As a Lennon fan who's never really got into Bowie (despite a few attempts), this song fascinates me - I first heard it when I was starting to discover musical taste of my own and it blew me away - such a great, funky, song, but it never gets mentioned in anything I read about Lennon. What's the story behind this? Did they record it together? Did they write any other songs together?

Not the story behind the Fame collab (i'm pretty sure Anxiety will come up with that) but I thought it was an interesting take on John Lennon.


From a speech David Bowie gave to the Berklee College of Music's Class of 1999...

It's impossible for me to talk about popular music without mentioning probably my greatest mentor, John Lennon. I guess he defined for me, at any rate, how one could twist and turn the fabric of pop and imbue it with elements from other artforms, often producing something extremely beautiful, very powerful and imbued with strangeness. Also, uninvited, John would wax on endlessly about any topic under the sun and was over-endowed with opinions. I immediately felt empathy with that. Whenever the two of us got together it started to resemble Beavis and Butthead on "Crossfire."

The seductive thing about John was his sense of humor. Surrealistically enough, we were first introduced in about 1974 by Elizabeth Taylor. Miss Taylor had been trying to get me to make a movie with her. It involved going to Russia and wearing something red, gold and diaphanous. Not terribly encouraging, really. I can't remember what it was called -- it wasn't On the Waterfront, anyway, I know that.

We were in LA, and one night she had a party to which both John and I had been invited. I think we were polite with each other, in that kind of older-younger way. Although there were only a few years between us, in rock and roll that's a generation, you know? Oh boy, is it ever.

So John was sort of [in Liverpool accent] "Oh, here comes another new one." And I was sort of, "It's John Lennon! I don't know what to say. Don't mention the Beatles, you'll look really stupid."

And he said, "Hello, Dave." And I said, "I've got everything you've made -- except the Beatles."

A couple of nights later we found ourselves backstage at the Grammys where I had to present "the thing" to Aretha Franklin. Before the show I'd been telling John that I didn't think America really got what I did, that I was misunderstood. Remember that I was in my 20s and out of my head.

So the big moment came and I ripped open the envelope and announced, "The winner is Aretha Franklin." Aretha steps forward, and with not so much as a glance in my direction, snatches the trophy out of my hands and says, "Thank you everybody. I'm so happy I could even kiss David Bowie." Which she didn't! And she promptly spun around swanned off stage right. So I slunk off stage left.

And John bounds over and gives me a theatrical kiss and a hug and says "See, Dave. America loves ya."

We pretty much got on like a house on fire after that.

He once famously described glam rock as just rock and roll with lipstick on. He was wrong of course, but it was very funny.

Towards the end of the 70s, a group of us went off to Hong Kong on a holiday and John was in, sort of, house-husband mode and wanted to show Sean the world. And during one of our expeditions on the back streets a kid comes running up to him and says, "Are you John Lennon?" And he said, "No but I wish I had his money." Which I promptly stole for myself.

[imitating a fan] "Are you David Bowie?"

No, but I wish I had his money.

It's brilliant. It was such a wonderful thing to say. The kid said, "Oh, sorry. Of course you aren't," and ran off. I thought, "This is the most effective device I've heard."

I was back in New York a couple of months later in Soho, downtown, and a voice pipes up in my ear, "Are you David Bowie?" And I said, "No, but I wish I had his money."

"You lying bastard. You wish you had my money." It was John Lennon.

http://www.berklee.edu/op...508-2.html
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tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

great story.

sosgemini said:

Very dope...

From Rocky Mountain News - January 17, 2004...

Bowie link with Lennon builds 'Fame'

Special to the News

David Bowie and John Lennon hung out a lot in the '70s, but share only one songwriting credit: Fame, Bowie's first number-one hit. How did that one-off come about, and why did it stop?

"John was hanging out. It was one of those hanging-out sessions so much a part of the '70s," Bowie told the News. "He said 'Hey, why don't we do something?' I said 'OK, you're on.' Then I (thought) 'Oh (damn), what do we do? How do you write something with a Beatle?'"

Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar had come up with a riff they'd been doing in a cover of the old '50s Flares tune, Foot Stomping.

"We immediately started doing that. John was just playing along with it, and every now and again he'd go 'AYYMM!!' And I said 'I got it, I got it!' And I just put an F in front of it Fame! We were off and running from there."

Lennon wrote the chords, Alomar the roaring guitar line and Bowie filled in the lyrics and the lower guitar parts.

"I really wish, obviously, in hindsight that we'd done more work together. It was such a joy being in the studio with him. I wonder what we would have done," he said. "But we were having too much of a laugh. Most of the time we spent together was pure stupidity. There wasn't much work going on at all, as you can imagine."

BowieWonderworld.com "Press Archives":
http://www.bowiewonderwor...lennon.htm
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tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

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Great stories!!





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paligap said:

yep. Thanx for posting that, Aud. "Fame" is in my top 5 Favorite songs by anyone, ever, in the history of humans.

Thanks for posting these stories. I also found Wikipedia's entry about the song to be interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...ie_song%29

Great stories - thanks

Made me go off and find the footage of Aretha accepting the award. A damn good year for music

http://www.youtube.com/wa...JkOCEVjwQo

Sly said:

cha know...she said it in a nice and loving way...

and she even leans in to let him kiss her....

Thats my favorite part. Great story!