David Bowie Said His Song ‘Fame’ Was John Lennon’s Attempt to Bring Art to the Masses
Two classic rock stars helped write David Bowie’s “Fame”: Bowie himself and John Lennon. Looking back on the song, Bowie said it was inspired by John’s attitude toward art. Both rock stars were part of a border movement that shook the art world to its core. Notably, “Fame” was much more popular in the United States than it was in the United Kingdom.
David Bowie’s ‘Fame’ was inspired by a conversation he had with John Lennon
The three writers behind “Fame” were Bowie, John, and Carlos Alomar. Alomar is a rock and soul musician known for collaborating with Bowie and Mick Jagger. According to American Songwriter, Bowie gave an interview to MTV in 1995. In it, he discussed working on the song with John. “It came out of a conversation that we had,” Bowie recalled.
“He would rifle the avant-garde and look for ideas that were so on the outside, on the periphery of what was the mainstream, and then make them, apply them in a functional manner, to something that was considered populist and make it work,” he added. “He would take the most odd idea and make it work for the masses.”
Why David Bowie thought that John Lennon ‘was just so admirable’
Bowie was a fan of John’s thought process. “I thought that was just so admirable,” he said. “I mean, that was like making artwork for the people and not sort of having it as an elitist sort of thing. There was just so much about him I admired.”
Bowie and John peaked around the time pop art was really taking off. Bowie, John, and pop artists all helped to blur the line between high art and low art. It’s fitting that Bowie wrote a song called “Andy Warhol” and Warhol painted the cover of John’s compilation album Menlove Ave.
How ‘Fame’ performed on the pop charts in the United States and the United Kingdom
“Fame” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks, showing that an avant-gardist like Bowie could make a massive pop hit. It spent a total of 21 weeks on the chart. It became Bowie’s biggest hit in the United States and his only No. 1 single in the U.S. besides “Let’s Dance.” Interestingly, both of Bowie’s No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 were dance songs.
The track appeared on the album Young Americans. That record reached No. 9 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the chart for 51 weeks. Maybe the record’s title was especially enticing to Americans.
The Official Charts Company reports “Fame” reached No. 17 in the United Kingdom, staying on the chart for eight weeks. It’s surprising that audiences in the U.K. were so much less receptive to the song! Young Americans performed similarly in the U.K. There, the record climbed to No. 2 and stayed on the chart for 17 weeks.
“Fame” is a great song and it will go down in history as a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between two rock titans.
