Station To Station album coverRecorded: September–November 1975
Producers: David Bowie, Harry Maslin

Released: 23 January 1976

Personnel

David Bowie: vocals, guitar, saxophone, Moog synthesizer, Chamberlin, harmonium
Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick: guitar
Roy Bittan: piano
George Murray: bass guitar
Dennis Davis: drums
Warren Peace: backing vocals
Harry Maslin: saxophone

Tracklisting

Station To Station, David Bowie’s tenth studio album, was recorded in Los Angeles in 1975 and released the following year. It marked a transitional phase in Bowie’s career, between the blue-eyed soul of Young Americans and the more experimental European sound of the Berlin trilogy.

The reasons for doing the show and record were many-faceted. 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. So it came to that.
David Bowie
Musician magazine, May 1983

Although created during a high point in his career, Bowie was in the midst of numerous personal troubles. These included a chronic cocaine addiction, the decline of his marriage, a long-running lawsuit to end his management contract with MainMan, and disillusionment with the music industry.

Bowie had also become disenchanted with Los Angeles, where he lived for much of the year.

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There was no enjoyment in the working process [in America]. I’d exclude from that Station To Station. That was fairly exciting because it was like a plea to come back to Europe. It was one of those self chat things one has with oneself from time to time.

Christ, no… what am I talking about? A lot of that and Young Americans was damn depressing. It was a terribly traumatic time. I was absolutely infuriated that I was still in rock ‘n’ roll. And not only in it, but had been sucked right into the centre of it. I had to move out. I never intended to be so involved in rock and roll… and there I was in Los Angeles, right in the middle of it.

Whether it’s fortunate or not I don’t know, but I’m absolutely and totally vulnerable by environment, and environment and circumstances affect my writing tremendously. To the point of absurdity sometimes.

I look back on some things in total horror… And anyway I began to realise that the environment of Los Angeles, of America, was by this time detrimental to my writing and my work. It was no longer an inspiration to be caught in that environment.

I realised that that was why I was feeling so claustrophobic and cut off. I was adopting such a hypocritical stance. There was this incredible fight between materialism and aestheticism. My commitment has certainly never been in rock ‘n’ roll. I’ve made no secret of that. I was just a hack painter who wanted to find a new medium to work in, frankly.

David Bowie
Melody Maker, 29 October 1977

In 1976, during the making of Station To Station, Bowie explained his future direction to Rolling Stone magazine.

My actual writing doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense … frankly, I’m surprised Young Americans has done so well. I really, honestly and truly, don’t know how much longer my albums will sell. I think they’re going to get more diversified, more extreme and radical right along with my writing. And I really don’t give a shit…
David Bowie
Rolling Stone, 12 February 1976

Station To Station was mostly written and recorded a time when David Bowie was burnt out, paranoid, drug addicted, and barely subsisting on a diet of pure coke, milk, and finely chopped red peppers. He later said he barely remembered anything of the album’s creation.

I would say a lot of the time I spent in America in the ’70s is really hard to remember, in a way that I’ve not seen happen to too many other artists. I was flying out there – really in a bad way. So I listen to Station To Station as a piece of work by an entirely different person.
David Bowie
Q magazine, February 1997
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