The story behind the song…Station to Station
It’s never too late to appreciate that magical moment when the Thin White Duke announced himself to the world in a song that many believe to be one of Bowie’s very best
I’ve previously done a deep dive into All the Young Dudes, the song David Bowie wrote and gave to Mott the Hoople which, it turned out, saved them from disbanding and set them on a path of success.
Growing up I was borderline obsessed with Bowie. At school I remember drawing endless portraits of him in art class and how can I forget me and some friends painting our faces with the Aladdin Sane lightning flash whilst riding the tube to see him in concert at Earls Court.
I wanted to tell the story of another Bowie song, but couldn’t decide which one as there are just so many that are interesting and that I really like, both musically and lyrically. All these years later, play me almost any of his songs from Ziggy Stardust to Heroes and I can immediately sing along to the words. I knew it had to be a track from that period of his career and in the end I decided on Station to Station.
The title track to Bowie’s Station to Station album can be looked upon as the transition between the highly successful funk-infused Young Americans released the previous year and his more experimental Berlin trilogy begin with Low. Not only is it the album opener, but — at close to ten minutes — remains Bowie’s longest song.
Released on 23 January 1976, the album contained just six tracks, including the three hit singles: Golden Years, TVC15 and Stay. But equally important it introduced us to one of Bowie’s most enduring personas. Rolling Stone said the album contains “some of the greatest songs of Bowie’s career.”
Now I’ve loved Station to Station ever since I first heard it at the time of release and like so many Bowie songs, all these year’s later it still sounds so fresh. To this day it remains one of my favourites from his huge catalogue, one you can play over and over and not get tired of.
And despite listening to it numerous times over the years, and thinking I was ‘familiar’ with its lyrics, I now realise what I was actually familiar with were the sounds of his singing, without in fact knowing what the hell he was singing about.
The truth is Bowie’s lyrics are often hard to decipher, largely because for long periods of his career he employed a writing technique that involved incorporating words or phrases that he’s written on random bits of paper. At least that’s what I remember reading somewhere.
I also recall reading that Station to Station was written during a long train journey across Russia — Bowie notoriously hated flying and would do anything to avoid travelling by plane. So given its title and the fact that the song begins with the sound of a train, for years I’d assumed it had something to do with train travel.
It turns out I was way off track.
Setting the scene
It was late August 1975 and 28-year-old David Bowie had just completed shooting The Man Who Fell To Earth in Alberqueque, New Mexico. The Nicolas Roeg movie was his first major film role. Bowie played an alien arriving on Earth from a dying planet. Throughout filming he was struggling with severe cocaine addiction, so much so that years later he admitted to having “barely understood the film” and that he didn’t need to act but just be himself.
Beyond his cocaine addiction, he was going through personal turmoil, embroiled in a long-running lawsuit to end his management contract with MainMan and realising his marriage to Angie was falling apart.
The trial with his former manager Tony De Fries and his company MainMan came to an end a few weeks before the release of Station to Station.
Recalling just how bad things were, Bowie had this to say in 1999:
“1975 and 1976 were the darkest days of my life. So steeped in awfulness that recall is nigh on impossible — certainly painful.”
He reaffirmed his amnesia in a 2006 interview:
“It was probably one of the worst periods of my life. It’s a blur, topped off with chronic anxiety, bordering on paranoia.”
In the aftermath of The Man Who Fell To Earth, Bowie found himself at a low point. He was disillusioned with the music industry, despite having enjoyed considerable commercial success with the album he’d recorded the year before and the two hit singles it spawned — the biggest of his career to date— the title track Young Americans and its follow-up Fame.
Apart from when he was on location in Albuquerque, for much of 1975, Bowie had been living in Los Angeles. But, as he recalled in a May 1983 interview with Musician magazine, he was yearning to return to Europe.
“The overriding need for me was to develop more of a European influence, having immersed myself so thoroughly in American culture. As I was personally going through a very bad time, I thought I had to get back to Europe.”
But first, he had new music to make.
Bowie rented a house at 1349 Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air, a secluded 1950s-built property with a mock Egyptian interior. From here, he pulled together the team to record what would become Station to Station, his tenth studio album.
With long-time collaborator Tony Visconti tied up on another project, he recruited Harry Maslin — who he’d worked with on the Fame session in New York — as co-producer.
The first four musicians he pulled together to be the core of the group were guitarists Carlos Alomar (who had co-written his huge hit Fame on Young Americans and was playing guitar on Broadway in the Rocky Horror Picture Show when he received the call) and Earl Slick (who played on Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour the previous year)
At the time, Slick was preparing to record a solo album, when he got the call from Bowie saying he wanted him for his next album and “we start next week.”
Joining the two guitarists were Fame drummer Dennis Davis, and bassist George Murray.
Davis later recalled how he recommended Murray to Bowie:
“David had booked me for the session. On the morning I was getting ready to leave David called me again and asked if knew a bass player. I told him year I know a guy, George Murray. George told me he was about to go out on the road with George McRae. A few hours later we were both on our way to join up with Bowie.”
After two weeks’ rehearsals in a small studio on Cahuenga Boulevard, they checked into Cherokee Studios, chosen apparently because it was new and quiet.
The studios at 751 N. Fairfax Avenue in Hollywood was founded a couple of years earlier and was formerly the location of MGM Studios. Apart from Bowie, Cherokee has seen many notable recordings by artists including Steely Dan, Journey, Toto, Michael Jackson, Van Halen, Guns N’ Roses, The Cars, Foreigner, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Mötley Crüe.
At Cherokee, they were also joined by Bowie’s school friend Geoffrey MacCormack aka Warren Peace, who would provide backing vocals. The only thing missing was a piano player.
Bowie had bid adieu to his previous pianist Mike Garson — the last musician of the Ziggy era — and had originally called up British pianist Roy Young to play on the sessions. However, he was held up by visa problems so Bowie urgently needed an adept replacement.
In 2015 Roy Bittan recounted to Rolling Stone how he got involved
“I was staying at the Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles when we were on the Born To Run tour in 1975. David’s guitar player, Earl Slick, was a friend of mine. I bumped into him at the hotel and he said, ‘I can’t believe you’re here. We were just talking about you.’ David knew we were coming to town and he wanted a piano player. It was just a very fortuitous moment for me.”
The following day, Bittan arrived at the studio:
“We began with TVC 15 and I wound up playing on every song besides Wild Is The Wind. It must have only been about three days. It’s one of my favourite projects I’ve ever worked on.”
As well as vocals, Bowie himself played guitars, tenor and alto sax, moog, and mellotron.
Recording the album
The sessions took place between September and November 1975. As Harry Maslin recalled:
“It was rigorous. We tried to keep it private. Not too many people in there — usually no one. We started at 10 or 11 at night and went to anywhere from eight in the morning to whatever, 36 hours later.”
The gruelling nature of the sessions was something Earl Slick would later corroborate:
“We’d work ridiculous hours. Sometimes we’d be in there for fifteen, sixteen, twenty hours. So you’re brain dead in a way. Your functionality wasn’t there, but your creativity got better. It came out of sleep depravation and cocaine. We were over the top, there’s no doubt about that!”
Slick also confirmed Bowie had gone into the studio without any finished songs:
“He had one or two songs written, but they were changed so drastically that you wouldn’t know them from the first time anyway, so he basically wrote everything in the studio.”
Those two songs were almost certainly Golden Years and Word On A Wing.
Maslin went on to describe the writing process:
“David knows exactly what he wants, it’s just a matter of sitting there and doing it until it’s done.”
During the sessions Bowie was heavily dependent on drugs, especially cocaine, and as a result recalled almost nothing of the production. He once quipped, “I know it was recorded in LA because I read it was!”
“I started on the drugs at the end of 1973 and then with force in 1974. As soon as I got to America, pow! It was so freely available in those days. Coke was everywhere. Because I have a very addictive personality, I was a sucker for it.”
As Slick remembered it:
“That record would never have been that record without cocaine. Harry Maslin was the only one who wasn’t high.”
But according to Maslin even he was using:
“I wasn’t a cocaine fanatic. I did a little bit, but mostly to keep up with David through the night, because he liked to work long hours and a little bit of cocaine is going to help you stay up. I didn’t like the drug, but David liked it. It was difficult because I had to play friend, brother, psychologist and producer all in the same day.”
The first song they worked on was Golden Years, the most obvious throwback to where Bowie had been on the previous album.
Apparently Golden Years was written with label mate Elvis Presley in mind and Bowie is supposed to have sent him a finished demo in the hope that he might record it. Although he never did, it’s easy to imagine Presley’s rich baritone making it his own.
Roy Bittan recollected his involvement on the sessions:
“It was really just a case of making my way through the roadmap of the songs and trying to create a part. I only did a couple of takes on each song because David wanted the element of free form playing.”
The album established a method of working that Bowie would follow throughout the rest of his career. First, he and the nucleus of his band — in this case Alomar, Davis and Murray — would work through his initial ideas, turning fragments into arrangements as quickly and spontaneously as possible.
As Maslin recalled:
“There were no attitude problems and they were all willing to take whatever direction was offered. When you work with musicians of their calibre great things are the result.”
Once a basic structure for each of the songs has been established, the slower and more laborious process of overdubbing would begin. On Station to Station, this generally began with Alomar and Slick adding competing lead-guitar parts, Bittan laying down piano and keyboard tracks, and then Bowie and Maslin experimenting with keys, sax, additional percussion and more.
Only at the very end would vocals be added. For Maslin this was one of the hardest parts of the process.
“He might change the words of a song from one take to the next.”
Maslin’s job was made more difficult because Bowie approached each vocal differently, from the rebel yell of TVC 15 to the delicate, lovelorn Wild Is The Wind. To capture this range of vocal performances, Maslin often used different microphones in an effort to match the singer’s diverse style. As was often the case with Bowie, the first take was usually the one that stuck.
Though there was no timetable for completing the album, Bowie was in no mood to take it easy. He would work solidly for three or four days before taking a couple of days off “to rest and get charged up for another sprint”.
Recording the title track
Written by David Bowie, the title track Station To Station remains one of his most experimental, yet most enduring compositions, but according to Earl Slick it wasn’t written to be one song:
“To the best of my memory, Station to Station was three different pieces that he had and we kind of puzzled them together. I don’t know how we did it. He had three separate ideas and somehow they worked together.”
Bass player George Murray recalled much the same:
“We worked on all three of those parts separately, but played them together. I remember it as being one full take.”
The train intro, later reproduced on stage with synthesizers, was taken from a sound-effects LP, with Harry Maslin and Bowie first equalizing the recording, then doctoring it with phasing methods. As Maslin explains:
“It starts with a train sound effect. I wasn’t sure whether I should use it because Station to Station has a very deep meaning, it’s not necessarily a railroad train, it’s the stations of the Tree of Life. But I felt, why not?”
Speaking to Uncut magazine in 1999, Bowie had this to say:
“One other lazy observation I would like to point up, by the way, is the assumption that ‘Station To Station’ was homage to Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express.”
In fact Station To Station preceded Trans-Europe Express by quite some time. Kraftwerk’s sixth album was recorded in 1976 and released in March 1977.
Bowie would later admit to having few recollections of recording the album, bar shouting his idea for a feedback part to Earl Slick.
Slick confirms that little was planned before they entered the studio:
“Adding the train noise and all the feedback was spur of the moment. That’s how spontaneous that whole thing was.”
As the train fades into the distance, a single note on Earl Slick’s guitar bleeds into feedback. A rhythm assembles: four quiet beats, a metronomic two-note piano pattern (which, eventually bolstered by strafing guitar, underlies much of the opening section) and a trio of notes repeated on George Murray’s bass.
Carlos Alomar offers minimalist arpeggios, a ghostly organ plays chords, and then, with four kicks of Dennis Davis’ bass drum, the song lurches into life.
It’s taken more than three minutes before we hear Bowie’s voice announcing the arrival of his new alter-ego with the immortal line:
“The return of the Thin White Duke, throwing darts in lovers’ eyes”
After Bowie quietly sings “white stains” and Alomar’s guitar dances for three more bars, the song opens up. A key change and a slamming shift to 4/4 begins the middle section. And we’ve only just reached its mid-point.
With Bittan’s driving piano line and Bowie’s soaring, waltzing vocal, almost entirely consisting of triplets (“once-there-were moun-tains-on /mount-ains-and once-there-were/sun-birds-to soar-with-and once I could never be down”)
After a two-bar break (drum fills, a spray of piano notes, a tongue-twister (‘wonder-who-wonder who-wonder when’)), comes the peak of the section and the song, Bowie offering a question (“Have you sought fortune, evasive and shy?”) a toast (“Drink to the men who protect you and I”) and a command (“Drink, drink, drain your glass, raise your glass high.”)
At the end of this, there’s a seamless move to the final section. Full of dramatic tension, its cold, claustrophobic funk sounds like a fusion of a soul groove and a fascist war march. Showing off Bowie’s vocal range, it gradually speeds up for Earl Slick’s fiery solo.
Recalling which guitars he played on the track, Slick said he used a Stratocaster on the first half and then changed to a black Les Paul when the song goes uptempo and for his solo. (Talking of Slick solos, arguably his most electrifying one can be found at the end of the track Stay.)
As Bowie sings the refrain “It’s too late…to be grateful, it’s too late…to be hateful.” the dominant instrument taking us to the fade is Roy Bittan’s driving piano. (Bittan’s piano is all over the Station to Station album, especially on the track TVC-15.)
What’s it about?
Despite written — as many believe — whilst touring America and Europe by rail the song isn’t about trains. Its enigmatic, narcotically fuelled lyrics reflected Bowie’s preoccupations with mythology and, especially strange religions and specifically, the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Aleister Crowley.
The title is in fact a reference to the fourteen Stations of the Cross, which Bowie equates to the eleven Sephirot of the Tree of Life. As he himself confirmed in an February 1997 interview with Q magazine:
“The Station To Station track itself is very much concerned with the stations of the cross, All the references within the piece are to do with the Kabbalah. It’s the nearest album to a magik treatise that I’ve written. I’ve never read a review that really sussed it. It’s an extremely dark album. Miserable time to live through, I must say.”
Kabbalah isn’t easy to define, but essentially it’s a Jewish mystical tradition describing a set of practices and theologies concerning the relationship between the realms of heaven and earth, the divine and the mortal, the infinite and the finite, the eternal and the temporal.
One of the aspects of kabbalah is the idea of ‘stations’ through which God may reveal himself. These are plotted on what is called the Tree of Life and two of these stations are referenced in the song’s most enigmatic lyric “one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth” The Tree of Life’s most sublime, highest realm has (Kether) at its crown, and the realm of Earth and matter (Malkuth) at its base.
The magical rituals of Kabbalistic ceremonial magical circle of protection are also referenced in the line:
“Here are we, one magical moment, such is the stuff from where dreams are woven, bending sound, dredging the ocean, lost in my circle.”
Another religious reference is the line The European canon — a play on the Pāli Canon, a set of Theravadan Buddhist scriptures.
Also permeating the song, are references to Aleister Crowley, and especially his book White Stains.
Crowley was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society devoted to the occult, metaphysics, the paranormal, and spiritual development. Golden Dawn’s Tattva system was a method of clairvoyance which used ‘colour flashing’ to ascend to the astral plane. Bowie, in his Thin White Duke guise, was “flashing no colour, tall in my room overlooking the ocean”.
Does my face show some kind of glow — Kirlian photography was something Bowie was enamoured with at the time, photographing his fingertips before and after using cocaine. Kirlian images are captured by placing objects onto sheet photographic film overlaid onto a metal plate. When a high voltage current is quickly applied, it creates an exposure on the film, which some people believe captures the aura of a subject.
The “throwing darts in lovers eyes” line is one of Bowie’s most overt Aleister Crowley references as Crowley’s followers apparently threw darts at lovers.
And then there’s the references to cocaine, both oblique (“making sure white stains”) and overt (“it’s not the side effects of the cocaine”)
Lyrically, Station to Station is filled with the wrack of a dozen religions and cults. Flashing no colour, for example, is a reference to the Golden Dawn Tattva, a meditational system.
Then the song breaks into Bowie’s musical daliance with blue eyed soul on Young Americans as he sings about searching for something to help him reconnect with the world.
The title of the book of short stories he’d begun writing while shooting The Man Who Fell To Earth, titled The Return of The Thin White Duke, made its way into the opening line of Station To Station.
Although we’re told this is his return, it introduced the alabaster skinned character born out of Thomas Jerome Newton while Bowie was filming in Albuquerque, the Duke City.
This Harry Maslin remix from 2010 is the highest quality recording of the studio track available on YouTube.
The lyrics
The return of the Thin White Duke, throwing darts in lovers’ eyes
Here are we, one magical moment, such is the stuff from where dreams are woven
Bending sound, dredging the ocean, lost in my circle
Here am I, flashing no colour, tall in this room, overlooking the ocean
Here are we, one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth
There are you, you drive like a demon from station to station
The return of the Thin White Duke, throwing darts in lovers’ eyes
The return of the Thin White Duke, throwing darts in lovers’ eyes
The return of the Thin White Duke, making sure white stains
Once there were mountains on mountains and once there were sunbirds to soar with
And once I could never be down, got to keep searching and searching
And oh what will I be believing and who will connect me with love? Wonder who, wonder who, wonder when
Have you sought fortune, evasive and shy?
Drink to the men who protect you and I
Drink drink, drain your glass, raise your glass high
It’s not the side-effects of the cocaine, I’m thinking that it must be love
It’s too late to be grateful, it’s too late to be late again, it’s too late to be hateful, the European canon is here
I must be only one in a million, I won’t let the day pass without her
It’s too late to be grateful, it’s too late to be late again, it’s too late to be hateful, the European canon is here
Should I believe that I’ve been stricken? Does my face show some kind of glow?
It’s too late to be grateful, it’s too late to be late again, it’s too late to be hateful, the European canon is here, yes it’s here
It’s too late, the European canon is here
Alternative lyrics:
In Bowie’s original handwritten lyrics, the phrase “California Canon” was crossed out and replaced with “European Canon”.
Interestingly, the notes also reveal two unused lines: “It’s better to have loved than not to have loved at all/Pardon me boy, throw me right in.”
The album cover
This was a production still from the movie The Man Who Fell To Earth taken by photographer Steve Schapiro of Thomas Jerome Newton entering his ill-fated spaceship.
Originally it was going to be in colour, but at the last moment, Bowie decided it should be monochrome and cropped it to a 35mm frame. The change was so last minute that colour versions of the cover appeared on some pre-release promo material.
The striking red typography was also retained for Bowie’s next release, Changesonebowie.
The imagery
The thin white duke — a skeletal, pallid figure clad in white shirt and black waistcoat — was Bowie’s darkest, most menacing character ever. He later said he based his appearance and stagecraft on the 1927 Fritz Lang film Metropolis.
The song’s influence
At the time of recording Station to Station Bowie was disillusioned with Los Angeles, where he had been living for much of 1975. He was looking increasingly towards Europe, influenced by the innovative sounds of musicians such as Kraftwerk and Brian Eno.
Regarded as one of his most significant works, the album and especially its title track marked the beginning of a change in Bowie’s music, as he explained in a January 2001 interview with Uncut:
“As far as the music goes, Low and its siblings were a direct follow-on from the title track ‘Station to Station’. It’s often struck me that there will usually be one track on any given album of mine, which will be a fair indicator of the intent of the following album.”
In its album review at the time Rolling Stone concluded by saying:
“It’s a much better album than we’d been led to believe Bowie was willing to make.”
Many have commented on Station to Station being a hugely influential album. Looking back at it some years after its release, Bowie himself put it this way:
“I pick up my feedback on how my work is being regarded from musicians because the way you change music is by changing the music. And I see Station to Station as an album that did create some sort of change.”
The Lost Track
Station to Station only has six tracks on it, but it turns out that whilst at Cherokee, Bowie and his band recorded and completed at least one more song. An early admirer of Springsteen, Bowie covered It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City from The Boss’ debut.
Apparently this was one of Bowie’s favourites and perhaps owes its existence to his having Springsteen sideman Roy Bittan at his disposal. Although it was produced by Harry Maslin and featured all the musicians who appear on Station to Station, it doesn’t sound like it fits in musically, or thematically with any of the other tracks, which is probably why it was left off the album.
Where are they now?
David Bowie: After suffering a heart attack in 2004 — something only his inner circle knew about — Bowie took himself almost entirely out of the public eye. He had an angioplasty (an insertion of a stint into his artery) and underwent a long convalescence and effectively disappeared from the limelight. Whilst some claim he would have liked to have moved back to London, he remained in New York for the relative anonymity it allowed him.
On 10 January 2016, Bowie died at his Manhattan home, having been diagnosed with liver cancer 18 months earlier. Like his earlier heart attack, he kept his illness from public knowledge, only telling his closest friends and family.
The disease first affected him in 2014 when Bowie turned up to the studio to record what would be his final album with no hair or eyebrows as a result of chemotherapy, swearing everyone he worked with to secrecy. By mid-2015 he was in remission — but in November 2015, the cancer returned and this time it was terminal, having spread around his body.
He died two days after the release of his twenty-sixth and final studio album, Blackstar, which coincided with his 69th birthday.
There was no funeral. Instead, his body was cremated in New Jersey without friends or family present and his ashes were scattered on the Indonesian island of Bali in accordance with Buddhist rituals.
He left behind two children. His son, Duncan Jones was born in 1971 to his first wife Mary “Angie” Angela Barnett. They married in 1970 and divorced 10 years later. Bowie then married supermodel Iman in 1992 and they had a daughter, Alexandria “Lexi” Zahra Jones. It is said that Bowie left an estate of around $100 million (half of which went to his second wife and the rest was split between his two children).
Five years after his death, and less than a month after going on the market, Bowie’s 470sq m (5,090sq ft) residence at 285 Lafayette Street in Manhattan sold for $16.8 million.
Originally built in 1886 as the Hawley & Hoops chocolate factory, 285 Lafayette Street was converted to a full-service condominium building in 1999. That year Bowie bought the property for $3.81 million and lived there with his Iman until his death.
Founded by John Hawley and Herman Hoops, in the 1870s, Hawley & Hoops, was one of the biggest candy manufacturers in the nation, employing as many as 800 workers in what was described as a “splendid five-story building” that took up nearly an entire city block.
Hawley & Hoops continued long past the demise of its founders. It remained in business until 1952, when Forrest Mars bought it and merged it into M&M Mars.
Carlos Alomar: Born in Puerto Rico, but raised in New York City, Alomar worked as Bowie’s band leader from 1975 to 2003 and played on eleven Bowie albums, more than any other musician apart from pianist Mike Garson. He went on to become Bowie’s live musical director beginning with the Station to Station tour in 1976. Throughout his career he has also played with the likes of Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger, Simple Minds, Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars to name but a few. Now 72, he spends his time in academia (he has been the Distinguished Artist in Residence at Stevens Institute of Technology where he teaches music since 2005) and writing his biography. He is married to Robin Clark (who sang backing vocals on Young Americans) and they have a daughter, singer/songwriter, Lea-Lorién Karima Alomar. In 2022, he admitted “I’ve not done many things since David’s passing.”
Dennis Davis: The native New Yorker, a childhood friend of Carlos Alomar, played on ten of Bowie’s albums starting in 1975. He also worked on albums with Iggy Pop and Stevie Wonder. At 64, Davis died of lung cancer in April 2016, just three months after Bowie. He left behind a wife Chie Davis and five children: Darien, Naoto, Erika, Kaito and Hikaru.
George Murray: In 1975, Murray had flown to California from New York at the request of his friend Dennis Davis. He recalls meeting Bowie for the first time at a rehearsal studio on Cahuenga Boulevard, Hollywood. He continued to work with him on the Berlin trilogy as well 1980s Scary Monsters And Super Creeps. After that album, his relationship with Bowie ended as suddenly as it had begun. “When it was over, it was over. I just didn’t get called back.” After a stint in studio instrument rentals, Murray transitioned out of the music industry and focused on starting a family. In 1987, he began working in education — most recently as Director of Facilities and Transportation Services — for the Alhambra Unified School District where he stayed for 35 years. He lives in California with his wife Theresa Woo-Murray and son Marcus.
Earl Slick: Born Frank Madeloni in Brooklyn, New York, Slick was initially hired by Bowie when he was 22 to replace Mick Ronson on the 1974 Diamond Dogs tour from which the David Live album was culled. His first studio project with Bowie was Station to Station. After that album, following a fall out with Bowie’s management company, the two didn’t work together until 1983 when Stevie Ray Vaughan left the Serious Moonlight tour and Bowie called him out of the blue. Subsequently, Slick worked with Bowie during the early 2000s, when he again became a key member of his band right up to Bowie’s second-to-last album, The Next Day. Other artists Slick has played with include John Lennon and Ian Hunter. In 2018, Slick toured North America with a project he put together with Mike Garson entitled Celebrating David Bowie, during which he covered many of the Bowie songs they played on including of course Station to Station. In 1976, he married Fanny bassist Jean Millington and together they had a daughter Marita Madeloni and a son, Lee John Madeloni.
Roy Bittan: Born 2 July 1949, in Rockaway Beach, New York, Bittan is an American keyboardist, best known as a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, which he joined on 23 August 1974. Bittan, nicknamed The Professor, plays the piano, organ, accordion and synthesizers and fifty years later he is still performing with Springsteen and is currently on a 2024 world tour. As well as Bowie, other artists Bittan has recorded with include Stevie Nicks, Jackson Browne and Bob Seger among others. In 2014 he released his first solo album Out Of The Blue. Now aged 74, he lives in Malibu, California, with his wife Amy, with whom he has two grown children.
Warren Peace: Born Geoff MacCormack, he went to school with Bowie and the pair were best friends since they were seven years old. During the three years that MacCormack toured and recorded with Bowie, he was part of five records — from Aladdin Sane to Station to Station — and six different tours. He has authored a book ‘David Bowie: Rock n Roll With Me’ and staged exhibitions of his photos taken on tour with Bowie. Now 77, he lives with his wife Jo in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
Harry Maslin: After working on Station to Station, Maslin went onto produced albums for the likes of the Bay City Rollers, Eric Carmen and Air Supply. Now 74, he is married to songwriter and producer Michèle Vice-Maslin.
Live Versions
It’s interesting to hear how Bowie evolved Station to Station over the years.
This fabulously muscular version was recorded live at the Nassau Coliseum, Long Island in 1976. It features most of the studio line-up with the exception of Stacey Heydon who replaced Earl Slick on lead guitar and Tony Kaye who replaced Roy Bittan on keyboards.
Tower Theatre, Philadephia, 28–29 May 1978. This is the recording used in the 1981 German film Christiane F., as mimed by Bowie’s then-current band (with G.E. Smith on lead guitar). In October 1980, Bowie filmed a brief cameo for the Herman Weigel movie Christiane F. Although most of the film was made in Berlin, Bowie’s footage, during which he lipsynced to the stage version of Station To Station, was shot at the Hurrah club on 32 West 62nd Street, Manhattan. At 10:50 on the evening this was filmed, John Lennon was shot just three streets away at his home in the Dakota. Apparently, on hearing the news, Bowie canceled the film shoot, but the producer got him to do it.
By 1983 Bowie’s live band had a new line-up. It now featured Earl Slick who was back on lead guitar, Carlos Alomar on guitar, Carmine Rojas on bass, David Lebolt on keyboards and Chic’s Tony Thompson on drums. In addition, there were Ray Staff and Stan Harrison on horns and Frank and George Simms on backing vocals. This recording was mixed by Chic’s Nile Rodgers.
On 25 June 2000 Bowie headlined Glastonbury. His band now featured Earl Slick on lead guitar, Mark Plato on rhythm guitar, Gail Ann Dorsey on bass, Sterling Campbell on drums and Mike Garson on piano as well as Holly Palmer on percussion and vocals, and Imm Gryner on keyboards and vocals. This version is much heavier and more urgent than the studio original and I think benefits from the addition of the female backing vocals.
Jones Beach Theatre, Wantagh, NY, 4 June 2004. This muscular performance featured Earl Slick on lead guitar and Gail Ann Dorsey enveloping Bowie’s vocals.
Hurricane Festival, Scheesel, Germany, 25 June 2004. This audio recording is Bowie’s very last performance of Station to Station.
After this show, he went backstage and collapsed. He was taken to hospital by helicopter where he underwent heart surgery. The rest of the tour was cancelled.
This video is of him performing Heroes for the final time.
Cover Versions
There aren’t that many cover versions worth listening to, but two stand out for me. The first is Alex Franklin’s abbreviated piano instrumental from 2014, which stripped of all other instruments really shows off the song’s melody.
Finally, this metal version by Two Minutes To Late Night from 2022 is one of the more interesting takes on the original.
Footnote
By my reckoning, this is the ninth song that I’ve written the story behind. Alongside my deep dive into Neil Diamond’s America, and The Specials Ghost Town, I think this is the one I’ve spent the longest time researching.
As you can imagine, much has been written and said about David Bowie and his many songs, albums and personas. Sorting often conflicting information into what is most likely to be the truth takes enormous amounts of patience and sends you down many a rabbit hole. Then taking all you’ve learned and finessing it into an engaging story is what really takes the time.
The one thing I can say for certain is, like all the song’s I’ve picked to tell their stories, even though I’ve listened to Station to Station more times in the last few months than I’ve done since first buying the album back in 1976, I’ve never tired of hearing it. Standing both repeated listens and the test of time are two of the deciding factors about what makes a song truly great. But it usually goes deeper than that.
Great songs are those that showcase all aspects of the artist: their personality, their musicality, their way with words and their influence on music in general. To be deemed truly great pieces of work, they also have to be important. Throughout his long career, Bowie has penned and recorded a huge number of great songs, many of which can now be looked back on as being important. Station to Station is rightly up there as being one of his very best.
About the author
Based in Sussex-by-the-Sea, on England’s south coast, Gary is a creative writer and image-maker. He specialises in creating out of the ordinary portraits of musicians and people with interesting faces, as well as photographing some of the world’s finest flowers and gardens, not forgetting an array of automotive exotica.
On the writing side, he has used his research skills to author deep dives into some noteworthy songs beginning with Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’ ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials, ‘Real Wild Child’ by Ivan and ‘All The Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople.
He has also written a biography of Robert Palmer and the stories behind Whitesnake’s blatant Led Zep rip-off, ‘Still Of The Night’, Harry Styles’ anthem to positivity, ‘Treat People With Kindness’ and the little known Queen track ‘Cool Cat.’
Most recently, Gary has penned the fascinating story behind George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ as well as ‘Believe It Or Not’ a look into the rise of fake news.
All these can be found here on Medium, along with his reviews of gigs and events and chats with musicians including the likes of Royal Blood, Joe Satriani and Wolf Alice.
