“I’ll never forget something John Lennon told me,” David Bowie told Aussie journalist Molly Meldrum in 1983. “All you have to do is say what you mean, make it rhyme, and put a backbeat to it.” That may be an oversimplified view of songwriting, but who’s to argue with a Beatle (or David Bowie, for that matter)?
Videos by American Songwriter
Fame (fame) makes a man take things over
Fame (fame) lets him lose hard to swallow
Fame (fame) puts you there where things are hollow
Fame (fame)
Fame not your brain it’s just the flame
That puts your change to keep you sane (sane)
Fame (fame)
From The Flares to “Fame“
As Lennon told Bob Harris on The Old Grey Whistle Test, “I got to know David through Mick [Jagger], really. Although I’d met him once before. And next minute, he says, ‘Hello, John, I’m doing ‘Across the Universe,’ do you want to come on down? So I said, ‘Alright, you know I live here. I’ll pop down. I played rhythm. … We made this lick into a song, is what happened.”
The plan in the studio was to record a cover of the 1961 song “Foot Stomping” by The Flares. Guitarist and frequent Bowie collaborator Carlos Alomar worked up a riff for the song, and when Lennon and Bowie arrived at the studio, they started jamming on it. Soon they had an original song, and thus Alomar was given a third of the writing credit.
Fame (fame) what you like is in the limo
Fame (fame) what you get is no tomorrow
Fame (fame) what you need you have to borrow
Fame (fame)
Fame nein it’s mine is just his line
To bind our time, it drives you to crime (crime)
Fame (fame)
How to Make the Masses Like Art, Per John Lennon
“It came out of a conversation that we had,” Bowie shared with MTV in 1995. “He would rifle the avant-garde and look for ideas that were so on the outside, on the periphery of what was the mainstream, and then make them, apply them in a functional manner, to something that was considered populist and make it work. He would take the most odd idea and make it work for the masses. And I thought that was just so admirable. I mean, that was like making artwork for the people and not sort of having it as an elitist sort of thing. There was just so much about him I admired.”
Bowie was feeling his way through being a celebrity. The idea of being famous for the sake of being famous fascinated and scared him. Fame can be a vacuous thing, and Bowie and Lennon were both aware of it. Lennon started singing “Aim” while guitarist Carlos Alomar riffed to a beat. Bowie changed the word to “Fame,” and away they went.
[RELATED: 5 Rock Songs That Feature Famous Background Singers]
Lennon said they inverted a Stevie Wonder middle-eight, and the song as we know it was truly born. It would appear on his Young Americans album and go all the way to No. 1 on the singles chart, a first for him. Bowie would go on to sing “Fame” on Soul Train, becoming one of the first white performers on the show.
Could it be the best, could it be?
Really be, really, babe?
Could it be, my babe, could it, babe?
Could it, babe? Could it, babe?
What “Fame” Is Actually Getting at, Though: Managers Suck
Bowie is barking out his frustration with the concept of celebrity in general as well as his anger over his situation with manager Tony Defries. Some of the lyrics of “Fame” are aimed directly at Defries.
Is it any wonder I reject you first
Fame (fame) fame fame
Is it any wonder you are too cool to fool
Fame (fame)
Fame, bully for you, chilly for me
Got to get a rain check on pain
(Pain)
Bowie spoke to Performing Songwriter in 2003: “We’d been talking about management, and it kind of came out of that. He was telling me, ‘You’re being shafted by your present manager.’ That was basically the line. And John was the guy who opened me up to the idea that all management is crap. That there’s no such thing as good management in rock’ n’ roll, and you should try to do without it.
“It was at John’s instigation that I really did without managers and started getting people in to do specific jobs for me, rather than signing myself away to one guy forever and have him take a piece of everything that I earn, usually quite a large piece, and have him really not do very much. So if I needed a certain publishing thing done, I’d bring in a person who specialized in that area, and they would, on a one-job basis, work for me, and we’d reach the agreed fee. And I started to realize that if you’re bright, you kind of know your worth, and if you’re creative, you know what you want to do and where you want to go in that way.
“What extra thing is this manager supposed to do for you?” Bowie continued. “I suppose in the old days, it was ‘Get you breaks!’ I don’t quite know what managers are supposed to do, even. I think if you have even just a modicum of intelligence, you’re going to know what it is you are and where you want to go. Once you know that, you just bring in specific people for specialist jobs. You don’t have to end up signing your life away to some fool who’s just there kind of grabbing hold of the coattails.”
A Match Made in Heavenly NYC
Bowie used the line I heard the news today, oh boy in “Young Americans” as a nod to Lennon’s “A Day in the Life.” As he recorded his own version of “Across the Universe” on the album as well, it was only fitting that John Lennon took part in the sessions. He knew a bit about where Bowie came from, after all. He was known to say, “Glam rock is just rock ‘n’ roll with lipstick on.”
Photo by Tim Boxer/Archive Photos/Getty Images
