A year ago, David Bowie's public face was a mess. The Diamond Dog tour he'd recently completed had certainly been successful enough, but it was a case of Bowie preaching to the already-converted. At a time when Elton John was tearing the rock & roll demographic spread a new asshole, it was difficult to make a case for Bowie as the most fabulous star. His audience was still too specialized. And he was said to be nearly finished with an album that would be quite unlike anything that devoted audience might expect of him; a risky proposition at the very least. And there was trouble on the horizon at MainMan, the organization from which Tony DeFries launched a thousand Col. Tom Parkerisms in Bowie's name.

When the situation finally came to a head, it was often even more confusing than the rumors that preceded it. Bowie renounced DeFries and MainMan on the eve of the release of the Young Americans album, and the ousted manager retaliated by initiating a legal injunction to prevent the album's release. Though the injunction was lifted only a few days later, the action offered no promise of immediate relief from this complex business entanglement. Some contended that Bowie had walked away with his economic assets intact; others were the picture of conviction as they told you horror stories of DeFries making his escape with the cash and Bowie left with nothing. They were positive that was Bowie they'd seen, wasted and defeated, driving down Santa Monica Boulevard in a battered old Volkswagon. Really, now...

The Young Americans album itself was the source of much initial discomfort. It was so heavily r&b oriented that, at first listening, it was virtually indistinguishable from all the other disco muzak that had infested the airwaves. The point seemed seconded when the 'Young Americans' single, like so many other disco attractions, ran out of steam before it could get over the top. (England remains relatively indifferent to the album to this day, preferring to see Space Oddity at the top of the charts its third time around than any of that alien jungle music.) And, furthering what has now almost become a tradition, he swore that the road would never again claim him.

Out of all this chaos and uncertainty, some concrete action was finally generated. He made the plunge into cinema that had been forecast for years, taking the lead in a sci-fi romance called The Man Who Fell To Earth, directed by Nicholas Roeg (whose credits include participation in the filming of Performance). And just when it looked like he was turning his back on music, as he'd always stated that he eventually would, 'Fame' exploded off Young Americans to become his first #1 single in the States. This success did create the feared schism in his audience, but the repercussions weren't nearly as dramatic as some had predicted. As it turned out, many of the kids who'd danced and drooled to Bowie and Suzi Quatro at Rodney's had now graduated to heavier playschools, where they danced to whatever was playing. And what was playing was disco. David was right there.

The entanglement with Tony DeFries was ultimately resolved outside the courtroom, and Bowie immediately formed a production company called Bewlay Bros. to handle organization of the promised plethora of media projects he'd undertake. He mentioned film projects based on Ziggy Stardust and Young Americans and production on an album by his current guitarist Earl Slick, but when it came time to lay it all on the table, the first order of business was to break his oft-made promise never again to tour.

Bowie announced the tour via satellite hookup with English chatshow host Russell Harty. It commences of February 2nd, and in its 35 stops will hit nearly every North American market of major consequence. When the North American dates conclude in the last week of March, he catches a ship to Cannes and dives into a six-week European homecoming tour. When that winds down in early May, there's the release of The Man Who Fell To Earth and the attendant soundtrack album to pick up the pace again.

And somewhere in the midst of all of this there is an album. An album that, although a large portion of the customary Bowie buzz has been channeled toward the film and the tour, is nonetheless crucial to the momentum of his media assault. Bowie's first appreciable success was with his Ziggy Stardust persona, which carved out his specialized audience so intensely that he was trapped by it for the three years that followed. The break through he enjoyed in 1975 generated immediate sales and a widening demographic turf, but the novelty aspect of a Bowie r&b album fueled very little in the way of tangible expectations. Young Americans was a successful experiment, but rather than creating another entrapping persona, he had simply created an audience for his work that was apart and very different from his Ziggy army. So his task became not the creation of yet another persona, but the unification of an audience he'd divided by success. That's where the new album, Station To Station, fits in.

The great single, 'Golden Years', nutshells it effectively. The groove is obviously r&b inspired, but the treatment is rock & roll guitarband; people tell me I'm crazy, but I hear echoes of 'Gloria' right alongside the disco derivations. Nearly all of the songs retain an r&b sense of motion, but they all have additional references to other stations along Bowie's musical legacy. The title track comes off in part like Ziggy Stardust; 'Stay' takes a little from 'John I'm Only Dancing', and the strategic theme of the album as an introduction to a tour situation was exercised before with Diamond Dogs. The small band he utilizes here (and which will accompany him on the road) — Earl Slick/lead guitar, Carlos Alomar/rhythm guitar, George Murray/bass, Dennis Davis/drums — gives him his first real rock & roll continuity since the days of the Spiders From Mars.

What critics have always found lacking in Bowie's music was commitment. It's hard to imagine young David Jones hearing Elvis or Little Richard on the radio late at night and dedicating himself forever to rock & roll. Like any actor, his commitment was not to the form, but to his ability to manipulate that form to inspire commitment in his audience. He's done most of his previous posing as characters, but his filmwork has taken it beyond that; as an actor, he has to project the emotions that define character. Station To Station isn't a musical album as much as an emotional one; the question, as put in the title song, is "Who will connect me with love?" He offers sentiment more than scenario and, in 'Golden Years', seems to be offering his audience even a bit of reassurance and hope: "I'll stick with you baby for a thousand years/We can do it, all right, but we gotta get smart," The first step in getting smart is getting together, hence the unification moves that dominate Station To Station. It ties up all the loose ends.

This is not David Bowie's best album by any stretch of the imagination. It's mainly a stopping place where he can look at where he's been and collect his energy and audience for the next Big Move which his followers always expect him to make, and which Station To Station most assuredly is not. But with Bowie's talent and multidirectional work momentum, that Next Big Move won't necessarily be an album at al.

© Ben Edmonds 1976

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