R.I.P. David Bowie

This morning, the music world lost a true pioneer in David Bowie.  I can't pretend to accurately put into words here how much he meant to the musical world, the artistic world, and to his fans.  The only thing I'd recommend is to take some time to listen to his expansive catalog, which spans nearly 50 years.  As this is a Springsteen blog, I feel obliged to highlight his two Springsteen covers, "Growin' Up" and "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City". You can read more about these songs in our previous post about them.

Under the Influence of Springsteen: David Bowie

I’m currently reading Jeff Burger’s interview compendium “Springsteen On Springsteen” (full review to come soon) and something that struck me about the early interviews is just how little money Bruce had when he was starting out. Even after releasing two albums, Bruce and the band were barely scraping by and much of the time couldn’t afford to pay their rent. According to Bruce in one of the interviews, an early hope for more financial success was when David Bowie decided to cover a couple of Bruce’s songs: “Growin’ Up” and “It’s Hard to be a Saint in the City.”

Bowie recorded his covers in ’73 and ’74 but didn’t end up releasing either commercially until years later on reissues and collector’s editions. Legend goes that when the two met in ’74, Bowie told Bruce that he was the only American artist he would consider covering. Even though the songs weren’t released at the time, Bruce mentions in an interview that if Bowie keeps covering his songs, they might be able to make some money.

What do you think of Bowie’s versions? Personally, I’m partial to “Growin’ Up” and actually think I prefer it to Bruce’s original version (but not the acoustic version on Tracks).