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pulled in just behind the bridge. He lays her down, he
frowns, “Gee my life’s a funny thing” …’. The backing
might have been funky, but the lyrical style was a
straight lift from Bruce Springsteen, whom David and
Geoff had seen back at Max’s. To make the
homage even more specific, David had laid down a
cover of Bruce’s ‘It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City’,
which he delivered in his new, baritone croon, a kind
of cross between Elvis, Sinatra and Bryan Ferry.
During the session, Tony Visconti discovered Bruce
lived nearby – in a caravan, he remembers – and
they invited the New Jersey singer down to the
studio. Bruce was puzzled, confused that this English
glam singer was covering one of his songs and
praising him so extravagantly; in the end David’s
enthusiasm won him over, and they talked about
music late into the night.
Although on many other songs the soul element
was low-key and understated, the title track of
Young Americans was self-consciously funky, a
statement of intent. Exactly as he had done with
Ziggy, David was ‘repositioning the brand’, as Dai
Davies put it. But the move was intuitive, not
calculated, says Ava Cherry. ‘He was so happy
doing this – it was simply living out what he wanted
to be, living out a dream.’
Several tracks from those sessions illustrated that
Bowie’s love for the music he was channelling was
deep and heartfelt, notably the astonishing ‘It’s
Gonna Be Me’. It’s a gloriously stark, slow eight-bar
blues, backdropped by Mike Garson’s minimal
piano. David cajoles, sketching out image after