Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

otherhood, and as a result he comes very close to
enjoying one. Black listeners accepted this tribute in
the right spirit.
Song by song, Young Americans is played so
enthusiastically that no by-the-hour house band could
re-create such sonic buoyancy. The European as
s o ul fan and not soul man is the liberating
ingredient. “He would always unblock a musician,”
Alomar says, “and allow him his freedom of
expression without losing sight of the musicians’
effect on the song. As an example, if you played
guitar and you had Jimi Hendrix as the guitarist,
would you show him what to play or would you give
him a general idea of what the song needed and
then adjust his performance to fit the song? Bowie
always allowed every musician that freedom. He
would play a version of a song on piano, guitar,
synth, anything he could use to exact the effect he
needed. It was glorious.”
Reviews were largely positive as well. Lester
Bangs, who had previously singled out “Time takes a
cigarette,” the opening lyric from “Rock and Roll
Suicide,” as the worst ever penned, immediately
saw the album as another in a long line of hipster
white guys worshipping black culture and put it in
smart context. “Now, as we all know, white hippies
and beatniks before them would never have existed
had there not been a whole generational subculture
with a gnawing yearning to be nothing less than the
downest baddest niggers they could possibly be.
And of course it was only exploding plastic inevitable