This year Radioinfo will take you back 50 years to the songs that charted in 1974. It was a mighty fine year for music.
David Bowie was a ground breaking chameleon of personal styles and genres across his five-decade career before his death in 2016. He has several major career pivots and sidesteps that must have bewildered fans expecting some sort of consistency.
1973 was the peak of Bowie’s glam Ziggy Stardust persona which had seen significant success in the UK (and Australia). Bowie was exhausted, unsure if he loved or loathed the character and well on the way toward cocaine addiction. He’d also co-produced Lou Reed‘s Transformer, mixed the Stooges’ Raw Power, gifted Mott and the Hoople his song All the Young Dudes and written and released his own Aladdin Sane (with the iconic lightning bolt painted on his face on the cover). With all the above going on his record label RCA pushed for another album and so, six months after Aladdin Sane, Bowie recorded Pin Ups, which was just covers of some of his favourite tracks from the mid to late 60s, including Friday on my Mind, by Australian band The Easybeats.
Bowie’s backing band was breaking up and Bowie himself was pivoting toward his Thin White Duke / plastic soul phase that would see him move to the US and find significant success there.
Pin Ups was rather an afterthought, by the man who overthought everything else. To make matters worse, Bryan Ferry, who has many creative and competitive overlaps with Bowie, also released an album of covers on the exact same day and was not especially impressed. Pin Ups was fairly poorly reviewed and never ranks highly among fans and critics. Only one single was released from it, Sorrow.
Before I get to Sorrow, that is British super model Twiggy on the cover with Bowie. She’d just returned from a sunny vacation and the ethereal face paint was done initially to lessen the contrast between them. Twiggy said it is possibly her favourite image and the one she’s best known for. It was going to be a Vogue cover but Vogue wasn’t sure they wanted a man as well as Twiggy. While they faffed around, Bowie put it on his album cover, which I’m sure Vogue later regretted.
With 50 years hindsight, the songs that Bowie chose to cover have all held up remarkably well. Sorrow charted in Australia in the 60s for one hit wonders The Merseys (a UK garage band who were performing in the Cavern Club alongside the Beatles) but the original, by US band The McCoys didn’t.
The McCoys, as a sidenote, are also a one hit wonder here with their glorious Hang On Sloopy. Sorrow was the B side to their follow up cover of the standard, Fever.
in 1974 David Bowie was working on his 8th album Young Americans. From it comes Rebel Rebel, which also charted in Australia in 1974, but I thought I’d select the underappreciated and wonderfully melancholy Sorrow instead.
I’ve included the motivation from David on the back of the album for his song choices (if you can read his scrawl). I picked this album up for $1 from a local op shop.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo.