Behind the Song: Changes

David Bowie wrote perhaps his most career-defining single in the early 70s titled ‘Changes‘. The song marked his chart debut and became the anthem of youth’s freedom. ‘Changes‘ is a reflective song about defying your critics and stepping out on your own. The lyrics read “And these children that you spit on/As they try to change their worlds/Are immune to your consultations/They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.” The single was nothing but a masterpiece. 

At age 24, Bowie had around three albums out and his rivals, Elton John and Marc Bolan, were beginning to rise – perhaps even above him for a moment. So he wrote ‘Changes‘ in an attempt to stay in the game – it achieved more than Woodmansey thought possible. During his effort, Bowie replaced his usual harptone 12-string acoustic guitar for an ancient grand piano in Haddon Hall where he lived giving a better range of depth to the piece. Bowie also had many more things to incorporate into his music with a fresh perspective on the art. 

“In the early seventies it really started to all come together for me as to what it was that I liked doing,” Bowie said in 2003. “After I came back from my first trip to America, I had a new perception of songwriting, and it was about a collision of musical styles. I found that I couldn’t easily adopt brand loyalty, or genre loyalty; I wasn’t an R&B artist, I wasn’t a folk artist, and I didn’t see the point anymore in trying to be that purist about it. 

“What my true style was is that I loved the idea of putting Little Richard with Jacques Brel and the Velvet Underground backing them. What would that sound like? Nobody was doing that. At least not in the same way.” ‘

The single was perhaps one of the most brilliant pieces Bowie ever created. It later opened his fourth album ‘Hunky Dory‘ and quickly became his most recognizable and most loved piece of work. The lyrics glance at artistic generational divides, a significant issue for Bowie in the 1970s. The opening lines read “Still don’t know what I was waiting for/And my time was running wild/A million dead-end streets” – possibly referring to Bowie’s various artistic brick walls during the 1960s, where his attempts at fame were narrowed as he sought for a unique creative vision.

Those of who he worked with on the single were even surprised Bowie could create something so utterly unique and delicate despite its sharp rock and roll teeth. 

“Honestly, I didn’t think he had these songs in him,” recollected drummer Woody Woodmansey. “They were more structured. He’d obviously focused more as a writer, yet he’d managed to keep his unique approach, especially lyrically, while streamlining everything.” 

“Hunky Dory was the first recording session I ever did in my life, and just to be in a studio was amazing,” Trevor Bolder (bassist) told. “Our approach was very off-the-top-or-our-heads. We’d go in, David would play us a song – often one we hadn’t heard – we’d run through it once and then take it. No time to think about what you’re going to play, you’d have to do it there and then. In some respects it’s nerve-racking, but it gives a certain feel. If you play a song too many times in the studio it can become stale, and I think David wanted to capture the energy of it being on the edge.” 

“There was incredible pressure in getting a track recorded right,” Woodmansey recognized. “David didn’t like doing more than three takes to get it. Nearly every track I recorded with David was first, second or third take, usually second. He knew when a take was right.”

“Hunky Dory gave me a fabulous groundswell. First with the sense of: ‘Wow, you can do anything.’ You can borrow the luggage of the past, you can amalgamate it with things that you’ve conceived could be in the future, and you can set it in the now. 

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“Then the record provided me, for the first time in my life, with an actual audience – I mean people actually coming up to me and saying: ‘Good album, good songs.’ That hadn’t happened to me before. 

“It was like: ‘Ah, I’m getting it. I’m finding my feet. I’m starting to communicate what I want to do. Now… what is it I want to do?’”