"He walked into my bedroom, and he says, Darling, I think this is a hit." How a disco legend and a hotshot Texan blues guitarist helped resurrect David Bowie's career

Let's Dance — (Image credit: Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images | Jean-Louis URLI/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images | Robert Knight Archive/Redferns))

In 1983, following the expiration of the 12 year deal he signed in 1971, David Bowie parted company with RCA Records by mutual consent. While the singer's 'Berlin Trilogy' albums were critically acclaimed, none of the three records penetrated the US Top 10 - Low peaking at number 11, "Heroes" at number 35, and Lodger at number 20 - and although 1980's Scary Monsters was a greater commercial success, buoyed by the success of singles Ashes To Ashes and Fashion - there was no huge appetite at the US label to negotiate a new deal for the star.

"Rock and roll is a business and David wasn’t selling any records in America," Bowie's friend, producer and collaborative partner acknowledges in a new interview with Vulture. "We now act like it was all hip and fantastic, but it wasn’t. He wasn’t killing it."

Rodgers first met Bowie on a night out clubbing with Billy Idol in New York. By his own admission the New York-born musician doesn't recall a huge lot about the evening - "because I used to get really high every single day" - but the pair connected over a shared fondness for avant-garde jazz, and Rodgers was sufficiently together to pass on his phone number to Bowie, with a view to working together in the future.

Mr. Rogers, some fucking cocksucker calls up every day saying he’s David Bowie

In contrast to the English musician, Rodgers was on a commercial roll at as the 1970s drew to a close, scoring US number one singles with his band Chic for Le Freak in 1978, and Good Times in 1979. He'd also co-written a number one single for Diana Ross (Upside Down) and US Top 10 hits for Sister Sledge. Within the industry people began referring to him as The Hitmaker. But it took a little time for Rodgers and Bowie to come together to work their magic.

"I don’t even remember giving him my phone number," Rodgers admits to Vulture. "My place was being renovated and he would call every day. The construction people, who were pretty hardcore Italian dudes, finally told me after a week, 'Mr. Rogers, some fucking cocksucker calls up every day saying he’s David Bowie.' I was like, What do you mean every day? Oh my god, that’s actually him!"

In their initial weeks working together, Bowie and Rodgers were perhaps too respectful of one another, fearful of stepping on one another toes. Rodgers had originally envisaged pushing some sonic boundaries with a man he viewed as "on the same level as Miles [Davis] and [John] Coltrane, James Brown and Prince" until Bowie made it explicitly clear what he wanted from the collaboration: "I want you to do what you do best," he insisted. "I want you to make hits."

The first song the pair set to work on was Let's Dance, which would become the title track of the next Bowie album.

Bowie 1983 — (Image credit: Michael Putland/Getty Images)

"I was staying at his house in Switzerland, and frankly, I was asleep,” Rodgers recalled in an interview for the Victoria and Albert Museum. "He walked into my bedroom, and he says, ‘Nile darling, I think this is a hit.’ And I went, ‘Oh, cool man, let me hear it'. And he starts playing it on a folk guitar, a 12-string guitar with only six strings on it."

Rodgers remembers that the song sounded like "Donovan meets Anthony Newley."

"And I don’t mean that as a compliment,: he added.

“I felt that a lot of his songs were lacking in ear candy,” he told Rolling Stone, admitting that he thought that what Bowie was showing him was so mediocre that he wondered if he was being shown it as a test of his honesty.

"So I wrote out an arrangement for two guitars, bass and drums, because I knew that if the vibe was in the rhythm section, that's all I needed to hear," he told the V&A. "I easily knew that I could put strings or whatever on top of that if I wanted to, but if the funk was in the basic groove, we had something.

"David was really happy, and I remember this like it was yesterday. I said, You think this shit is happening? Wait till you hear my guys play it. Because I knew once we got back home, and it was the people that I played with playing my arrangements, it was going to be killer.

"I explained to him that every song I've ever written starts with the chorus. He says, 'Really? That's crazy. You build to the chorus.' I said, Yeah – well, if you’re white you build to the chorus."

While trusting Rodgers' vision, and the line-up of the band he'd assembled to record the song, Bowie had another ace up his sleeve, in the form of an up-and-coming blues guitarist called Stevie Ray Vaughan, who he'd seen perform at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival. Bringing the Texan hotshot into NYC's Power Station studio for the recording was a masterstroke, and helped unlock the song's mainstream appeal.

Released on March 14, 1983, Let’s Dance became the first David Bowie song to top both the US and UK charts, and his biggest-selling single ever. The single's success also powered its parent album to sell 11 million copies worldwide, and it remains the artist's biggest-selling album ever.

Bowie was back.

David Bowie - Let's Dance (Official Video) [HD] - YouTube

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A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

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