcoming backstage where Bowie had wanted his back-up band to remain. The concept was that of an opera where the orchestra plays from a stage pit. In Bowie's case, the band were requested to stay behind the scaffolding.
In many ways one can sympathise with their grumbling over such treatment, and as Bowie recalls:
"They kept on bugging me about coming out in front, and I kept on telling them that I didn't have any parts for them and stay behind those bloody sheets because it doesn't look like a street. But they started straying out, and how appropriate it was, because the tour started to collapse and we were trying to depict a destroyed city. The city was supposed to fall apart and now the tour did."
While in Philadelphia, during the recording of 'David Live', Bowie ventured into Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's Sigma Sound Studio. He had already prepared 'Young Americans' which was undergoing several working tittles 'One Damned Song', 'Somebody Up There Likes Me' and 'Fascination'.
Nine songs were recorded, but 'John, I'm Only Dancing,(Again)', 'Who Can I Be Now' and 'It's Gonna Be Me' were not selected for inclusion.
Unbeknown to RCA who quickly whisked away the Master Tapes, they left behind a copy of the last two songs which were 'picked up' by Bowie fans to become, for a time, quite desirable bootlegs.
Bowie's new direction in music began at Sigma Sound during a break in touring, and when the show resumed, the title 'The Philly Dogs Tour' took precedence. Indeed, the inclusion of Eddie Floyd's 'Knock on Wood' on 'David Live' gave some indication of the forthcoming change in direction.
At the time he commented to Tony Visconti, (Now the best of friends after Visconti's help with the string arrangement on '1984')
"I've got this great idea. I'll make a prophecy that America is going to go black. Black music is taking over...I want to make a black album...I want to make a soul album.'
Perhaps the most noteworthy claimants of this 'prophecy' were the highly successful 'BeeGees'.
In September 1974, 'Knock on Wood' was released as a single, followed a month later by 'David Live'. It seems quite incredible that Bowie was still two months short of ending his US tour; beginning as the 'Diamond Dogs Show' and now incorporating 'Young Americans' material.
The following February the 'Young Americans' single was released, and word had it that two Bruce Springsteen songs, 'It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City' and 'Grown up' had been dropped in favour of a Bowie/Lennon Collaboration, 'Fame'.
In March 1975, Bowie split with MainMan and the 'Young Americans' album was released.
Bowie had indicated before the album's release that it was the closest thing that he had ever performed on record that was absolutely personal.
In his own words: 'I always said that on most albums I was acting. It was a role generally. And this one is the closest to meeting me since 'Space Oddity''.
The track, Young Americans is about a newly-wed couple who don't know if they really appreciate each other to the extent which they feel they ought.
A predicament occurs due to this confusion. In interview, Bowie is stated as saying that he crammed his entire American experience in to the one song. Undoubtedly it is the most forceful track on the album, and in retrospect both analogies are equally valid; the song encompasses both a reflective and narrative stance.
It is equally feasible that his affiliation with soul-orientated music was a symbolic gesture to rid himself once and for all of the identity crisis faced concerning his role as an entertainer.
'David Live' although itself void of any real emotion, appeared to yearn towards some warmth and feeling. 'Young Americans' was a U-turn of immense bravado. It was yet another personal re-definition, requiring a complete openness to emotion that had not manifested itself since the onset of a decadent syndrome three years previously. He had been utterly encapsulated within the dubious past three roles, and the present provided an ideal and subtle stance in which to convey a more realistic view of contemporary American life. In this title track, the author attempts to re-evaluate his worldly pessimistic attitude. The revolutionary still lingers on, yet is subdued. The idealism that results alternates between self-definition and clinical examination.
The present social malaise, and not some sordid, hypothetical premonition give the track it's more human aspect. Indeed, the heroes of the initial part of the song act as representatives for their kind. "They pulled in just behind the fridge, he laid her down-he frowns, "Gee my life's a funny thing am I still too young." Bowie manages to utilise more sympathy, more pity, humanity and
understanding, on this one track, than in the complete works which followed 'Hunky Dory'.
The sexual act between the young couple, although pathetic, possesses none of the sleazy innuendoes found on 'Cracked Actor' or 'Sweet Thing'
"He kissed her then and there, she took his ring took his babies. It took him minutes, took her nowhere, heaven knows she'd taken anything."
The young wife is a romantic, naive and gullible. Her delusion is one of gallant, story-book heroes. Her man, the ideal husband.
"All night she wants the young American." Her knight in shining-armour, viewed through rose-coloured spectacles, is merely one of the many who personify the Great American Daydream.
His actual panache is as subtle as his failing health. The girl scans "life through the picture-window", where, "she finds the slinky vagabond. He coughs as he passes her Ford Mustang Heaven forbid she'll take anything." Her ideals differ totally from his. This girl is an integral part of the American social structure, very representative of that society, and ironically enclosed in an isolated world of fantasy, as are the majority of her peers.
The narrator presents a more realistic vision of American manhood; "But the freak and his type-all for nothing. He misses a step and cuts his hand. Showing nothing he swoops like a song."
The girl ignores the truth in preference to her own laconic romanticising. "Where have all papa's heroes gone ?" The refrain; "All night I want the young American." is cleverly incorporated by Bowie as representing the aspired ideal to both man, woman, and reactionary. This ideal varies greatly between all three, rather like widely differing opinions.
The theme of the ideal is central, the way in which it is manipulated by the individual is where confusion arises. It all depends upon who actually is doing the dreaming.
To the husband it represented the continuation of pursuing the relative freedom of batchelorhood "Her breadwinner begs off the bathroom floor, "We've lived for just these twenty years do we have to die for the fifty more ?".
The pain he causes his wife is only a whiplash of the pain he receives from the institution of marriage. On the other hand, the ideals motivating the revolutionary are those concerned with wearing "leather" and fighting changes by "slashing faces with razors."
The narrator then confronts the mass of his audience with some ideals of his own relating to the 'young Americans'. He exposes the malignancy of self-deceit as it penetrates right to the heart of their social structure. "Do you remember your president Nixon." and the legacy of mistrust which casts doubts even today.
Bowie's idea of the American ideal is then subjected. He wants the subterfuge to be replaced by spontaneity of emotion. After all; "You ain't a pimp and you ain't a hustler."
The majority are simply 'honest God-fearing citizens'. The long-suffering blacks have got "respect", and the whites can now have their "soul-train" without fear of ridicule.
But why does emotion not spring spontaneously ? Because all is symbolically pre-meditated by 'The Great Dream' which brings about division rather than unification; "I got a suite and you got defeat"
However, Bowie passionately feels that there exists somewhere a person who can admit to his failures, "A man who can say no more."
An action that can be undertaken without fear of reproach by social 'morality'; "A woman I can sock on the jaw."
A new life, taken for face-value, irrespective of colour, creed or political belief; "A child I can hold without judging."
And a hope that only time will not tell the actions related to the man, woman
and child; "A pen that will write before they die."
Throughout the song he debates the individuality of his characters irrespective of whether they are good or bad, and the merits of this individualism in a grave coronary world.
"Aren't you proud that you still got faces."
With the weight of all this behind him, Bowie remains incapable of possessing the emotion which is also lacking in his contemporaries "Ain't there one damn song that can make me break down and Cry ?"
Herein lies the seed of alienation which is developed further on 'Station to Station' and metamorphosis's into the solipsism on 'Low'.
In many respects, the 'Young Americans' album was an answer to the Doubting Thomas's who had convinced themselves that Bowie's creativity had been exhausted early on in his career.
It may have been an answer, yet whether it was beneficially warranted remains to be verified.
Arranging the covers of 'Alladin Sane', 'Pin-Ups' 'Diamond Dogs' and 'David Live' together, it is blatantly clear that Bowie's physical health was regressing. One plausible excuse was the sheer weight and responsibility of an undertaking such as the 1974 'Dogs' tour. A more likely explanation of his loss of vitality can be found in the philosophy and direction of his lyrical ability.
Bowie had not been writing material exclusively for some intellectual clique. He was a man of the people, and through his music, he had not only achieved esteem, but also met his public and subject-matter head-on. In order to write about decadence and idealism, it had to be lived. Bowie's albums were in a sense biographical. 'The Man Who Sold the World' subsumed into 'Hunky Dory', which, in turn subsumed into 'Ziggy Stardust' and so on to the maddening finale of 'Diamond Dogs'.
Not only was his identity becoming suspect, his very psyche was being heavily affected by the subject matter of his songs. If he had followed `Diamond Dogs' one natural step further, he may well have joined the ranks of Hendrix, Joplin and Vicious.
Not that his destruction would have been induced by external physical actions, moreover it would have been the accelerating decomposition of his mind in a fatal vortex. To counter this, he embarked upon a campaign of personality re-definition. One of his major difficulties in 1974, was his inability to completely come to terms with a foreign environment - America.
A grasping of soul music during the Philadelphia sessions was possibly a symbolic gesture of overcoming his identity crisis. The drawn-out mood belying 'Young Americans' is one of anguish and self-examination, essentially, a re-assessment, not uncommon in Bowie's make-up. It could possibly have been viewed as a last fleeting lunge at success in despair, personified by it's cultural 'melodrama' and melancholia.
Bowie was indeed very introspective on the album as indicated by his opening remarks on the interpretation of the title track.
This despair, with it's accompanied isolation, provoked him to move towards a more positive and determined outlook.
Such determination required an open-armed attitude to emotional feelings that had largely been suppressed throughout the previous three albums. He acknowledges this recent emotional 'awakening' in 'Win':-"Slow down, let someone love you. I've never touched you since I started to feel."
Bowie had clearly tired of the white rock n' roll style deployed on the previous albums. In 'Win' he faces his past dabbling with identity, and since the 'faker' has removed the charade, he offers himself without defence. "If there's nothing to hide me, then you'll never see me hanging naked and wild."
Bowie, as usual, is speaking in paradoxes. The song's theme is also intended to be adopted by the listener. If you want to win in life, then it is necessary to motivate yourself into action.
'Win was a sort of 'get off your backside' sort of song really.'
Bowie had little time for people who complained or didn't work hard at life. However, they ought not to allocate blame at their narrator, since he has the habit of getting the most out of it. "Since you're trying not to loose, since I'm not supposed to grin, all you've got to do is win."
Without doubt, `Can You Hear Me' has the most melodic phrasing on the album. It is a soulful ballad of great sophistication and depth.
In Bowie's own words: `Can You Hear Me' was written for somebody...that is a real love song - I kid you not.'
Perhaps so, and Bowie is reticent to let his public know who the song was for. It is sandwiched, on side two, between the two Lennon collaborations; `Across the Universe' (an old out-take from the `Sgt. Peppers' days, surfacing on the album 'Let It Be' in 1970); and 'Fame'.
'Fame' was co-written with Carlos Alomar, and recorded at the Electric Lady Studio's in New York. According to Bowie; 'We were just monkeying around...it was just a jam.'
Bowie had been improvising on 'Footstompin' and Springsteen's 'It's Hard to Be A Saint In The City'. Alomar joined in with further improvisations, including James Brown's 'Hot (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved)'.
Lennon, meanwhile, occupied himself by adding touches of 'Aaaay, Eiiie, Aaaay' every now and again.
Bowie paused for a moment, unable to decipher what Lennon was adding. "Are you singing, 'Fame' ?"
Lennon replied, "No, I'm just going, `Eiiide'."
"Well it sounds like `Fame'"
Bowie received his first American number one with the record.
Lennon's contribution should not be dismissed lightly, as Bowie pointed out
'It wouldn't have happened if John hadn't have been there. He was the energy and that's why he's got a credit for writing it; he was the inspiration.' Bowie opens 'Can You Hear Me' by surrendering what little emotion he does have, to his loved one. "Once we were lovers, can they understand. Closer than others I was, I was your man."
Reminiscing previous affairs with sentimental understanding, he now indicates that he is resolved to be less open and more cautious in the way he approaches a relationship; - "And I'm checking out one day, to see if I'm faking it all."
He refuses to hide behind excuses and artificial walls by confessing, "There's been many others, so mans times.."
This is totally in keeping with the albums disrobing and re-assessment qualities. Yet there still persists the problem of 'hanging naked and wild' in front of emotion.
He realises passionately that he "wants love so badly" and the need of the particular person towards who the song is aimed.
And, although love is "hard to take from anyone", Bowie finds it extremely more excruciating to fall in love himself. If, and when it does happen to him, he expects his affection to be taken "Right to your heart."
Three months after the album came out, Bowie was interviewed at his lawyer, Mike Lippman's house in Hollywood, by The Sunday Times. He spoke of his sexual flirtations with coloured girls, and of being turned off by the feminists in New York.
'It's all so academic, and anyway, I love my wife.' A year later he was to say; 'Never have been in love to speak of. I was in love once, maybe, and it was an awful experience....Being in love is something that breeds brute anger and jealousy, everything but love, it seems.'
David and Angie were divorced in February 1980, following a ten-years marriage. Nothing,(with the possible exception of 'Wild Is The Wind' Which Bowie didn't pen anyway), resembling any declaration of human love on a one-to-one basis was recorded with such furtive a gesture as 'Can You Hear Me', until the release of 'Let's Dance' nearly eight years later.
