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48 Years Ago: David Bowie Invents Post-Punk, Just Before Punk
How Berlin, Bowie, and one weird snare drum sound rewrote rock history with Low
At the start of 1976, David Bowie had two choices: leave Los Angeles or die.
He’d moved there the year before, partially to be closer to the movie industry after filming Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth and partially because he was finally about to make his big American breakthrough. He’d just spent a month at Philadelphia’s red-hot Sigma Sound Studio making Young Americans, an artistic swerve inspired by the Philly Soul sound that Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell had perfected there. With a new look abandoning glam androgyny for sleek suits, plus a new on-trend sound, Bowie scored his first American Top 10 album and a Billboard number one with the needly, minimalist funk of the John Lennon collaboration “Fame.”
Hollywood didn’t call, but cocaine did. Almost as soon as he settled into a ‘20s-era Spanish Colonial mansion in Bel Air, Bowie fell into a habit massive even by…
