In 1975, David Bowie was over rock’n’roll. “I’ve gone through some pretty interesting changes”, he told NME’s Andrew O’Grady. “Rock’n’roll certainly hasn’t fulfilled its original promise… it’s just become one more whirling deity, right? Going around that never-decreasing circle. Rock’n’roll is dead. It’s a toothless old woman. It’s really embarrassing.”
What he was saying wasn’t a million miles away from what punk rockers would soon shout. But this was 1975, and Bowie had become a soul man. His blue-eyed – or as he put it, “plastic” – soul switched a generation of white boys on to the joy and pain of black music. His alleged inauthenticity was of no significance. He sang it, felt it, transmitted it. The listener was moved by the result, never mind the process.
