David Bowie R.I.P

what the hell would the 80's have sounded like without him? maybe more like the stray cats. he kinda invented that decade.

Well, Ferry was around. Ferry was as influential as Bowie without being a generalist.

really? Ferry as influential as Bowie?

On British artists? Incalculable. Bowie and Ferry created the '80s. In America he's a nothing though.

I've started into the wilds of post-Scary Monsters Bowie, which I've mostly glossed over before now. 'Ricochet' is a pretty hot track that I've never paid attention to before. Not crazy about the production on Let's Dance thus far, which isn't bad but doesn't suit my idea of Bowie. And the Stevie Ray sticks out like a sore thumb.

xpost

I haven't got to his 90s stuff yet in my discography crawl. I'm making notes as I go, but thus far TMWSTW and Lodger are my faves, and I would also say they're records where he seems furthest from being a "pop star", tho obv the other Berlin records carry that on as well.

But vocally, and just as an artistic force, even when I'm not into all the songs, he just seems unstoppable. It amazes me he was doing what he did at such a young age -- yeah, he was *clearly* into being inspired by others, and taking existing sounds to use as templates for his own music. But I have always thought, and continue to think, that not only do most other great artists do this, but they *need* the template to discover and amplify their own voices. If I had to single out one thing that signifies a great artist, it would be that simultaneous assimilation of their environment and influences (musical, political, cultural etc), and the (miraculous imo) birthing of something that seems utterly new.

I like Vaughn's hot licks against Rodgers' rhythm playing. See "Criminal World."

xxxp I'm amazed to hear that, though I've never really paid much attention to Ferry, he's been 'embarrassingly suave uncle' for as long as I've remembered. What was his influence?

when I heard the a cappella tracks for Under Pressure, I gained massive respect for Bowie as a vocalist. He had such a *powerful*, expressive voice.

I agree with this and think he had fantastic *chops* - great pitch, just enormously expressive, and a lot of power.

"Well, Ferry was around. Ferry was as influential as Bowie without being a generalist."

withouth bowie where would ferry have been!?

bowie begat ferry. roxy + bowie = 2/3 of the 80's.

(biased because I'm listening to Teenage Wildlife at the moment, which sounds like Bowie completely kicking Ferry's arse at his own game)

xxxp I'm amazed to hear that, though I've never really paid much attention to Ferry, he's been 'embarrassingly suave uncle' for as long as I've remembered. What was his influence?

― Andrew Farrell, Friday, January 15, 2016

The collision of an addled romantic sensibility + art school proto-punk band. Late Roxy was way more influential on New Romantics and sophisti-pop than early and middle though. The look too. You can't look at Chic album art and listen to some of their more refined songs and not think Roxy.

roxy influence was indeed vast. but without bowie being born roxy would have sounded like the stray cats. or a roy wood album.

Hrm fair point, his solo career (that I know, which obv. isn't much) has caused me to soak up the idea (which might or might not be received wisdom for people about my age - born 1975) that what was good and startling from Roxy came from Eno (and went into Bowie).

bowie begat ferry. roxy + bowie = 2/3 of the 80's.

― scott seward,

Ferry begat himself. Bowie was a massive fan, more generous than Ferry himself (who envied Bowie's American success).

The Stranded-Country Life sequence w/out Eno is startling in a different way and is my favorite (think the VU after Cale left).

* I meant Stranded-Siren.

Even Eno rates Stranded as the best/his favorite Roxy album.

i always forget how big New Romanticism was in the 80s. point taken.

i can see Ferry be more influential as a vocalist, with that postmodern crooning. its a lot cooler - Bowie didn't mind getting ugly from time to time. see "It's No Game".

Bowie-style vocals are probably harder to imitate without ending up sounding exactly like David Bowie.

Well, Bowie was quoted in the mid-70s to the effect that listening to Roxy (not Ferry alone) and Kraftwerk helped him remake/remodel his own music, and friends who went to his shows in that era mentioned that, sure enough, the walk-in music incl. Roxy and Kraftwerk (and more Krautrock, reggae/dub, VU, early Eno, but especially the first two, like whole sides);
The line about Eno being a "non-musician" (even an "un-musician" sometimes) got printed enough that it may have been in his press kit: the idea was that he ran around and past the rules, like all those bad boy operatives on TV and in the movies, then and now. And he made the point early on, that he saw the synthesizer, not as a gussied-up electric organ or piano, but as a way to texture the instruments of Roxy---an extension of the artist's palette, and he reminded us he was from art school, in the great 60s British rock tradition, but more so.
There's also this traditional thing in jazz, despite the emphasis on chops: "Your guy plays his instrument, my guy plays jazz." and "arranger's piano," with Gil Evans voluteering his own playing as an example, and asking us to overlook it.

okay they obviously influenced EACH OTHER for years. i just wonder if roxy would have been a different beast without bowie around? more king crimson-y? maybe they were both following the same path at the same time. even down to the martian zoot suit sax worship. that supreme style mashup of all style mashups.

In my listening experience Roxy trod a different, more consistent path. Manzanera and Mackay worked with Eno and Cale on collaborations. Roxy's debut doesn't sound much like The Man Who Sold the World to my ears. However, Ferry, more conservative than Bowie, tried to write his own eversion of the Great American Songbook; there's no wanderlust in him.

read somwhere that bowie did a cover of ladytron during the pin ups sessions? or maybe he thought about doing one? don't think it exists.

Roxy are just a step ahead of Bowie in some regards & they seem to be a catalyst or spur for him in that 72/3 moment, eg Drive-in Saturday sounds most obviously post-Roxy & he's ever so slightly behind Ferry with a covers album.

roxy's first album is much more a style mashup than ziggy stardust, released in the same month.

The interviews with Eno and Alomar in Five Years shed interesting light on the "musician"/"hey, I'm not a musician" divide. Alomar talked about Eno during Low randomly pointing to chords on a blackboard, with Alomar getting more and more annoyed; Eno spoke of feeling intimidated somewhat by the abilities of Alomar and Dennis Davis. All came out of it with new ideas about music-making that stuck with them ever since.

Tin Machine covered "If There Is Something."

Both Roxy and Bowie following the idea of art-pop (from the Beatles? But more consistently than the Beatles, who had so much overhead and internal strife, went back to striving for hits of universal appeal; still, they showed that weird tracks could be popular, without being taken solely as traditional novelty hits). Come to think of it, at the time of obvious cash-in, when so influential (the MTV Wave 80s), they both went away, never really came back except Roxy basically as oldies.

maybe i have it all backwards. maybe the first roxy album invented bowie. he really did love roxy. i just read somewhere that as ziggy was coming out he raved to all the papers about the 1st roxy album.

but the first Roxy Music came out in 1971, same year as Ziggy.

anyways, T-Rex is being left out of this equation

both 1972

yeah, they come out the same month (week?) iirc.

nice piece from Geeta (if this hasn't been posted already)

https://medium.com/@geetadayal/on-david-bowie-part-1-47066adc0640#.q5375pdjl

so did he have an advance copy? or i guess Roxy was playing around a bunch then?

ferry in the quietus:

“I was shy of collaboration in the past. When you start off your career, it’s always me me me. 'Oh no, I’ve got plenty of ideas, I don’t need anybody else to interfere.' If, say, David Bowie had said in ’73, 'Oh can we write together?' I’d have said no, I’m not interested.”

I got the sense/assumed in the mid-70s that he was especially impressed by the way Roxy developed, and maybe retained the lessons of Eno after he left, surging into the Stranded and Country Life era.

Yeah, he would have known them from the London music scene - & just checked wiki - there's press coverage and a BBC session in 71 too.

I do think he takes a lot from them - that insane eclectic/synthy/proggy retro-futurist Roxy thing that's there from the start doesn't line up quite with the Ziggy era - it maps better to later 70s Bowie

xpost And that those albums were hits! In the UK, anyway---and if he took it towards something a bit more American---big beats, bring back the guitars, only cooler....

And then Roxy sez, "Okay---Love is the drug, and I need to score," and they do, in America too.

Well, Ferry was around. Ferry was as influential as Bowie without being a generalist.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 January 2016 15:47 (52 minutes ago) Permalink

really? Ferry as influential as Bowie?

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, 15 January 2016 15:49 (50 minutes ago) Permalink

On British artists? Incalculable. Bowie and Ferry created the '80s. In America he's a nothing though.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 15 January 2016 15:51 (47 minutes ago) Permalink

Soto OTM. Include Kraftwerk in there, and you essentially have some kind of holy '70s trinity that were a huge influence on the following decade.

Ferry had the weirdest careers of anyone up until about 76...the madness of Roxy meets the white dinner jackets and the albums of standards, its totally unprecedented.

Alfred def correct there

fwiw Space Oddity did have a stylophone and was recorded in 1969. maybe Roxy and Eno got the idea for synth rock from Bowie

Would love to have had a Bowie/Ferry Avalon-like "Dancin' in the Streets."

Sorry if I've been dogmatic. Ferry actually means more to me than Bowie. I'm fully aware that when Ferry chokes on a martini olive the extent of his American coverage will mention he wrote "More Than This" and that Bill Murray sang it.

xxpost Ugh, one of the crappiest moldy oldies, even the original. Martha and the Vandellas just getting through it, understandably so. Main thing was the Days of Rage rabble-rousers (Weather Underground etc.) seized on it.

Bowie's singing in "Loving The Alien" and "As the World Falls Down" are full of Ferryisms