Station to Station is the tenth
studio album by English musician
David Bowie, released by
RCA Records in 1976. Commonly regarded as one of
his most significant works,
Station to Station is also
notable as the vehicle for Bowie's last great 'character',
The Thin White Duke. The album was
recorded after he completed shooting
Nicolas Roeg's
The Man Who Fell to
Earth, and the cover featured a still from the movie.
During the sessions Bowie was heavily dependent on drugs,
especially
cocaine, and recalls almost
nothing of the production.
Musically,
Station to Station was a transitional album for
Bowie, developing the
funk and
soul music of his previous release,
Young Americans, while
presenting a new direction towards
synthesizers and
motorik
rhythms that was influenced by German
electronic bands such as
Kraftwerk and
Neu!. This trend
would culminate in some of his most acclaimed work, the so-called
Berlin Trilogy, recorded with
Brian Eno in 1977–79. Bowie himself has
said that
Station to Station was "a plea to come back to
Europe for me". The album’s lyrics, meanwhile, reflected his
preoccupations with
Nietzsche,
Aleister Crowley,
mythology and
religion.
With its blend of funk and
Krautrock,
romantic balladry and
occultism,
Station to Station has been described as "simultaneously
one of Bowie's most accessible albums and his most impenetrable".
Featuring the single "
Golden
Years", it made the Top 5 in both the UK and US charts. In
2003, the album was ranked number 323 on
Rolling Stone magazine's list of
the 500 greatest albums of
all time.
Background
According
to biographer David Buckley, the Los Angeles
-based Bowie, fuelled by an "astronomic" cocaine habit and subsisting on a diet of peppers and milk, spent much of 1975–76 "in a state
of psychic terror". Stories—mostly from one interview,
pieces of which found their way into
Playboy and
Rolling Stone—circulated of the singer
living in a house full of ancient-Egyptian artefacts, burning black
candles, seeing bodies fall past his window, having his
semen stolen by witches, receiving secret messages
from
The Rolling Stones, and
living in morbid fear of fellow
Aleister Crowley aficionado
Jimmy Page. Bowie would later say of L.A., "The
fucking place should be wiped off the face of the earth".
It was on the set of his first major film,
The Man Who Fell to
Earth, that Bowie began writing a pseudo-autobiography
called
The Return of the Thin White Duke. He was also
composing music on the understanding that he was to provide the
picture's soundtrack, though this would not come to fruition.
Director
Nicolas Roeg warned the star
that the part of Thomas Jerome Newton would likely remain with him
for some time after production completed. With Roeg's agreement,
Bowie developed his own look for the film, and this carried through
to his public image and onto two album covers over the next twelve
months, as did Newton's air of fragility and aloofness.
The Thin White Duke became the
mouthpiece for
Station to Station and, as often as not
during the next six months, for Bowie himself. Impeccably dressed
in white shirt, black trousers and waistcoat, The Duke was a hollow
man who sang songs of romance with an agonised intensity while
feeling nothing, "ice masquerading as fire". The persona has been
described as "a mad aristocrat", "an amoral zombie", and "an
emotionless
Aryan superman". For
Bowie himself, The Duke was "a nasty character indeed".
Production
Station to Station was recorded at
Cherokee Studios, Los
Angeles
. In 1981,
NME
editors
Roy Carr and
Charles Shaar Murray surmised that it
was cut—"in 10 days of feverish activity"—when Bowie decided that
there was no hope of his producing a soundtrack for
The Man Who
Fell to Earth. More recent authorship contends that the album
was recorded over a couple of months, in October–November 1975, and
was in the can before Bowie began his abortive sessions on the
soundtrack.
At various times to be titled
The Return of The Thin White
Duke, or
Golden Years,
Station to Station
was co-produced by Harry Maslin, Bowie's associate for "
Fame" and "
Across the Universe" on
Young Americans.
Tony Visconti, who after a three-year absence
had recently returned to the Bowie fold mixing
Diamond Dogs and co-producing
David Live and
Young Americans, was
not involved due to competing schedules. However, the recording did
cement the band line-up that would see Bowie through the rest of
the decade, with bassist
George
Murray joining
Young Americans drummer
Dennis Davis and rhythm guitarist
Carlos Alomar.
The recording process developed with this team set the pattern for
Bowie's albums up to and including
Scary Monsters in
1980: backing tracks laid down by Murray, Davis and Alomar; sax,
keyboard and lead guitar overdubs (here by Bowie,
Roy Bittan and
Earl
Slick, respectively); lead vocals; and finally various
production tricks to complete the song. According to Bowie, "I got
some quite extraordinary things out of Earl Slick. I think it
captured his imagination to make
noises on guitar, and
textures, rather than playing the right notes." Alomar recalled,
"It was one of the most glorious albums that I've ever done ... We
experimented so much on it". Harry Maslin added, "I loved those
sessions because we were totally open and experimental in our
approach".
Bowie himself remembers almost nothing of the album's production,
not even the studio, later admitting, "I know it was in LA because
I've read it was". The singer was not alone in his use of cocaine
during the sessions, Carlos Alomar commenting, "if there's a line
of coke which is going to keep you awake till 8 a.m. so that you
can do your guitar part, you do the line of coke ... the coke use
is driven by the inspiration." Like Bowie, Earl Slick had somewhat
vague memories of the recording: "That album's a little fuzzy – for
the obvious reasons! We were in the studio and it was nuts – a lot
of hours, a lot of late nights."
Style and themes
Station to Station is often cited as a transitional album
in Bowie's career.
Nicholas Pegg,
author of
The Complete David Bowie, called it a "precise
halfway point on the journey from
Young Americans to
Low", while for
Roy
Carr and
Charles Shaar
Murray, it "effectively divides the '70's for David Bowie. It
ties off the era of
Ziggy
Stardust and plastic soul, and introduces the first taste of
the new music that was to follow with 'Low'."
In terms of Bowie's own output,
Station to Station's
Euro-centric flavour had its musical antecedents in tracks like
"
Aladdin Sane 1913-1938-197?"
and "
Time" (1973), while its
funk/
disco elements were a
development of the
soul/
R&B sound of
Young Americans
(1975). More recently Bowie had begun to soak up the influence of
German
motorik and
electronic music by bands like
Neu!,
Can and
Kraftwerk. Thematically the album revisited
concepts dealt with in songs such as "
The
Supermen" from
The Man Who Sold the
World (1970) and "
Quicksand" from
Hunky Dory (1971):
Nietzsche's '
Overman', the
occultism of
Aleister
Crowley,
Nazi fascination with
Grail mythology, and the
Kabbalah. Pegg considered the album's theme to be a
clash of "occultism and Christianity".
The musical style of "
Golden
Years", the first track recorded for the album, built on the
funk and soul of
Young Americans but with a harsher,
grinding edge. It has been described as carrying with it "an air of
regret for missed opportunities and past pleasures". Bowie said
that it was written for—and rejected by—
Elvis Presley, while Bowie's wife at the time
Angie claimed it was penned for her.
Though a Top 10 single on both sides of the Atlantic, it was rarely
performed live on the subsequent
Station to Station tour.
"
Stay" was another
riff-driven funk piece, "recorded very much in our cocaine frenzy",
according to Alomar. Its lyrics have been variously interpreted as
reflecting on "the uncertainty of sexual conquest", and as an
example of "the Duke's spurious romanticism".
The Christian element of the album was most obvious in the
hymn-like "Word on a Wing", though for some commentators religion,
like love, was simply another way for the Duke to "test his
numbness". Bowie himself has claimed that in this song, at least,
"the passion is genuine". When performing it live in 1999, the
singer described it as coming from "the darkest days of my life ...
I'm sure that it was a call for help". The closing ballad,
"
Wild Is the Wind", was the
album's sole cover, and has been praised as one of the finest vocal
performances of Bowie's career. Bowie was inspired to record the
song after he met singer/pianist/songwriter
Nina Simone, who sang it on the album
Wild Is the Wind
(1966).
The spectre of
The Man Who Fell to Earth's Thomas Jerome
Newton sprawled in front of dozens of television monitors is said
to have partly inspired the album's most upbeat track, "
TVC15". Supposedly also about
Iggy
Pop's girlfriend being eaten by a TV set, it has been called
"incongruously jolly" and "the most oblique tribute to
The Yardbirds imaginable".
The title track has been described as heralding "a new era of
experimentalism" for Bowie. "
Station to Station" was in two
parts: a slow, portentous piano-driven march, introduced by the
sound of an approaching train juxtaposed with Earl Slick's agitated
guitar
feedback, followed by an up-tempo
rock/blues section. In 1999 Bowie told
UNCUT magazine, "Since Station To
Station the hybridization of R&B and electronics had been a
goal of mine". Despite the noise of a train in the opening moments,
Bowie claims that the title refers not so much to railway stations
as to the
Stations of the
Cross, while the line "From
Kether to
Malkuth" relates to mystical places in the
Kabbalah, mixing Christian and Jewish
allusions. Fixation with the occult was further evident in such
phrases as "
white stains", the name of
a book of poetry by Aleister Crowley. The lyrics also gave notice
of Bowie's recent drug use ("It's not the side effects of the
cocaine / I'm thinking that it must be love"). With its
Krautrock influence, it was the album's clearest
foretaste of Bowie's subsequent '
Berlin
Trilogy'.
Speaking to
Creem magazine in 1977,
Bowie proclaimed that
Station to Station was "devoid of
spirit ... Even the love songs are detached, but I think it's
fascinating."
Singles and unreleased tracks
Every song on
Station to Station, with the exception of
the title track, eventually appeared on a
single. "Golden Years" was released in
November 1975, two months before the album. Bowie allegedly got
drunk to perform it on TV for the American show
Soul Train, resulting in the film clip seen
on
music video programmes. It made
number 8 in the UK and number 10 in the US (where it charted for 16
weeks) but, like "
Rebel Rebel"'s
relationship to
Diamond Dogs
(1974), was a somewhat unrepresentative teaser for the album to
come.
"TVC15" was released in edited form as the second single in May
1976, making number 33 in the UK and number 64 stateside. "Stay",
also shortened and appearing the same month, was issued as a
companion 45 to RCA's
ChangesOneBowie greatest hits
collection, though it did not appear on the compilation
(
ChangesOneBowie was itself packaged as a uniform edition
to
Station to Station, featuring a black-and-white cover
and similar lettering). In November 1981, as Bowie's relationship
with RCA was winding down, "Wild Is the Wind" was issued as a
single to push the
ChangesTwoBowie compilation. Backed
with "Word on a Wing" and accompanied by a video shot especially
for the release, it made number 24 in the UK and charted for 10
weeks.
Another song purportedly recorded during the album sessions at
Cherokee Studios, a cover of
Bruce
Springsteen's "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City", went
unreleased at the time but was issued in 1990 on the
Sound and Vision box
set. According to Nicholas Pegg, however, the Cherokee work most
likely consisted of overdubs to a track originally cut at
Sigma Sound Studios during
Young
Americans.
Release and reception
Station to Station was released in January 1976. The
sleeve was originally to have featured a full-colour still from
The Man Who Fell to
Earth. However Bowie rejected the colour cover, claiming
the sky looked artificial ("Since when has that ever stopped him
from doing anything?", asked
NME's Roy Carr and Charles
Shaar Murray later). The album was duly released with the same
picture cropped in
black-and-white;
it was not until
Rykodisc reissued Bowie's
catalogue in the early 1990s that the colour version was
restored.
Billboard considered
that Bowie had "found his musical niche" following songs like
"
Fame" and "Golden Years"
but that "the 10-minute title cut drags".
NME called it "one of the most significant albums
released in the last five years". Both found the meaning of the
lyrics difficult to fathom.
Rolling
Stone applauded the album's 'rockier' moments but
discerned a move away from the genre, finding it "the thoughtfully
professional effort of a style-conscious artist whose ability to
write and perform demanding rock & roll exists comfortably
alongside his fascination for diverse forms ... while there's
little doubt about his skill, one wonders how long he'll continue
wrestling with rock at all."
Circus, noting that Bowie
was "never one to maintain continuity in his work or in his life",
declared that
Station to Station "offers cryptic,
expressionistic glimpses that let us feel the contours and
palpitations of the masquer's soul but never fully reveal his
face." The review also found various allusions to earlier Bowie
efforts, such as the "density" of
The Man Who Sold the
World, the "pop feel" of
Hunky
Dory, the "dissonance and angst" of
Aladdin Sane, the "compelling percussion"
of
Young Americans,
and the "youthful mysticism" of "
Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud",
concluding that "it shows Bowie pulling out on the most challenging
leg of his winding journey".
Station to Station was, and remains, Bowie's
highest-charting album in the US, reaching number 3 and remaining
for 32 weeks. It was
certified gold by the
RIAA on 26
February 1976. In the UK, it charted for 17 weeks, peaking at
number 5, the last time one of his studio albums placed lower in
his home country than in America.
Aftermath
With the
Station to Station sessions completed in December
1975, Bowie started work on a soundtrack for
The Man Who Fell
to Earth with
Paul Buckmaster
as his collaborator. Bowie expected to be wholly responsible for
the film's music but found that "when I’d finished five or six
pieces, I was then told that if I would care to submit my music
along with some other people's... and I just said "Shit, you're not
getting any of it". I was so furious, I’d put
so much work
into it." However Harry Maslin contended that Bowie was "burned
out" and couldn't complete the work in any case. The singer
eventually collapsed, admitting later, "There were pieces of me
laying all over the floor". In the event, only one instrumental
composed for the soundtrack saw the light of day, evolving into
"
Subterraneans" on his next studio
album,
Low.
Bowie on stage in Toronto, 1976
After abandoning the soundtrack album, Bowie went
on tour in support of Station to
Station, commencing 2 February 1976 and completing on 18
May 1976.
Kraftwerk's "
Radioactivity" was employed as an
overture to the shows, accompanying footage from
Luis Buñuel's and
Salvador Dali's
surrealist film "
Un
Chien Andalou". The staging featured Bowie, dressed in The
Duke's habitual black waistcoat and trousers, a pack of
Gitanes placed ostentatiously in his pocket, moving
stiffly among "curtains of white light", an effect that spawned the
nickname 'the White Light Tour'. In 1989 Bowie reflected, "I wanted
to go back to a kind of
Expressionist German-film look ... and
the lighting of, say,
Fritz Lang or
Pabst. A black-and-white movies
look, but with an intensity that was sort of aggressive. I think
for me, personally, theatrically, that was the most successful tour
I’ve ever done."
The Station to Station tour was the
source of one of the artist's best-known bootlegs, culled from an FM radio broadcast of his 23 March 1976
concert at Nassau Coliseum
.
Bowie drew criticism during the tour for his alleged pro-
fascist views. In a 1974 interview he had declared,
"
Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock
stars ... quite as good as
Jagger ... He
staged a country", but managed to avoid condemnation. On the
Station to Station tour, however, a series of incidents
attracted publicity, starting in April 1976 with his detention by
customs in
Eastern
Europe for possession of
Nazi
memorabilia.
The same month he was quoted in Stockholm
as saying that "Britain could benefit from a
Fascist leader". Bowie would blame his addictions and the
persona of The Thin White Duke for his lapses in judgment.
The
controversy culminated on 2 May 1976, shortly before the tour
completed, in the so-called 'Victoria Station
incident' in London
, when Bowie
arrived in an open-top Mercedes
convertible and apparently gave a Nazi
salute to the crowd that was captured on film and published in
NME. Bowie claimed that the
photographer simply caught him in mid-wave, a contention backed by
a young
Gary Numan who was among the
throng that day: "Think about it. If a photographer takes a whole
motor-driven film of someone doing a wave, you will get a Nazi
salute at the end of each arm-sweep. All you need is some dickhead
at a music paper or whatever to make an issue out it ..." The
stigma remained, however, to the extent that the lines "To be
insulted by these fascists/It's so degrading" from
Scary Monsters'
opening track "
It's No Game", four
years later, were interpreted as an attempt to bury the incident
once and for all.
Legacy
Station to Station was a milestone in Bowie's transition
to his late-1970s '
Berlin Trilogy'.
Bowie himself has said of the album, "As far as the music goes,
Low and its siblings were a direct follow-on from the
title track", while
Brian Eno opined that
Low was "very much a continuation from
Station to
Station". It has also been described as "enormously
influential on
post-punk".
Roy Carr and
Charles Shaar Murray wrote in 1981, "If
Low was
Gary Numan's Bowie's
album, then
Station to Station was
Magazine's." However,
Stylus declared in 2004 that "just as
few had anticipated Bowie’s approach, few copied it ... for the
most part this is an orphaned, abandoned style".
In 1999, music biographer David Buckley described
Station to
Station as a "masterpiece of invention" that "some critics
would argue, perhaps unfashionably, is his finest record". The same
year, Eno called it "one of the great records of all time". In
2003, the album was ranked number 323 on
Rolling Stone magazine's list of
the 500 greatest albums of
all time. A year later,
The
Observer ranked the album number 80 on its list of the 100
greatest British albums.
Track listing
All songs written by
David Bowie except
where noted.
Original LP release
Side one
- "Station to Station" –
10:14
- "Golden Years" – 4:00
- "Word on a Wing" – 6:03
Side two
- "TVC 15" – 5:33
- "Stay" – 6:15
- "Wild Is the Wind"
(Ned Washington, Dimitri Tiomkin) – 6:02
CD releases
The album has been re-released four times to date on
CD, the first being in 1985 by
RCA with the original
black-and-white cover art, the second in
1991 by
Rykodisc (containing two bonus
tracks), the third in 1999 by
EMI (featuring
24-bit digitally remastered sound and no bonus tracks), and finally
in 2007 by EMI Japan replicating the original vinyl artwork. In
2009 it was announced that a
deluxe
edition would be released in 2010, including a
Dolby 5.1 mix of the album and the entire 1976
Nassau Coliseum show on two CDs.
1991 reissue bonus tracks
Recorded
at Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York
.
- "Word on a Wing" (live) – 6:10
- "Stay" (live) – 7:24
2010 bonus discs
5.1 surround sound mix.
- "Station to Station"
- "Golden Years"
- "Word on a Wing"
- "TVC 15"
- "Stay"
- "Wild Is the Wind"
Uniondale, Nassau Veteran's Memorial Coliseum, 23 March 1976.
- "Station to Station"
- "Suffragette City"
- "Fame"
- "Word on a Wing"
- "Stay"
- "Waiting for the Man"
- "Queen Bitch"
- "Life on Mars?"
- "Five Years"
- "Panic in Detroit" (with most of drum solo edited out)
- "Changes" (with band intro)
- "TVC 15"
- "Diamond Dogs"
- "Rebel Rebel"
- "The Jean Genie"
Personnel
Musicians
Production
Charts
Album
Single
| Year |
Single |
Chart |
Peak
position |
| 1975 |
"Golden Years" |
UK Singles Chart |
8 |
| "Golden Years" |
US Billboard Pop Singles |
10 |
| 1976 |
"Golden Years" |
Netherland's singles chart |
6 |
| "Golden Years" |
Sweden's singles chart |
10 |
| "Stay"/"Golden Years" |
US Billboard Club Play Singles |
9 |
| "TVC 15" |
Sweden's singles chart |
18 |
| "TVC 15" |
UK Singles Chart |
33 |
| "TVC 15" |
US Billboard Pop Singles |
64 |
| 1981 |
"Wild Is the Wind" |
UK Singles Chart |
24 |
Notes
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