How David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” Changed Music

bowie really wanted a smash hit so he assembled this super group of musicians and engineers and mixers around him to help him make that happen hello there it's warren hewitt here hope you're doing marvelously well and welcome to my new series songs that change music this week we're going to talk about let's dance by david bowie [Music] so thanks ever so much for watching if you haven't already please subscribe if you hit the notification bell you'll be notified when we have a new video and of course you can go to produce like a pro.com and sign up for the email list and get a whole bunch of free goodies today we're going to talk about david bowie's song let's dance this was a huge huge hit for him there are so many individual ingredients that make the song great but let's start by looking at where bowie was in 1982. one of the differences between bowie and everyone else is he was a real taste monger he's right up there with miles davis and frank zappa he brought lurie to so many people produced transformer with the course walk on the wild side and perfect day on iggy pop is another person that he brought to the fold in a huge way and this album was no different this album he brought stevie ray vaughan to the center stage also the now very very famous and arguably greatest mixer of all time bob clear mountain bowie assembled the hottest guys the best musicians the best engineers best of the best bowie himself was an amazing musician and of course world-class songwriter but he also had the best taste coming into this record bowie had recorded scary monsters this album was certified platinum in the uk and canada but had barely made a dent in the u.s it is an incredible album it just didn't bring him the commercial success especially in the u.s that he wanted for instance ashes to ashes was a number one hit in the uk but only a hundred and one in the us bowie really wanted a smash hit record so he assembled this super group of musicians and engineers and mixers around him to help him make that happen because i wanted to redefine everything i did i think i also wanted to be in a position where i didn't know the people that i was working with to redevelop the kind of enthusiasm and and slight panic that you have when you're not sure how the other person is going to react to any situation there comes there comes a point where if you know your musicians too well you can almost predict the way they're going to interpret or play something and that takes for me personally takes some of the fascination of making music away i like to be kind of really surprised each time bob was the engineer on the mixer on this record he had worked with the stones very famously on tattoo u but he'd also worked with sheik doing tons of incredible disco records of course bruce springsteen and the pretenders and had just finished one of inarguably the finest albums of all time avalon by ruxin music he was there from beginning to end and he had a lot of creative input on this record he really helped shape the sound of this album it's weird because in some ways he was spontaneous in that he kind of let me do anything i wanted you know i would come up with you know let's dance he's got some crazy effects on it i thought no no he's not going to go over this and he goes yeah man that's cool that's that sounds great you know that crazy delay on the um niles guitar and i mean there's a lot of weird stuff on that bowie brought in producer gnar rogers one of the archetypes of the sound of disco but also an incredible guitar player an incredible producer niall had made a name for himself throughout the 70s with sheik and sister sledge disco was huge in the 70s but it angered many rock fans for example there was a disco demolition knight it was a radio promo at a chicago white sox game you could get in for 98 cents if you brought a disco record with you then they were going to blow them up that night 50 000 people showed up and it turned into a riot disco was already on his way out but this put a nail in the coffin now rogers was the king of disco guitar and he had to figure out something fast in 1982 bowie and niall became friends bonding over their shared love of jazz bowie invited nile to switzerland to record with him david wrote the song he actually walked into my bedroom one morning with a 12-string guitar yeah and he said uh nah darling um i think this record's a hit and he had a 12-string guitar which traditionally is used for folk music in america and he starts playing this song and i thought to myself wow david uh if i do a song called let's dance and it sounds like a folk song i'd have to turn in my black music union card so let me let me take that and work on an arrangement okay niall worked on his arrangement he changed the voicings the key and added in some more colorful chords let's listen to an early demo version of the song and notice how it feels different from the final version we all know and love [Music] the guitar part is completely different and it sounds much more like now roger's trying to lay alone and not upset the disco sucks crowd the bass line is very different it's not moving at all just this static repetition of notes so what happened between the demo and the final version because i was running away from funk because of the whole disco sucks thing instead of playing so i just played straight i just played all up strokes and we let the delay make the groove too so they got a good arrangement of bowie's little folk song on their hands but it still needed some finishing touches like carmine rojas on electric bass and erdahl kazilkay on synthesis with the iconic bassline [Music] omar hakeem on drums with that classic 80s gated reverb snare and i remember the drum sound being very unusual the engineer a guy named bob clear mountain had this ludwig black beauty snare drum that was part of the studio stock like back then recording studios had their own drum set stock and he had taped some uh small contact mics to the rims and you know he was he you know he was doctor and he was cooking something up bob clear mountain right he was cooking something up man the genius bowie's vocal though is just incredible [Music] the song was almost complete it was just missing one final touch at the end i remember him david coming to me and said have you ever heard of this guy named stevie ray vaughan i know unfortunately no i i feel like i should i should no i don't know who that is oh i ran into him he was playing in a club in in austin and i'm bringing him in to do some solos cool and i just stevie and i hit it off immediately he's just such a great guy just a crazy talented incredibly talented player and what was great was you know he didn't bring in some crazy pedal board or racket gear he had a super reverb a strat and a guitar cord beautiful luckily he was long enough to get from the control room out to the studio and that was it you know and i put some room mics on it [Music] bowie had met stevie in 1982 at the montro jazz festival in switzerland after stevie ray vaughan's performance bowie was so impressed he later said he's completely flawed me i probably hadn't been so gung-ho about a guitar player since seeing jeff beck with his band the tridents at this point in history not many people had actually heard of stevie rover he came in and played an incredible solo at the end of let's dance as well as others on the record this album was really introducing stevie ray vaughan to the whole world as a matter of fact after hearing let's dance for the first time eric clapton recalled i stopped my car and said i have to know who this guitar player is today not tomorrow but today let's dance was released in 1983 and as a result the world would never be the same let's dance was one of bowie's fastest ever selling songs it became his first and only song to be number one in both the uk and the us charts bowie got his smash hit stevie ray vaughan was the hot new guitarist but he didn't end up going on tour with bowie he asked me to do the tour with double trouble opening up right and we know we were never even on the show really he just wanted me to play with him yeah so you got a pretty raw deal yeah so i didn't go since stevie was suddenly free and very popular he put all of his efforts into promoting his own album texas flood what a masterpiece that was and he used his experience with less dance to catapult his career nile had suddenly successfully broken out of disco maybe we could have made a hip folk song that made it maybe it would have been a hit but this was infinitely more powerful it changed my life it changed david's life and we wound up working together on another five projects over the course of our careers but it was that let's dance session that changed everything but clear mountain continued to produce engineer and mix with everyone from tears for fears woman in chains and absolute masterpiece of course to the cures just like heaven another masterpiece bob looks back on that time as one of his best ever yeah it was really that's one of the high points of my life i would have to say working with that guy so thanks ever so much i really hope you enjoyed that if there any other songs that you want to hear about please let us know and of course as ever leave any comments and questions below thank you ever so much for watching have a marvelous time

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 170,062

Rating: 4.960485 out of 5

Keywords: Warren Huart, Produce Like A Pro, Home studio, Home recording, Recording Audio, Music Production, Record Producer, Recording Studio, David Bowie, Let's Dance, Nile Rodgers, Bob Clearnmountain

Id: KYpoYh-MY7w

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020