Guitarist Carlos Alomar Recalls David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’ at 50

When Carlos Alomar talks about the 50th anniversary of “Young Americans” — David Bowie’s self-defined ode to “plastic soul,” released March 7, 1975, and re-released today by Rhino/Parlophone — it’s done with love and respect. Make that self-respect, too, because the guitarist knows exactly who he was to Bowie: the musician who helped the glam-rock god get on the good foot.

With the help of Alomar’s wife, vocalist Robin Clark, their dear friend Luther Vandross, and the inspiration of Gamble & Huff’s Sound of Philadelphia studio vibe (where most of the album was recorded), “Young Americans” became Bowie’s first album to achieve top 10 status in the U.S., followed by its chart-topping single, “Fame,” co-written with Alomar and John Lennon.

Alomar has plans to pay tribute to his association with Bowie on a tour next winter. In the meantime, for the occasion of this “Young Americans” 50th anniversary date, Alomar spoke with total recall about everything that occurred between the two from the start.

“Beginning of 1973, RCA Studio, NYC,” says Alomar of his unknowing first session with Bowie, and the position he held among New York studio musicians at the time. “Robin and I had been married for two years and, as newlyweds, were dynamic in influencing the New York music scene.”

After joining up with Vandross to forming the New York musical ensemble Listen My Brother (seen playing in Harlem in 1969 in Questlove’s “Summer of Soul” documentary), Robin and Carlos wed. Along with busying themselves doing studio work for commercial ad jingles and sessions with Ben E. King, Roy Ayers and Esther Phillips, Alomar played as part of the Apollo Theater’s house band.

Working too with RCA as a member of the Main Ingredient, Alomar got a call for a session with Scottish pop singer Lulu, who was then looking to change her goody-two-shoes-image by covering “The Man Who Sold the World,” one of Bowie’s more sinister songs at the time. “But there was no Lulu there, and I really wanted to meet her because of ‘To Sir With Love’ and Sidney Poitier,” says the guitarist. 

One person who was behind the glass at RCA’s studio was the track’s producer, Bowie, who emerged from the booth to greet his day session player. “We worked well together, talked easily and, mainly, got it done in no time, which he liked,” Alomar says.

Finding Bowie to be “thin, like ‘whoa’ skinny,” Alomar invited the singer to his home, and fed him more than just his wife’s home-cooked meal. “David was knowledgeable in American lore, in blues, jazz, R&B, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald. And I asked Bowie about his Spiders from Mars, and had he known the Beatles? I had never met a Brit before.”

After exploring shared curiosities, Alomar brought Bowie to the Apollo Theater, when the Main Ingredient opened for Billy Paul and Richard Pryor. Upon taking Bowie backstage to meet Pryor, pleasantries were exchanged, but Pryor abruptly told Bowie and company “to get the fuck out,” says Alomar. “I was embarrassed, but David wasn’t upset in the least. The bragging rights to being cursed out by Richard Pryor would be talked about for years to come.”

Staying friends through the close of the “Ziggy Stardust” era, Bowie shared with Alomar his idea of recording an R&B album in Philly while attempting to enlist the guitarist as part of 1974’s “Diamond Dogs” tour. But Alomar turned down Bowie’s management, based on the money they were offering. “Man, they were cheap,” he says. “I was making good money on the road when the Main Ingredient hit with ‘Everybody Plays the Fool,’ and doing session work. Bowie’s people started at $200 and went to $250 at a time when I was making $800 a week.”

Yet Alomar was intrigued by Bowie’s ongoing conversation about recording something with a Sound of Philadelphia “feel” at the homebase of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, Sigma Sound Studio.

“David is very calculating about the narrative of everything that he does,” says Alomar. “The bragging rights of Gamble & Huff, the branding behind their hits with the O’Jays, etc., the notoriety of the raw Philly sound… that roughness was what David was looking for, as opposed to, say, the elegance of Motown and Detroit.”

Bowie was, however, disappointed that Gamble & Huff’s usual session musicians, MSFB, had refused his offer to back him in Sigma’s studio.

“I explained to David how MSFB had just recorded their own hit with the ‘Soul Train Theme,’ and now would suddenly be reduced to his backing band,” says Alomar, who then offered his services to find like-minded musicians to go with the players that Bowie had in place. “Luckily, David talked to his people, and we negotiated a proper price. And Mike (Garson, the Spiders pianist) and (bassist) Willie Weeks – I loved Willie – and David Sanborn would be there after touring with Bowie.”

Alomar recalled working with the young alto saxophonist previously through a commercial jingle company during studio sessions in Woodstock, NY (“Robin and I felt like hippies”) where Sanborn “played like a wild man.”

Additionally bringing his wife, Robin Clark, to the friendly Philly sessions, Sigma, a small room mic-ed for “seductive” maximum impact, felt like a gathering place for “an army of comrades, a family,” with Bowie as the permissive father figure.

Talking about the assembly of musicians that Bowie and the guitarist gathered for Sigma’s sessions, Alomar recalled how this disparate bunch found their own way through each track. “The great thing about David is that he lets you work out your own problems,” he says. “We’d jam, he’d add something, we’d come back, discuss. Maybe there was something nuanced someone did that we didn’t catch, but it would be, ‘Hey, we like that. Maybe there’s this Latin thing we can do on “Young Americans.” Yeah, let’s try that.’ We’d develop grooves.”

One of the grooves Alomar developed, first in Philly for a cover of the Flairs’ funky 1961 hit “Footstompin,” was a lick he used later in New York for “Fame.” Alomar knows that his cherished flame-flickering lick has its own history in R&B, and that his is but one piece of the song. “There are many truths, and subjectivity plays a role, but everybody pitching their own stories of who did what gets boring,” he laughs. “We mustn’t think that one line or one lick is the song — they’re not.”

Alomar credits the lineage of his catchy lick in “Fame” first to “You Can Call Me Rover,” by the Main Ingredient. “I played that line when we did ‘Rover’ live,” he says. “I got that lick from the string lines played during the studio sessions for that song.” Alomar additionally credits Bunny Feiten II’s clucking guitars in “Jungle Walk” from the Rascals as inspirational.

“Once the groove was set with David, with the track stripped to just drums and bass, I laid down all the guitar parts — which I learned working with James Brown and his guitarists, who used to slap me down when I overplayed — and did not disturb the groove.”

Alomar claims to have thought often about James Brown when working alone for Bowie in the Philly and NYC studios. “I thought of James’ guitarists. After that, it took me two minutes to create that track. When David returned to the studio, all he did was lay down that gigantic bah-bah-bah-bah – and ‘Fame’ was done. In fact, John and David were going to dinner and invited me, but I had to finish the song. I was hearing those guitars in my head, and had to get it down.”

One lost meal for Alomar became a gain for “Fame” and Bowie.

The provenance of “Fame,” its Philly-first history (uncovered in Wax Poetics in 2016, rehashed now with the retrieval of lost Sigma tapes by Philadelphia music historians) and that recent excavation thrills Alomar. “I haven’t heard them yet, but I love the discovery,” he says.

Alomar also enthuses about the participation of his wife, Robin, and their pal Vandross in 1974’s Sigma sessions – scenes of which were used in “Luther: Never Too Much,” director Dawn Porter’s 2024 documentary.

“David met Carlos and Robin in 1973, a couple,” says Alomar, speaking in the third person. “It wasn’t about meeting musicians. David sought connection. In so doing, he found a level of comfort.”

Knowing his Sigma stay in Philly would last for months, Alomar invited Clark, and Clark invited Vandross. “That’s how we all got work then; one person got the gig then brought their friends,” says the guitarist. “We were tight with Luther, so tight that we had to kick him out of our room the night we got married.”

Once at Sigma, Vandross quietly suggested to Alomar and Clark some hearty zig-zagging vocal lines and complex harmonies for one of Bowie’s new songs. Overhearing Vandross’ and Clark’s experiments for the backgrounds of “Young Americans,” Bowie was amazed.

“Can you repeat that? Can you do that into the microphone?” was Bowie’s request. “After that, David couldn’t get enough of their voices.”

From there, Vandross and Bowie re-fashioned one of the former’s songs, “Funky Music (Is a Part of Me),” into the latter’s freshly-titled “Fascination.” And Vandross became a vocal arranger (“He kept asking us what he should charge David”) at Bowie’s urging, bringing singing friends Anthony Hinton and Diane Sumler in as background vocalists with Bowie, and welcoming then-girlfriend Ava Cherry to the fold for a lustrous, gospel choral display. “Robin was a middleman between David, me and Luther. And David was so comfortable having us around… a comfort that allowed him to be, to try anything and everything. It was more of a family bond than a professional one. We were already pros, that’s why we there.”

In critique of Bowie’s soulful vocal stylings throughout “Young Americans,” Alomar is more than complimentary. “David’s range, his ability to emulate the trappings of R&B — that takes a lot. When you look at all he did before ‘Young Americans,’ we never heard this soulful David. Deep down in his consciousness, to emote as he did here, interpreting those soulful moments with his own narratives, and working creatively to tug at your heartstrings — that’s what sells you on those songs. Who does that?”

Using the “Young Americans” tracks “Right” and “Win” as best examples of funky prowess, Alomar is as thrilled today as he was in 1975 hearing Bowie rise to the challenge of that album’s differing shades of R&B. “To bring out another David to go with each brand, and to match and surpass that with each song; you know full well how amazing that is. And nobody knew that he had such soulfulness until ‘Young Americans.’ And that had generational impact on music, social science, culture, everything. Hell, he wound up on ‘Soul Train’ a year later.”

Returning to the present, Alomar mentions November 2025’s upcoming D.A.M. Trio tour with bassist George Murray in commemoration of Bowie’s passing, as well as the death of drummer Dennis Davis – the third D.A.M. member, who together, formed the core of Bowie’s most influential albums following “Young Americans.”

“David passed; Dennis died several months later – that’s catastrophic,” says Alomar of losing Bowie and Davis in 2016.

“Other Bowie band members were able to continue on with their plans when David died,” he says, speaking of some of the tribute tours that involved veteran Bowie sidemen. “I couldn’t. I’m a pretty sensitive guy… People claimed ownership to certain parts of David Bowie, and I thought it only proper that alumni members pay their respect, to say their goodbyes to David. But that just kept going on and on and on…”

Upon bumping into Murray at a recent Bowie fan convention in Liverpool, Alomar rekindled their friendship (“George was the same as when I last saw him decades ago”) and shared muscle-memory chops when they joined that Bowie convention’s cover band.

“Holy smokes, was George amazing,” says Alomar. “I got that let’s-get-the-band-back-together feeling.”

Alomar is finally ready to give fans what they want, with a Bowie-homage tour that will representing “the soul of ‘Young Americans’” — and, together with Murray and D.A.M., also bring that vibe to the material that those musicians worked on in the subsequent albums “Station to Station,” “Low,” “Heroes,” “Lodger,” and “Scary Monsters.”

“It’s been a decade since I’ve done anything in tribute to Bowie,” says Alomar. “And it was proper to let other musicians who worked with him have their space. But, now, I want to do ‘Low,’ ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lodger’ – the Berlin Trilogy – right. So, it’s Carlos Alomar presents D.A.M. doing ‘Back to Berlin,’ just as if David had asked me to re-do those songs — just as David and I always worked, starting with ‘Young Americans.’”