The Top 10 Greatest Chuck Berry Covers.

As I wrote in my Last Thoughts On Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry's songbook is the rock & roll songbook. Only Bob Dylan is more covered than he is, but with 10 years on him, Chuck Berry's covers have the wider scope.

While I'm now listening to a lot of Chuck Berry, & a greatest list of his own best recordings is to come, I thought there was no finer tribute to his life & influence than the ways in which others have breathed life into his art. Hence this list, which attempts to fight through the countless Chuck Berry covers out there to make a definitive Top 10 list.

I tried to go by the quality of the recording (or in the case of The Sex Pistols, lack thereof), not who was doing it. I was very tempted by Bob Dylan's version of "Nadine," David Bowie's version of "Round & Round," & Jerry Lee Lewis's "Little Queenie," but ultimately left them all off because it would have been more about including those artists on the list, as opposed to their versions of Chuck Berry's songs.

Some of these songs were major career-defining hits, others were shelved outtakes or rough demos; some appeared at the dawn of an artist's career, others in the twilight. What they all have in common is a love for Chuck Berry--which is to say, a love for rock & roll itself.

10. The Sex Pistols: "Johnny B. Goode," Demo, c. 1975.

By the time The Sex Pistols emerged in the mid-'70s, the once-raw genre of rock & roll that Chuck Berry helped usher into the world had become lifeless & bloated. The Pistols helped to rebuild the genre by tearing it down to its studs, & here in a classic early demo later released on The Great Rock & Roll Swindle soundtrack, they take on Rock Version 1.0, wherein they attempt to play "Johnny B. Goode," the greatest rock song of all. SPOILER: THEY CAN'T. But if they sound like a bunch of no-talent snotty kids banging around in the garage that's the point. & even though they had yet to release their first single, singer Johnny Rotten's venom is already fully-intact, bluffing his way through the words like they were caustic nails. It was this same hellfire that helped to reignite rock for the next 35 years & counting.

9. The Band: "Back To Memphis," Studio Outtake, 1973.

As if anyone needed evidence of the range of Chuck Berry's appeal, look no further to one of the least-talented rock bands (above), followed by one of the most-talented ones here. Initially recorded for their 1973 album of classic rock covers, Moondog Matinee, this Berry super deep-cut was shelved in favor of a solid-but-unremarkable version "Promised Land." By the late 1980s, however, the reissue powers-that-be were reissuing this song on Band compilations everywhere, after dubbing in fake crowd fanfare to pass it off as a live performance. Here is the undoubted original studio recording, which shows why no one questioned the authenticity of the fanfare--it's the rare Band studio recordings that capture their contagious onstage energy.

8. Johnny Rivers: "Memphis," At The Whiskey A Go Go, 1964; #2 US.

This could be a sequel to "Back To Memphis" if it wasn't recorded nearly a decade earlier. It is also probably the most classic Chuck Berry song that no one realized was originally a Chuck Berry song. A down-home country ballad of a man pleading with a long-distance operator, it was remade into a minor rock classic with Johnny Rivers' live version here (it also interestingly inverts The Band's recording above in that instead of featuring a fake crowd on a studio recording, this is a real live recording that sounds like a fake one). & for those wondering how Johnny Rivers made a list with greater rock idols, perhaps he is a secret weapon of rock covers--when pressed for his favorite cover of one of his songs, Bob Dylan famously said Johnny Rivers version of "Positively 4th Street." So maybe his presence here isn't so strange after all.

7. The Beatles: "Roll Over Beethoven," With The Beatles, 1963; #68 US.

To modern ears, Chuck Berry's original versions can sometimes drag a bit, even when the singing & playing are top-notch ("Johnny B. Goode," of course, is an exception to this). Often, when you name a classic like "Roll Over Beethoven," people are actually thinking of The Beatles cover of it, not because it is necessarily better, but simply tighter, faster, & more modern. In one of George Harrison's earliest vocals, he tries his hand at this classic & announces the arrival of a second generation of rock & rollers. Within a few years, albums like Revolver & Sgt. Pepper would be hailed as artistic achievements that actually would rival Beethoven in a very real way. But here, they're still having fun in a track that was strong enough to kick off their second American album & even be a minor hit on this side of the pond.

WARNING: THIS IS NOT THE ORIGINAL STUDIO VERSION OF THE SONG, BUT THE LIVE BBC VERSION. IT IS VERY CLOSE TO THE ORIGINAL, BUT THE ORIGINAL VERSION SHOULD BE SOUGHT OUT. IT IS BEST HEARD ON WITH THE BEATLES OR ON THE OLD 1970s DOUBLE-LP BEATLES COMPILATION ROCK & ROLL MUSIC.

6. The Rolling Stones: "Bye Bye Johnny," The Rolling Stones [EP], 1964.

It's not easy picking an early Rolling Stones cover of a Chuck Berry song; there were simply so many. "Carol" was strong enough to be released as a Top 10 hit in France, while "Around & Around" was a fine tribute recorded at Berry's own Chess Records. But their cover of Berry's little-known sequel record to "Johnny B. Goode" is the best to my ears, released on their first EP in 1963. It documents The Stones as raw & hungry, at once near-amateurish compared to the production values of their rival Beatles, yet able to provide a dense onslaught of sound that already full of toughness & swagger. Plus, lead guitarist Keith Richards already establishes himself as Berry's spiritual eager kid brother. They would record bigger & more popular Berry covers in the years to come, but the sheer sound of this one leaves the others in the dust.


5. The Yardbirds: "Too Much Monkey Business," Five Live Yardbirds, 1964.

Long before the likes of Cream, Derek & The Dominoes, & a sprawling solo career, Eric Clapton was a scrawny guitar hero in The Yardbirds. He was nicknamed "Slowhand" because he played his guitar so fast that he'd break strings & have to change them to the sound of a slow handclap; within months, "Clapton is God" graffiti began appearing in the London subway halls (much to Clapton's embarrassment). Before he left The Yardbirds for more greener (or rather, blues-ier) pastures, he left this searing document, taken from their sets at the Marquee Club. This song was their opener & they all but blow the roof off the top of it in the performance. While everything revolves around Clapton, I'm always most tickled by Keith Relf's vocals, solidly singing the words in verse, shouting them in another, & then dutifully reciting them in a detached sense of boredom that cuts to the teenage blues at the heart of the song. Before getting obliterated once again by those guitar solos.


4. The Million Dollar Quartet: "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," Studio Jam, 1956.

Long before the likes of Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry was rock & roll's premiere wordsmith. Compared to contemporaries like Elvis or Fats Domino, Berry's songs were epics where the others' were merely three-stanza poems. Berry was a man who truly loved words & putting them together in memorable ways. One realizes this when listening to the famous Million Dollar Quartet jam session where Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, & Johnny Cash turned to Berry's "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man." For several takes, you can hear them collectively honing in on the song, different people remembering different parts of different verses, until it all comes together here. If one needs any further evidence of strongly Berry was on the rock founders' minds, look no further than the fact that aside from "Don't Be Cruel," this is the only rock song sung by The Million Dollar Quartet for the nearly 80-minute session.

3. Buddy Holly: "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," Reminiscing, c. 1956; #113 US, #3 UK.

An opposite take on "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" by no less of a founding rock god. Precise where The Million Dollar Quartet was loose, & rocking where they were almost folksy, Buddy Holly's version of the song reshapes it into a driving rockabilly masterpiece (with a seeming tip of the hat to The Champs' "Tequila," although Berry himself loved a good Latin groove as well). & when the snare drum hits to emulate the high-fly being hit into the stands, it is a subtle use of sound effects that presages songs like "Penny Lane" by a decade. Although not originally released during Holly's lifetime, it saw the light of day just before The Beatles invaded America, even making the Top 5 in the Holly-loving UK.


2. Elvis Presley: "Promised Land," Promised Land, 1974; #14 US.

Elvis's last truly classic recording was also his first great cover of a Chuck Berry song. He had tried in overeager readings of "Maybellene" at the Louisiana Hayride & later in listless recitations of "Johnny B. Goode" in Las Vegas, but only his mid-'60s country take on "Too Much Monkey Business" was close to interesting, & only then because it was the only Elvis recording to feature the word "Vietnam." But in 1974, Elvis showed he still had something left to prove when he attacked Berry's "Promised Land." Perhaps it was because the song contained an idea as big as Elvis--THE Promised Land--that he was up for the challenge, but its rock star travelogue version of The American Dream never sounded better than in Elvis's telling. Cut at Stax Records, it provided Elvis with the last Top 15 pop hit of his lifetime, although it deserved to go all the way to #1.


1. The Beatles: "Rock & Roll Music," The Beatles For Sale, 1964.

The Beatles' cover of Chuck Berry's "Rock & Roll Music" is easily the greatest Berry cover of all time. It encompasses all of the key elements that can be found in the other songs listed above--a sense of rawness, of quality, of reinvention, of tightness, of fun, & of simple, irreverent joy. Like they already had with "Roll Over Beethoven" the year before, The Beatles took Chuck Berry's original & tightened it up, locking it together in a way that the original version merely suggested. The words were never the problem in Berry's original--it was that the music never matched their promise. The Beatles fixed all of that. With Lennon shouting his finest vocal this side of "Twist & Shout," the group shows that even in the wistful, post-A Hard Day's Night period of late 1964, they could still rock out with the best of them.

& in doing so, more than hold their own against none other than their idol, Chuck Berry.

WARNING: THIS IS NOT THE ORIGINAL STUDIO VERSION OF THE SONG BUT A CRAPPY LIVE VERSION. (THANKS, BEATLE LAWYERS!) THE ORIGINAL VERSION MUST BE SOUGHT OUT. IT IS BEST HEARD ON THE ORIGINAL BEATLES FOR SALE LP OR THE OLD 1970s DOUBLE-LP BEATLES COMPILATION ROCK & ROLL MUSIC THAT BARES ITS NAME.

Last Thoughts On Chuck Berry, 1926-2017.

Years ago, I once read that Chuck Berry is the rock upon which rock & roll rests; to this day, I cannot think of a better way to put his influence.

Only The Beatles, Elvis, Dylan, & The Rolling Stones can rival him in influence, & of those 4, only Elvis is conceivable without him.

Simply put, Chuck Berry is rock & roll.

The depth, range, & influence of artists who have covered him is staggering: The Beatles, Elvis, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Sex Pistols, Jerry Lee Lewis, David Bowie, The Animals, The Kinks, The Band--& that's just off the top of my head & only counting songs that were officially released on official albums. Throw in live recordings, jam sessions, & bootlegs, & you'd have basically everyone ever.

His music is the blood that flows through the veins of rock & roll; take it away, & the history of the music dies.

The Beatles cut their teeth on his records. They paid credit both directly, with blistering covers of "Roll Over Beethoven" & "Rock & Roll Music," but also indirectly, when Lennon lifted the "Here come ol' flat top, he come groovin' up slowly" from Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" to begin his classic "Come Together." Lennon could be forgiven though; it was simply proof that by 1969, Chuck Berry was simply rock's second mind.

The Rolling Stones' first single was a cover of Berry's "Come On," while one of their early standout covers was "Carol." They also went to Chess Records, the temple where Chuck recorded, & laid down a great version of "Around & Around," which was also covered by The Animals that same year. (David Bowie cut a version of the same song seven years later; it was originally slated to go on the Ziggy Stardust album.) Did I write that Chuck Berry was rock's second mind by 1969? I take that back. By 1965, Mick Jagger took the line "I can't get no satisfaction from the judge" from Berry's "Thirty Days" & wrote what many consider to be rock's definitive anthem.

Those people are wrong, though. Rock's definitive anthem came seven years earlier when Chuck Berry released "Johnny B. Goode."

From the blazing guitar intro through the lyrics and the solo, no one could ever beat it, not even Chuck himself. It was the story of the American Dream told through the eyes of a young guitarist, highlighted by those two-note driving solos that Berry used build rock guitar's (which is to say, rock's) basic vocabulary. Any time you hear someone blasting out those double-note riffs, they are reaching for Chuck Berry's performance in "Johnny B. Goode."

Yet that said, "Johnny B. Goode" was not surprisingly the toughest Chuck Berry song to cover. Both The Beatles & Elvis made passes on it in live performances, but neither could come close. To best illustrate the point, listen to The Sex Pistols set it aflame in an early demo where they can't play it & Johnny Rotten doesn't know the words. They end up shouting "Go! Go! Go!" because it's all they can do. It's a pathetic mess, but in its own raw way, it blows away those versions by The Beatles & Elvis.

Elvis couldn't do a Chuck Berry song justice until he tackled "Promised Land" in 1975, & it was his last truly classic recording. Berry had written it in jail some fifteen years earlier & like "Johnny B. Goode" before it, it too told a version of the American Dream, only this time from East Coast to West, &, as Greil Marcus pointed out when he called it the greatest American song of all time (as in, song about America), rags to riches. It's like one big musical montage that ends with a phone call to the folks back home where it all began.

When Elvis had the famous Million Dollar Quartet jam session with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, & Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry was virtually the only rock on the menu that wasn't someone already in the room. The majority of the session leaned on gospel, country, & blues, but there was a hilarious stretch where they try to remember the words to "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" & piece it together in a gesture of love & admiration, with Elvis strumming away frantically on the acoustic guitar. Once they finally get it, Carl goes into a story about coming off of tour with Chuck Berry.

Chuck Berry touring was an interesting thing by the 1980s, where Berry would show up to a club with his guitar in hand, get his money, then go onstage & play with whatever band was there. Every band knows his songs, he rationalized, because his songs are the rock & roll songbook. A young Bruce Springsteen was in one of these bands in the 1970s; twenty years later, he would back Berry at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Concert in 1995. In the years in between, he released a live version of "Run, Run Rudolph," proving even Berry's Christmas songs were nothing to be ignored.

& then there are the Chuck Berry songs that lead to other songs. Brian Wilson so clearly lifted Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" for The Beach Boys' 1963 breakthrough "Surfin' U.S.A." that Wilson eventually had to give him a co-authorship credit; years earlier, rhythm & blues singer Richard Berry (no relation) used the pidgin English of Chuck's "Havana Moon" as a main inspiration for "Louie, Louie," later immortalized by The Kingsmen in a song that all but invented punk rock.

& then there is the popular memory. Back To The Future (Marty McFly playing "Johnny B. Goode" while the film's greatest line is spoken: "Hey Chuck, this is your cousin Marvin, Marvin Berry! You know that new sound you've been looking for? Well listen to THIS!") & Pulp Fiction (the twist dance contest scene, set to "You Never Can Tell") put Chuck Berry into motion picture history in a way that even his own Hail, Hail Rock & Roll documentary could not. When John Lennon & Yoko Ono cohosted The Mike Douglas Show in the 1970s, they jumped at the chance to have Chuck Berry on, & then jumped at the chance to play with him on stage (it serves as a reminder that for everything that Lennon's presence supposedly represented about the counterculture, he was still most wowed by '50s rock & roll). & when NASA shot a rocket into space representing human culture, Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" was among its artifacts. Saturday Night Live famously quipped that the first response from alien life has been received & it is: "Send more Chuck Berry."

& as some like to tell it, Chuck Berry's 1955 first hit single, "Maybellene," was the first rock & roll record of them all.

The one & only time I ever saw Chuck Berry was 50 years to the day after "Maybellene" was released, in August of 2005, at the nightclub he owned in St. Louis, Blueberry Hill, which oddly named after a Fats Domino song. Even odder was that, after much fanfare about this being the 50th anniversary of "Maybellene," he didn't even play the song. My sister & I had gotten there early, stood in line for a few hours, & sat in the front row. Even though he was in his 80s, he came out like a king & was rock royalty in a way I have only ever seen in person from his contemporaries like Jerry Lee Lewis & B.B. King--those pre-television legends who could really hold a stage.

With his son leading the band, Berry played 10 songs in 60 minutes, 9 of his classics & one Jimmy Reed cover. He was spry, sprightly, having fun, & basking in the glow, & during "Johnny B. Goode," he even duckwalked, to my astonishment. He closed with "Reelin' & Rockin'," never one of my favorites at that time, but a favorite ever since. His band shrewdly pulled up girls onstage to dance (of which my sister was thrilled to be among the first, invited up by none other than Chuck Berry, Jr.), which allowed him to sneak out the back behind the wall of dancing girls. It was the rock & roll equivalent of disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

Now Chuck Berry is truly gone. It may be cliche, but it seems like there is nowhere else to end but with the final verse of "School Day," yet another song that, like so many others, is so vital to rock's repertoire but escaped my stream-of-conscious words above.

As the man said:

Hail, hail rock & roll

Deliver me from the days of old

Long live rock & roll

The beat of the drums, loud & bold

Rock, rock, rock & roll

The feeling is there, body & soul

Chuck Berry is dead. Long live Chuck Berry.

Last Thoughts On David Bowie, 1947-2016.

"Is David Bowie's 'Young Americans' the greatest song ever?" asked the 2004 fourth edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide. "For the five minutes of the song, all anyone could ever want is to be or do a young American. David Bowie's whole world, & everything great about rock & roll, is in this tune."

& even better is the version he sang on The Dick Cavett Show in 1974:

Let's be clear here: "Young Americans" is not the greatest rock & roll song--it's not even the greatest David Bowie song. But it has a grit, an attitude that carries it, at once cool & removed, & intimate & sexy. The song caught Bowie in his short-lived "plastic soul" phase--between the far more celebrated "Ziggy Stardust" & "Thin White Duke" periods--where he tried to make classic soul & Philadelphia funk records, or at least his own version of it.

By the time he sang the song on Dick Cavett, Bowie was in the midst of a sold-out series of concerts & his usually-pristine voice was shot. We hear him reach for notes he can't quite hit & run ragged over his own lyrics. Instead of taking away from the performance, it only makes it that much better, his body literally injecting that raspy-voiced, going-all-out feel that makes soul music soulful.

& all of this on the title track of a mediocre album in a period of his career which is usually overlooked by his more thrilling peaks.

* * *

When David Bowie died yesterday on January 10--two days after his 69th birthday & the release of his final album Blackstar--he left a legacy that is little equaled in rock. Instead of asking, "What David Bowie song do you like best?," one could just as easily ask, "Which David Bowie do you like best?" A decade before the likes of Michael Jackson, Madonna, & Prince were changing up their looks & styles with each new album, David Bowie was pioneering the melding of rock & roll & performance art. He is often described as a chameleon, but this doesn't do him justice. A chameleon blends in with their surroundings; Bowie stood out & led the way for others to follow.

He emerged just after Rock had established itself as Art (with an uppercase A), through the likes of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper & everything that Bob Dylan ever touched. The Beatles & Bob Dylan showed that a rock performer could be a rock artist--& change & progress as their career saw fit. Hence, you have The Beatles' sonic development from the folk-rock of Rubber Soul to the psychedelic rock Revolver & beyond, as well as Dylan's lyrical development from the earnest folksinger of The Times They Are A-Changin' to the surreal joker of Another Side Of Bob Dylan & Bringing It All Back Home. What The Beatles & Dylan did with their albums, Bowie did with his albums, but also with himself.

For Bowie's music wasn't only inspired by his rock peers, but by artists like Andy Warhol, whose "Pop Idea" that anyone could do anything was a major influence. Bowie was also fascinated by the likes of Anthony Newley, a British actor who played a pop star & then became one in real life. Finally, the lure of musical theater (& the gay community that surrounded it) appealed to Bowie, a stage on which one could literally act out a role & become a star.

All of this would inform his music & his Art, which were one in the same.

He developed from the psychedelic pop of "Space Oddity" (1969) & the underrated The Man Who Sold The World (1970) the following year into the showtune-souding-heavy Hunky Dory (1971), which, propelled by his signature "Changes," was his first masterpiece. All of this set the stage for his most celebrated achievement: Ziggy Stardust.

Building on The Beatles & Dylan's musical advancements & mixing it with the philosophy of Andy Warhol, he decided that he would become the biggest rock star in the world by playing the role. He used stretch limos & booked major arenas, believing that if you want to be treated like a star, you have to act like one. What is often overlooked is that the album this was all built upon, The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars (1972), was a rare rock masterpiece, one of the finest albums ever created. From the opening doom-threat of "Five Years" through the wrenching closer "Rock & Roll Suicide" some 40 minutes later, not a second is wasted. Glam rock would soon become an overblown joke of excess, but here it's the economy that shocks you. The title track "Ziggy Stardust" & "Suffragette City" are the famous ones, but every song is a classic. To my ears, nothing sounds better than the centerpiece, "Lady Stardust," which breaks down the love of fandom & rock into a few perfect lines:

I smiled sadly

For a love

I could not obey

Lady Stardust

Singing songs

Of darkness & dismay

"Lady Stardust"--& in turn, Ziggy Stardust--worked because because it was fueled by love--the sacred bond between fan & star, grounded in a swaying piano & the warmth of an acoustic guitar. It's all so touching that you can almost miss him mumbling get some pussy now at the end of the song.

The whole Ziggy Stardust thing went over brilliantly in England, where a few well-chosen TV appearances & concerts could launch someone of great talent into "The Next Big Thing," but it all fell apart somewhere in the American heartland on his Ziggy Stardust tour. America was too big to hold the illusion in place it seemed, & rock music as a whole was beginning to splinter to a point at which an artist like Elvis or The Beatles could no longer unite it, no matter how good they were. The fallout was charted on Aladdin Sane, in which he seemed to struggle between a new persona of "Aladdin Sane" & a continuation of "Ziggy Stardust."

But credit Bowie for keeping going, wherever his muse took him: The 1984 Orwellian glam opera Diamond Dogs (1974); the plastic soul of Young Americans (1975); the emergence of the "Thin White Duke" on Station To Station (1976); the much-celebrated "Berlin Trilogy" of Low (1977), "Heroes" (1977), & Lodger (1979), which found him mixing rock with atmospheric soundscapes; the postpunk Pierrot of Scary Monsters (& Super Creeps) (1980), which yielded the funky, surreal sequel to "Space Oddity," "Ashes To Ashes," which may just be his finest song of all. Let's Dance (1983) shifted the focus to the dancefloor in the 1980s & contained his last truly classic song, "Modern Love." Since then, he's continued to release material, both solo & with various collaborations, some magical, some forgettable, but none of which carry the stamp of his first decade.

* * *

The truth is that none of it needed to.

Through a combination of hard work & good music, Bowie earned that most dysfunctional decade of rock & roll: The 1970s. No one else could deftly mix singer-songwriter music with underground rock & glam, & then soul, dance music, & ambient art rock--let alone enjoy a major hit at nearly every step of the way.

& in acting like a rock legend, he became one. touching nearly every era & legend of pop music: He claimed to have been in the crowd at Bob Dylan's infamous "Royal Albert Hall" concert in which someone shouted "Judas!" (who was decidedly not Bowie; he couldn't understand why everyone was so angry at this wonderful new music); he collaborated with John Lennon in the 1970s, who co-wrote Bowie's first American #1 hit, "Fame," he even sang a duet with Bing Crosby on "Little Drummer Boy" in a 1977 Christmas special.

He was gracious with his time & talent: He wrote Mott The Hoople's comeback hit, the glorious "All The Young Dudes"; he produced Lou Reed's finest album, Transformer; he co-wrote & co-produced Iggy Pop's signature "Lust For Life"; he co-wrote the classic "Under Pressure" with Queen, the hook of which would go onto power Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice Baby" (despite Vanilla's denial); he had a major hit with Mick Jagger on a cover of the old Motown song "Dancing In The Street"; he co-headlined a major 1990s tour with Nine Inch Nails; he collaborated a little over a decade later with a group he had heavily influenced, Arcade Fire. He even wrote a song for Elvis Presley, who passed on it. Bowie decided to record it himself: "Golden Years."

He covered virtually everyone imaginable in the last 40 years of rock music: Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Who, The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Iggy Pop, Jonathan Richman, The Pixies, & many, many more. There are even events that defy the above categorization--how Joy Division initially named themselves Warsaw after an instrumental song on Low; how he spent the 1990s collaborating with seemingly anyone who would have him (Al B. Sure!, Lenny Kravitz, Pet Shop Boys, Placebo, etc.); how Kurt Cobain breathed new life into "The Man Who Sold The World," in his last major performance before killing himself.

If David Bowie was the rare artist who could be all things to all people, it was only because he was all things to himself, a kaleidoscope of sound+vision who influenced all who heard him.

* * *

I wish I could find a way to tie everything back to "Young Americans," but I can only be led back to the stubborn, careening chords of "Time":

Perhaps you're smiling now

Smiling through this darkness

But all I have to give

Is guilt for dreaming

We should be home by now.

Goodnight, David. & thank you for everything.