I grew up in South London, a short bus ride from the Brixton home where Bowie was born. Strolling across the road to get to the tube I walk past the cosmic, spectral-coloured mural that marks his connection to his hometown. Bowie spent his adolescence at a house not far from the Bromley Glades, my nearest big shopping centre. One of my teachers at school even had Bowie as his babysitter as a child.

“His music is oceanic and operatic, constantly dancing on the edge of chaos to craft something starkly new”

Everyone hates being forced in small talk to choose their favourite artist, but I suspect most of us deep down know our answer. I love Bowie more than any other artist for his versatility, for his emotional and philosophical depth. A constant enigma, he inhabited so many selves and speaks to every emotion, every fear we have. His music is oceanic and operatic, constantly dancing on the edge of chaos to craft something starkly new.

It is bizarre to think that such a well of artistic inspiration could have sprung up amidst ordinary streets I walk every week. That said, South London has a unique buzz; there is always something going on, always someone new and interesting to encounter. Perhaps only a place like this could begin to contain the legacy of such an effervescent musical personality.

This March, Bowie’s album Young Americans turns fifty. The album contains his first US number one single ‘Fame’ which regularly appears alongside the title track on greatest hits compilations of Bowie’s work. It also charted second on the UK albums chart. Despite this, given the breadth of Bowie’s back catalogue, it is rarely seen among the albums vying to be considered his magnum opus, falling between his two greatest creative periods: the Ziggy Stardust period which contained The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory and the Berlin period which produced Station to Station and Low.

Nevertheless, the album is unfairly overlooked: it is one of the most consequential for his artistic development. Bowie is known as a self-fashioning, ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic innovator. Yet, the evolution in his artistry in Young Americans is primarily shaped not by the desire to be a shapeshifter in its own right but by the process of opening oneself up to learning from others.

“It is a short album, and lacks the aesthetic breadth of the ‘Ziggy and ‘Thin White Duke’ periods between which it is situated, yet is the blueprint of things yet to come”

In many ways, Young Americans is an apprenticeship. It is a short album, and lacks the aesthetic breadth of the ‘Ziggy’ and ‘Thin White Duke’ periods between which it is situated, yet is the blueprint of things yet to come. Bowie’s sound shifts towards soul, away from the glitzy and zappy electric guitar of glam rock; he sounds funkier, more bluesy, and has pared back his makeup and elaborate stagecraft. Bowie invited phenomenal soul artists to learn from and collaborate with. Most influential among these was the guitarist Carlos Alomar, who wrote the riff which evolved into ‘Fame’. Bowie also gave Luther Vandross one of his first major breaks as a backing singer on the album, helping to launch a remarkable career both as an artist and producer.

The album is, however, somewhat controversial, it is perhaps most influential for triggering a wave of white artists replicating traditionally African-American soul music. Alomar’s riffs are the backbone of some of the album’s greatest songs yet Bowie gained almost all the credit and renown for his talent. It is right to be conscious of the fact that Bowie undoubtedly walks a fine line between appropriation and a genuine desire to enter a musical conversation with new voices.

At the same time as he was studying soul, he became the apprentice of a pop icon. Bowie encountered John Lennon while recording at the Record Plant studio. From this bloomed a cover of my favourite Beatles song, the stirring, beautiful ‘Across the Universe’, and the impromptu jamming session which produced ‘Fame’. When I first heard that Bowie had covered ‘Across the Universe’, I had my doubts as to how anyone might improve such a perfect and well-rounded song. Now, I find it difficult to say which I prefer and when I sing it I find myself borrowing moments from Bowie and moments from Lennon. Bowie’s track is visceral and perhaps more emotional; it is at once desperate, passionate, and confident. This chance meeting meant that in two tracks on the album, Lennon sings the backing track. To meet the man that defined pop stardom throughout the 1960s undoubtedly left a deep impression on Bowie in consciously fashioning his own iconography.

What I love so much in Bowie’s music is its narrative force. Each song, each album forms part of a story interwoven across 26 studio albums. Young Americans is crucial to this journey; Bowie’s appreciation for the bouncy rhythms of R&B and soul stayed within him for the rest of his career and embellished his already varied soundscape. The ‘Thin White Duke’ and the themes of discontent and ennui that would dominate the Berlin period were beginning to emerge. Young Americans is a perfect example of the openness to inspiration and a restless capacity to innovate that typifies Bowie’s work. Each album is as much the work of David Jones the man as a patchwork of influences from many other musicians, poets, thinkers, and chance encounters.

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