Station to Station

David Bowie developed a cocaine addiction in the summer of 1974, following the release of the album Diamond Dogs. The Alan Yentob documentary Cracked Actor depicted Bowie on the Diamond Dogs Tour in September 1974 and showcased his mental state. Bowie said in a 1987 interview: "I was so blocked ... so stoned ... It's quite a casualty case, isn't it. I'm amazed I came out of that period, honest. When I see that now I cannot believe I survived it. I was so close to really throwing myself away physically, completely." After seeing an advanced screening of the film in early 1975, director Nicolas Roeg contacted Bowie to discuss a role in his upcoming adaptation of Walter Tevis's 1963 novel The Man Who Fell to Earth. Bowie accepted the role, and moved from New York to Los Angeles, California, where shooting was to take place. On his arrival in L.A., Bowie stayed with Glenn Hughes, the bassist for the English rock band Deep Purple. He also visited his old friend, singer Iggy Pop, in rehab. The two would attempt to record some material in May 1975, but the sessions were unproductive due to Pop's heroin addiction. Hughes told the biographer Marc Spitz that Bowie lived in an increasingly paranoid state, recalling he refused to use elevators because of his fear of heights. His addiction severed friendships with the musicians Keith Moon, John Lennon and Harry Nilsson; he later said: "If you really want to lose all your friends and all of the relationships that you ever held dear, [cocaine is] the drug to do it with." According to the biographer David Buckley, Bowie's diet now consisted primarily of red and green peppers, milk and cocaine. Bowie later admitted that he only weighed about 80 pounds and was "zonked out of his mind most of the time". Hughes said Bowie would not sleep for "three to four days at a time". Stories, mostly from one interview—pieces of which found their way into Playboy and Rolling Stone—circulated of the singer living in a house full of ancient Egyptian artefacts, burning black candles, seeing bodies fall past his window, having his semen stolen by witches, receiving secret messages from the Rolling Stones, and living in morbid fear of the Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. In an interview with Melody Maker in 1977, Bowie described living in L.A.: "There's an underlying unease... You can feel it in every avenue... I've always been aware of how dubious a position it is to stay here for any length of time." Three years later, he would tell NME that the city "should be wiped off the face of the earth". In April 1975, Bowie announced his retirement from music, stating: "I've rocked my roll. It's a boring dead end. There will be no more rock'n'roll records or tours from me. The last thing I want to be is some useless fucking rock singer." The biographer Nicholas Pegg attributes this quote to Bowie's decaying mental state; his "retirement" lasted less than six months. Shooting for The Man Who Fell to Earth began in June 1975. ==Development==

(pictured in 2008). Bowie's work on the film partially inspired the album. Bowie's heavy drug use continued during filming. He recalled in 1993: "My one snapshot of that film is not having to act...Just being me as I was perfectly adequate for the role. I wasn't of this earth at that particular time." When shooting took place in New Mexico, he was reported to be in a much healthier state compared to his time in Los Angeles. During his days off from filming, he began writing a collection of short stories called The Return of the Thin White Duke, which he described as "partly autobiographical, mostly fiction, with a deal of magic in it;" he also recalled taking "400 books" for the shoot. He began writing songs throughout filming, including two—"TVC 15" and "Word on a Wing"—that would end up on his next album. On top of this, he was in line to compose the film's soundtrack. In the film, Bowie portrays the lead role of Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien who travels to Earth in search of materials for his dying planet, eventually becoming corrupted by humans. Roeg warned the star that the part of Newton would likely remain with him for some time after the filming. With Roeg's agreement, Bowie developed his own look for the film, and this carried through to his public image over the next twelve months, as did Newton's air of fragility and aloofness. Newton served as a major influence on Bowie's next onstage character, the Thin White Duke. Bowie's 1975 single "Fame", a collaboration with John Lennon, was a massive commercial success, topping the charts in the US. Bowie's label RCA Records were eager for a follow-up. After completing his work on The Man Who Fell to Earth in September, he returned to Los Angeles; his assistant Coco Schwab had recently acquired a house for him. Partly because of his drug addiction, his marriage to his wife, Angie, began falling apart. After recording backing vocals for Keith Moon's "Real Emotion", he was ready to record his next album. ==Production==

Studio and personnel Station to Station was recorded primarily at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles. The studio opened in January 1975 and quickly became one of the city's busiest studios, attracting artists such as Rod Stewart and Frank Sinatra. Cherokee was more advanced than Philadelphia's Sigma Sound Studios, where Bowie had recorded Young Americans (1975); it featured five studio rooms, 24-track mixing consoles, 24-hour session times, more space and a lounge bar. On arriving at Cherokee, Bowie sang a few notes in Studio One, played a piano chord, and said: "This will do nicely." Producer Harry Maslin said the studio was chosen because it was new and quiet, with less paparazzi and media attention. With a more advanced studio and no time constraints, experimentation became the ethos of the sessions. (pictured in 2011), who played lead guitar on Station to Station. Maslin, who co-produced "Fame" and "Across the Universe" on Young Americans, was brought back by Bowie to produce. Tony Visconti (who after a three-year absence had recently returned to the Bowie fold mixing Diamond Dogs and co-producing David Live and Young Americans) was not involved because of competing schedules. Also returning from the Young Americans sessions were guitarists Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick, drummer Dennis Davis and Bowie's old friend Geoff MacCormack (then known as Warren Peace). George Murray, a player from Weldon Irvine's group, was recruited as bassist. Bowie would use the rhythm section of Alomar, Murray and Davis for the rest of the decade. In mid-October, pianist Roy Bittan, a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, joined the ensemble at the suggestion of Slick. Bittan recalled: "David knew we were coming to town and he wanted a keyboard player. It must have only been about three days. It's one of my favourite projects I've ever worked on." Following the departure of Mike Garson, Bowie praised Bittan's contributions. Although NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray surmised it was cut "in 10 days of feverish activity", more recent scholarship contends that the album was recorded over a period of about two months, with the sessions beginning in late September or early October 1975 and ending in late November. Both Slick and Maslin praised Bowie's "on-the-spot approach". Slick found the lack of rehearsals advantageous, resulting in a cleaner performance. Because of his heavy cocaine use, Bowie recalled remembering "only flashes" of the album's production, later admitting that "I know it was in LA because I've read it was". Buckley says that Bowie's only memory of the sessions was "standing with Earl Slick in the studio and asking him to play a Chuck Berry riff in the same key throughout the opening of 'Station to Station'." The singer was not alone in his use of cocaine during the sessions; Alomar recalled that "if there's a line of coke which is going to keep you awake till 8 a.m. so that you can do your guitar part, you do the line of coke ... the coke use is driven by the inspiration". Like Bowie, Slick had only vague memories of the recording: "That album's a little fuzzy—for the obvious reasons! We were in the studio and it was nuts—a lot of hours, a lot of late nights." Pegg says there were several 24-hour non-stop sessions; one day, work began at 7 a.m. and ended at 9 a.m. the next day. According to Spitz, at one point Bowie moved a bed into the studio. On one day, recording moved to the nearby Record Plant because Cherokee was already booked and Bowie did not want to lose momentum. Maslin recalled: "[Bowie] liked to work four days or so, very strenuous hours, and then take a few days off to rest and get charged up for another sprint." Cherokee co-owner Bruce Robb told Spitz: "I'd come in the following day and they were all still working from the night before. I'd leave and they were still working." Mixing When mixing Station to Station, Maslin found using the 24-track mixing consoles a challenge, but they allowed flexibility. Richard Cromelin of Circus writes that having a large number of tracks allowed Maslin to "waste" a channel on one sound effect which could then be "tampered with", leaving other tracks for use by double-tracked instruments and vocals. Bowie later expressed regret that he "compromised in the mixing. I wanted to do a dead mix ... All the way through, no echo ... I gave in and added that extra commercial touch. I wish I hadn't." Speaking to Creem magazine in 1977, Bowie proclaimed that the album was "devoid of spirit ... Even the love songs are detached, but I think it's fascinating." ==Musical style==

Station to Station is often cited as a transitional album in Bowie's career. Developing the funk, disco and soul sound of Young Americans, the album also reflects the influences of electronic music and the German music genre of krautrock, particularly by bands such as Neu! and Kraftwerk. Bowie had exhibited avant-garde elements on the 1973 tracks "Aladdin Sane (1913–1938–197?)" and "Time". According to Robert Christgau, Bowie's experimentation with African-American music styles had matured by the time he recorded Station to Station, as the record appropriated them "in a decidedly spacy and abrasive context"; he said it added soul to the "mechanical, fragmented, rather secondhand elegance" explored on Aladdin Sane (1973). "eerie avant-pop", "art-funk", and "ice-funk". Maslin told Circus magazine: "There was no specific sound in mind. I don't think [Bowie] had any specific direction as far as whether it should be R&B, or more English-sounding, or more commercial or less commercial. I think he went out more to make a record this time than to worry about what it was going to turn out to be." Pitchfork and Rolling Stone defined the track as a "momentous prog-disco suite" and a "Krautrock disco opus" respectively. With its krautrock influence, it is the album's clearest foretaste of Bowie's subsequent Berlin Trilogy. The musical style of both "Golden Years" and "Stay" are built on the funk and soul of Young Americans but with a harsher, grinding edge. Bowie said the "Golden Years" was written for, and rejected by, American singer Elvis Presley, while Angie Bowie claimed it was penned for her. According to Pegg, the song lacks the "steelier musical landscape" of the rest of the album. Author James Perone argues "Stay" represents a merger of hard rock and blue-eyed funk. "TVC 15", the album's most upbeat track, has been compared to the music of the English rock band the Yardbirds. "Wild Is the Wind" contains funky elements in its electric guitar playing, while the rhythm section and acoustic guitar add a jazz flavour. AllMusic's Donald A. Guarisco likens the music of "Word on a Wing" to gospel and soul; Perone compares it to the sound of American musician Roy Orbison. Both tracks have been categorised as hymns and ballads. ==Lyrics and themes==

While living in his cocaine-induced, paranoid state, Bowie did not sleep for days, often reading books one after the other. During a run-in with Jimmy Page in February 1975, Page discussed the works of the English occultist Aleister Crowley with him. Bowie, whose tracks "Oh! You Pretty Things" and "Quicksand" from 1971's Hunky Dory had exhibited occult influences, immersed himself in Crowley's works. He revisited concepts seen in Hunky Dory and The Man Who Sold the Worlds "The Supermen" (1970) such as German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of Übermensch, or "Superman", and studied new concepts such as Nazi fascination with Holy Grail mythology and the Kabbalah. Bowie would use all these ideas throughout Station to Station, with Pegg describing the album's theme as a clash of "occultism and Christianity". The title track introduces Bowie's new persona—the Thin White Duke—who became the mouthpiece for Station to Station and often during the next six months, for Bowie himself. It concerns a character's girlfriend being eaten by a television. The song was inspired by a dream of Iggy Pop's featuring a similar premise, as well as a scene in The Man Who Fell to Earth where Newton fills a room with television screens, each tuned to a different channel. Pegg calls it the album's "odd man out". ==Artwork and packaging==

The album cover is a black-and-white photograph taken by Steve Schapiro on the set of the film The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which Bowie, as Newton, steps into the space capsule that will return him to his home planet. Bowie had insisted on the cropped monochrome image, feeling that in the original coloured full-size image the sky looked artificial; an all-white border was placed around the image, which Pegg believes reflects the "stark monochrome aesthetic" of both the Thin White Duke character and the 1976 tour. He also contends that the monochrome cover matches the "austere tone" of the album. The full-size, colour version was used for some subsequent reissues of the album. The back cover's photograph was taken in Los Angeles in 1974, also by Schapiro, and showed Bowie sketching the Kabbalah Sephirot with chalk. It was Bowie's first LP not to include lyric sheets in the packaging, which was criticised in contemporary reviews by Street Life and NME. ==Promotion and release==

on the variety show The Cher Show, November 1975 RCA released "Golden Years" as the album's lead single on 21 November 1975, with the Young Americans track "Can You Hear Me?" as the B-side. On 4 November, Bowie appeared on the American television show Soul Train, miming to "Fame" and the then-unreleased "Golden Years". Bowie was the second white artist to appear on the programme, after Elton John six months earlier. During the performance and interview, he was visibly drunk and, according to Pegg, was at a "new low in coherency". Bowie later felt ashamed for his behaviour, recalling in 1999 that he had failed to learn the new single and was scolded afterwards by the show's DJ. The resulting film clip was used as an unofficial music video to promote the single worldwide. Commercially, "Golden Years" reached the top ten in the UK and the US but, like "Rebel Rebel" had been for Diamond Dogs, it was a somewhat unrepresentative teaser for its parent album. Following Soul Train, Bowie appeared on The Cher Show on 23 November, performing "Fame" and a duet of "Can You Hear Me?" with Cher. He then appeared via satellite on ITV's Russell Harty Plus five days later. On 3 January 1976, Bowie and his band appeared on Dinah! and performed "Stay", marking the song's public debut. RCA released Station to Station on 23 January, with the catalogue number APLI 1327. It was a commercial success, peaking at number three on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart, and remaining on the chart for 32 weeks. Station to Station was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on 26 February. "TVC 15" was released in edited form as the second single from the album on 30 April 1976, backed by the Diamond Dogs track "We Are the Dead". Its release coincided with the European leg of the Isolar tour. It peaked at number 33 in the UK. "Stay" was first issued, in its full-length form, as the B-side of "Suffragette City" in the summer of 1976 to promote the Changesonebowie compilation. An edited version was subsequently released in July as an A-side in the US and other territories, backed by "Word on a Wing". It failed to chart. The song, however, did not appear on the compilation. (Changesonebowie was itself packaged as a uniform edition to Station to Station, featuring a black-and-white cover and similar lettering). In November 1981, as Bowie's relationship with RCA was winding down, "Wild Is the Wind" was issued as a single to promote the Changestwobowie compilation. The full-length version of "Golden Years" backed the UK single. Accompanied by a video shot specifically for this release, it peaked at number 24 in the UK and charted for ten weeks. ==Critical reception==

Station to Station received positive reviews from music critics on its release. Paul Trynka says overall, critics acknowledged that Bowie was exploring new territories. Ian MacDonald noted Bowie's musical growth in Britain's Street Life magazine, recognising it as one of his finest albums up to that point. He believed it was the first album he'd released where it felt he had total control. Writing for NME, Charles Murray praised the music throughout the record, but was critical of Bowie's vocal performance, particularly on "Word on a Wing" and "Wild Is the Wind". Another reviewer for NME found the album "a strange and confusing musical whirlpool where nothing is what it seems", ultimately calling it "one of the most significant albums released in the last five years". The magazine named it the second best album of the year, behind Bob Dylan's Desire. John Ingham of Sounds magazine gave immense praise to the album, naming "Golden Years", "TVC 15" and "Stay" some of Bowie's best songs up to that point and overall "a great record of our time". Musically, he viewed it as a cross between The Man Who Sold the World and Young Americans. Some reviewers found the lyrics' meaning difficult to comprehend, with Ingham citing "TVC 15" as an example. However, he felt it was part of the LP's charm. Rolling Stone writer Teri Moris applauded the album's 'rockier' moments but discerned a move away from the genre, finding it "the thoughtfully professional effort of a style-conscious artist whose ability to write and perform demanding rock & roll exists comfortably alongside his fascination for diverse forms ... while there's little doubt about his skill, one wonders how long he'll continue wrestling with rock at all". Critic Dave Marsh was extremely negative, calling it "the most significant advance in LP filler since Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music [1975]". Considering "Word on a Wing" the "only complete success" on the LP, he panned the tracks as overlong, unexciting and uninteresting, further arguing that "it's rather appalling that the best thing [Bowie] can think of doing with his talent currently is fool around." Rock critic Lester Bangs, who had generally assessed Bowie's previous work negatively, praised Station to Station in Creem magazine, noting the presence of "a wail and throb that won't let up" and "a beautiful, swelling, intensely romantic melancholy" and calling it Bowie's "(first) masterpiece". In Circus, Cromelin, noting that Bowie was "never one to maintain continuity in his work or in his life", declared that Station to Station "offers cryptic, expressionistic glimpses that let us feel the contours and palpitations of the masquer's soul but never fully reveal his face". Cromelin also found allusions to earlier Bowie efforts, such as the "density" of The Man Who Sold the World, the "pop feel" of Hunky Dory, the "dissonance and angst" of Aladdin Sane, the "compelling percussion" of Young Americans, and the "youthful mysticism" of "Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud", concluding that "it shows Bowie pulling out on the most challenging leg of his winding journey". Ben Edmonds did not find the LP one of Bowie's best works in Phonograph Record instead believing that Station to Station was merely a "stopping place" where he could reflect and plan his next steps. However, he noted the album's overall cohesiveness and praised the backing band, which he considered Bowie's finest since the Spiders from Mars. Station to Station was voted the 13th best album of 1976 in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics nationwide, published by The Village Voice. Reviewing the record for the newspaper, Robert Christgau expressed some reservations about the length of the songs and the detached quality of Bowie's vocals, but deemed "TVC 15" his "favorite piece of rock and roll in a very long time" and wrote, "spaceyness has always been his shtick, and anybody who can merge Lou Reed, disco, and Dr. John ... deserves to keep doing it for five minutes and 29 seconds". He ranked it as the year's fourth best in his ballot for the poll. ==Subsequent events==

With the Station to Station sessions completed in December 1975, Bowie started work on a soundtrack for The Man Who Fell to Earth with Paul Buckmaster, whom Bowie worked with for Space Oddity (1969), as his collaborator. Bowie expected to be wholly responsible for the film's music but found that "when I'd finished five or six pieces, I was then told that if I would care to submit my music along with some other people's ... and I just said 'Shit, you're not getting any of it'. I was so furious, I'd put so much work into it." a contention backed by a young Gary Numan who was among the crowd that day: "Think about it. If a photographer takes a whole motor-driven film of someone doing a wave, you will get a Nazi salute at the end of each arm-sweep. All you need is some dickhead at a music paper or whatever to make an issue out it ...". ==Influence and legacy==

Station to Station was a milestone in Bowie's transition to his late 1970s Berlin Trilogy. Pegg calls it the "precise halfway point on the journey from Young Americans to Low". Bowie himself said, "As far as the music goes, Low and its siblings were a direct follow-on from the title track [of Station to Station]". For the Berlin Trilogy, Bowie collaborated with Tony Visconti and former Roxy Music keyboardist and conceptualist Brian Eno. Eno similarly felt that Low was "very much a continuation" of Station to Station, which he called "one of the great records of all time" in 1999. In an interview with Q magazine in 1997, Bowie considered Station to Station a "great, damn good" album, but "extremely dark". Because of his disconnected state during its recording, he heard it as "a piece of work by an entirely different person". The album has been described as "enormously influential on post-punk". Ten years later, NPR's Jem Aswad described the album as "pioneering ice-funk" that "paved the way not only for thousands of artists who were influenced by it, but also for the brilliant wave of experimentation that followed over the next five years: Low, "Heroes" (both 1977), Lodger (1979) and Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)". Bowie's biographers have described Station to Station as one of his greatest records. In his book Strange Fascination, David Buckley calls it a "masterpiece of invention" that "some critics would argue, perhaps unfashionably, is his finest record". He finds Bowie's vocal performance on "Wild Is the Wind" one of the best of his career. Paul Trynka was struck by the album's innovation, noting "a bizarre blend of spritely and monumental themes", and argues it "marks the point at which David Bowie moved from pop musician to phenomenon". Marc Spitz acknowledges Station to Station as a "gigantic creative leap forward", similar to Hunky Dory five years earlier. He praises the record's timeless feel, the performances and the overall atmosphere, and considers it the first new wave record. James Perone cites it as one of the most "structurally coherent and broadly accessible" records of the era. Peter Doggett argues that the new recording process Bowie used on the record allowed him to elevate it into a single unifying vision, as he had encapsulated on Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust. Although Bowie would use this process for later records such as Lodger and Scary Monsters, Doggett believes these records are more fragmented than cohesive in the manner of Station to Station. Reappraisal Retrospectively, Station to Station is viewed as one of Bowie's best and most significant works. In a 2013 retrospective for Rock's Backpages, Barney Hoskyns called Station to Station "one of the most impressive of his musical junctions: intense, passionate, focused, surging and urgently funky". In The Guardian, Alex Needham said the album "manages to incorporate almost everything fantastic about pop music" in just six tracks: "it's dramatic, stylish, emotional and danceable". Like his biographers, critics have acknowledged the album's position in Bowie's overall discography as the transition between the styles of Young Americans and the Berlin Trilogy. Michael Gallucci of Ultimate Classic Rock described it as "the moment where his most unabashed commercial move gave way to his most don't-give-a-damn experimental period", arguing the album marked Bowie's transition "from Rock Star to Artist". Following Bowie's death in 2016, Ultimate Classic Rocks Bryan Wawzenek listed Station to Station as his fourth greatest album, stating that although he made better albums in the years to follow, "he made this fascinating album first". Rankings Station to Station has frequently appeared on several lists of the greatest albums of all time by multiple publications. In 1995, it was ranked number 21 on Mojo magazine's list of the 100 greatest albums ever made, the highest ranked Bowie album on the list. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked it number 323 on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, 324 on the 2012 revised list, and 52 on the 2020 revised list. In 2004, The Observer ranked the album number 80 on its list of the 100 greatest British albums. Vibe magazine placed the album on its list of 100 Essential Albums of the 20th century. In 2013, NME ranked the album 53rd in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Uncut magazine ranked the album 30th on their list of the 200 greatest albums of all time in 2015. A year later, the UK-based Classic Rock magazine ranked the album number five in its list of the 100 Greatest Albums of the 1970s. English writer Colin Larkin included Station to Station in the second edition of his book All Time Top 1000 Albums (1998) at number 305. The album was also included in the 2018 edition of Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. ==Reissues==

The album has been released several times on CD beginning in 1984 by RCA, with the original black-and-white cover art. The album was rereleased in 1991 by Rykodisc featuring two bonus tracks: live versions of "Word on a Wing" and "Stay"; this reissue charted at number 57 on the UK Albums Chart for one week. Both rereleases used the original, full-sized colour cover artwork. Station to Station was reissued in 2010 in special and deluxe editions. The special edition included an "original analogue master" of the album (a newly prepared digital master sourced from the original tapes) and the complete 1976 Nassau Coliseum concert on two CDs. The deluxe edition included the special edition's contents, on both vinyl and CD, alongside a disc of single edits and three further versions of the album: a Dolby 5.1 surround sound mix and a new stereo mix, both created by co-producer Harry Maslin (and issued on DVD-Audio), and the 1985 RCA CD master. Both editions were released in September 2010. In The Complete David Bowie, Pegg is critical of Maslin's remix. He writes that it "surrenders all the subtlety of the original [mix] in favour of unimaginatively pushing everything to the front", resulting in a "messy racket", particularly evident in the backing vocals for "TVC 15". Although he notes that there is a different lead vocal take on "Wild Is the Wind", he considers the new mix drastically inferior to the original. In 2016, the album was remastered for the Who Can I Be Now? (1974–1976) box set, with standalone CD and vinyl releases the following year. The box set included both the original 1976 mix and the 2010 stereo remix of Station to Station (for the first time available in its entirety on CD and vinyl), individually packaged. The sleeve containing the 1976 mix used the original cover art, while the sleeve containing the 2010 mix used a colour-corrected version of the 1991 front cover art; the back cover of the 2010 mix's sleeve was a variant of the 1976 back cover, with burgundy text in place of bright red. ==Track listing==

All songs written by David Bowie except "Wild Is the Wind", with lyrics by Ned Washington and music by Dimitri Tiomkin. ==Personnel==

Albums credits per the liner notes and biographers Nicholas Pegg, Chris O'Leary, & Benoît Clerc: • David Bowie – vocals; acoustic guitar, effects (1), melodica (1, 2), synthesisers, handclaps (2), Chamberlin (3), alto & tenor saxophone (4), Minimoog, Mellotron (5) • Carlos Alomar – rhythm guitar (1–5), lead guitar (2, 4, 5), acoustic guitar (6) • Earl Slick – lead guitar; rhythm guitar (1, 2, 4) • George Murray – bass guitar • Dennis Davis – drums; percussion (1–3, 5) • Roy Bittan – piano (1, 3, 4), organ (1) • Warren Peace – backing vocals (1–4), percussion (2, 3, 5) • Harry Maslin – effects, vibraphone (1), synthesisers (2), baritone sax (4) Production • David Bowie – producer • Harry Maslin – producer, recording, mix and mastering engineer • Ted Spencer – assistant mix engineer • Steve Shapiro – photography ==Charts==

Weekly charts Year-end charts ==Certifications and sales==