Although the liner notes add a bit of spin to the proposition that Ziggy Stardust morphing into Blue (and Green) Eyed Soulboy was as wrong footing and unpredictable as Radiohead doing reggae, the comparison is not as crass as it looks. Anyone who remembers Radiohead mailing out the first promos of Kid A are likely to recall just how bloody inflexible the vast majority of us were at the proposition of the world’s finest guitar band downing their picks and going all weird and arty. In an era that still hadn’t really embraced electronica with any real warmth or commitment, it was not unlike Pink Floyd becoming a Punk band, in that there was a sense of quiet desperation, not to mention disbelief, about the whole balmy project. What do you do when you’ve produced the best album of your career in the time it takes most bands fall out of their transit-van for their first gig? You panic, that’s what you do. And not in Detroit this time – but in Philadelphia.
Recorded between November ’74 and January ’75 after Bowie’s Halloween Jack trashed glam with the monster riffing Rebel Rebel and the strangely raucous Diamond Dogs LP, Young Americans saw Bowie put the final nail in the coffin for Ziggy and quickly douse the punkish flames that rose from ‘Dogs’ at his cremation. Not entirely challenged by the post-Ziggy formula of ‘Dogs’ and starved of the theatrical dare afforded by previous incarnations, Bowie did what any self-respecting ‘chameleon of rock’ would do in his circumstances: he tore up a rulebook he’d already conclusively shredded and altered course, choosing a route so devilishly uncool, so frightfully neglected and so perfectly set for revival that it seemed the boldest statement a cultural icon could make short of putting a shotgun to his head and pulling the trigger. And it was a lot less messy too.
So what we have here is lots of Barry White malarkey, right? Loads of Philadelphia strings? Lots of shag carpet? Lots of love from a good woman? Well no, not really. Histrionics aside (and those are considerable, let’s face it) with the exception of saxy slo-groovers like ‘Can You Hear Me’ and the rich velvet seam of black backing vox that lines it like the interior of a porn star’s stretch-limo, ‘Young Americans’ is a funky affair, chaffing and flashing like strobes (‘Fascination’), panting like a nympho (‘Right’), pouting like a rainbow (‘Across The Universe’) and culminating in that slithering sleight-of-hand, ‘Fame’ co-starring John Lennon and Carlos Alomar and literally purring with sleaze and satisfaction.
Shock-tactics are a relative phenomenon at best. Sometimes even the vilest and most grotesque courses of action yield the smallest amount of surprise and the most local of manoeuvres shake the firmest of foundations. Popular music in Britain at this time may have been no World Trade Centre, but it collapsed just as spectacularly on the impact of this light (and plastic) aircraft.
This 2-disc CD/DVD set includes the entire album plus bonus tracks in 5:1 Surround Sound and a selection of rare footage from Bowie’s appearences on the Dick Cavett Show.