Young Americans

Hey there Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has got David Bowie's "Young Americans" spinning right now from that same-named 1975 album, and man, does this track still hit different. It is pure plastic soul, as Bowie himself called it, a deliberate dive into Philly-style funk and R&B that caught everybody off guard after the glitter and glam of Ziggy. Recorded down at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia during a break in the Diamond Dogs tour, Bowie pulled in local players and turned the whole thing into this nervy sketch of American life. He told NME it was about a newlywed couple who do not really know if they like each other, well they do, but they do not know if they do or do not, a bit of a predicament. The opening line about pulling in just behind the fridge is actually a nod to a Peter Cook and Dudley Moore revue called Behind the Fridge that Bowie and producer Tony Visconti had caught in London the year before. Then there is the Beatles reference near the end with "I heard the news today, oh boy," and the whole thing was cut not long after Nixon resigned, so you get those lines about remembering your President Nixon and being the un-American. Luther Vandross, who was still mostly doing session work then, came up with the killer call-and-response hook on the chorus after Bowie overheard him and Robin Clark messing with the backgrounds. Bowie said his Young American was plastic on purpose, and it worked in a way he had not really expected, making him a star in America even though the invention was more plastic than anybody else's. David Sanborn is wailing on the sax, and the whole session had that late-night energy because Bowie liked recording vocals after midnight, figuring that is how Sinatra did it. The song charted solid in the States and the UK, and later Bowie took the whole plastic soul vibe onto Soul Train, one of the few white artists to get that invite back then. It is still one of those tracks that feels like a snapshot of mid-seventies America filtered through an Englishman's eyes, full of Mustangs, Cadillacs, Afro-sheen, and all that restless searching.

Bowie once said there was no big story, just young Americans, but the lyrics paint this impressionistic picture of youth, disappointment, and the bills you have to pay, with that falsetto cry at the end wondering if there is one damn song that can make him break down and cry. Carlos Alomar, who came on as guitarist and musical director, talked about how they had never heard this soulful side of Bowie before. The band jammed, Bowie added lines, and they kept pushing until it locked in. Visconti flew in from London after finishing another session and found Bowie pale and thin but already deep into the track with Mike Garson, Andy Newmark, Willie Weeks, and the rest. The vocals on the final mixes were often live because Visconti had this wild idea with out-of-phase mics to cancel the band bleed so Bowie could sing right in the room. Ava Cherry, who was around for a lot of those sessions, remembered how Bowie wanted to do soul after she played him Aretha, Michael Jackson, and Marvin Gaye all the time, and she helped connect him with the Philly scene. The album as a whole was this radical reinvention, and the title track set the tone for the whole plastic soul experiment that carried over into Station to Station. Even years later Bowie looked back and said they worked really hard to make that record come alive, and the resonance was undeniable even if it was more invention than pure authenticity.

Before all that plastic soul and the Ziggy stardust explosion, David Robert Jones was just a kid from Brixton born in 1947 who picked up the saxophone at thirteen after getting inspired by the jazz scene around London's West End. He took lessons from Ronnie Ross and started playing in school bands. By fifteen he was in the Kon-rads, then jumped to the King Bees, the Manish Boys, and Davey Jones and the Lower Third, putting out a few singles that mostly went nowhere. He worked as a commercial artist on the side while chasing the music. The name change to Bowie came in 1966 so he would not get mixed up with Davy Jones of the Monkees, and he took it from the knife carried by that American frontier guy Jim Bowie. Early on he was into mods and music hall, then dipped into Buddhism for a stretch in a Scottish monastery, studied mime with Lindsay Kemp, and even ran his own short-lived mime company. The breakthrough single Space Oddity arrived in 1969, written after he saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and got properly freaked out by the trip sequence. That one hit in the UK and finally convinced him to go all in on the music. He hooked up with old friend Marc Bolan, started the Beckenham Arts Lab, and by the early seventies had teamed with Mick Ronson, who was still working as a gardener when Bowie's drummer tracked him down. Those first few years were all about trying on different styles, from the bluesy early singles to the more theatrical stuff, until the whole Ziggy persona took off in 1972 and changed everything. That restless shape-shifting was already there from the start, the same curiosity that later had him chasing Philly soul down in Sigma Sound.

You can dig deeper into all of this over at the official David Bowie website, where they have whole pages on the Young Americans era and the 50th anniversary looks back. The man is also active on the official Facebook page, the official Instagram, and the official X account under DavidBowieReal, where the estate keeps the catalog and the stories going. For the dedicated fans there is the long-running Bowie Wonderworld site packed with lyrics, press archives, and deep dives that cover the Young Americans album from every angle, plus active groups like the DAVID BOWIE Support Group over on Facebook where Zoo Freaks and Bowie heads swap stories. All of it fits right in with what we do here at THE ZOO, spinning the deep cuts and the classics for the freeform rock audience that still wants the real stories behind the records. The Zoo Crew will keep the vinyl turning and the tales rolling as long as the Freaks are listening.