David Bowie Took a Rolling Stones Classic — And Made It Sound Like the Future
In 1973, David Bowie was no longer interested in simply sounding like another rock star.
He wanted to sound lik
e the future.
So when he chose to record The Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together” for his album Aladdin Sane, he did not treat the 1967 classic like something sacred.
He tore into it.
The original Rolling Stones version had already caused controversy. Its openly sexual title was considered so provocative that when the Stones performed it on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1967, Mick Jagger was pressured to change the words to the safer “Let’s spend some time together.”
Six years later, Bowie had no intention of making it safer.
His version was faster, harder and far more theatrical.
Mick Ronson’s guitar gave the song a sharper edge. Mike Garson’s frantic piano added chaos, while Bowie used synthesizer effects to push the familiar Stones rocker into the strange, glittering world of glam.
Even Bowie’s vocal changed the meaning.
What had sounded like Mick Jagger’s swaggering invitation now felt exaggerated, ambiguous and deliberately provocative. Near the end, Bowie even added new lyrics of his own, making the song unmistakably his.
That was exactly what made the cover so divisive.
Some critics disliked it. Rolling Stone described the performance as campy and unsatisfying.
Others thought Bowie had achieved something remarkable: taking one of the Rolling Stones’ own songs and transforming it so completely that it suddenly belonged to another era.
But Bowie was not trying to insult the Stones.
He admired them.
Members of his band later described the recording as a genuine tribute, even as Bowie pushed the song into new territory.
That contradiction is what makes the performance fascinating.
Bowie respected the past, but he refused to preserve it exactly as he found it.
Released on Aladdin Sane in April 1973, “Let’s Spend the Night Together” became the album’s only cover song. Surrounded by tracks like “The Jean Genie,” “Time” and “Panic in Detroit,” it also revealed something essential about Bowie.
He could take a song everyone thought they already knew and make it feel unfamiliar again.
The Rolling Stones had made it dangerous in 1967.
David Bowie made it strange in 1973.
And sometimes, that is what a great cover is supposed to do.
Barbara Mandrell Retired From Music at 18 — One Night at the Grand Ole Opry Changed Her Mind
Long before Barbara Mandrell became one of the biggest stars in country music, she had already decided her music career was over.
She was only 18.
That decision sounds almost impossible in hindsight.
Because Barbara Mandrell had been preparing for the stage practically since childhood.
Born in Houston on Christmas Day in 1948, she learned accordion and how to read music before entering first grade. After her family moved to California, she began studying steel guitar at about ten years old while also learning saxophone at school.
Then someone important noticed her.
Country guitarist Joe Maphis saw the young Mandrell performing at a music trade convention in 1960.
He was impressed enough to bring her into his Las Vegas act.
Barbara was still a child, yet she was already sharing a musical world populated by professional country performers.
Before long, she appeared on the Los Angeles television program Town Hall Party and joined a national package tour headlined by Johnny Cash.
By 14, she was performing with her family band at military bases in the United States and Asia. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
It looked as though music had already chosen her.
Then Barbara walked away.
She had fallen in love with Ken Dudney, the drummer in the Mandrell family band.
Dudney eventually joined the Navy and trained as a pilot.
The couple married in 1967.
Barbara decided that was enough.
At 18, she retired from music.
For someone who had spent much of her childhood performing, it was an extraordinary choice.
But the retirement did not last.
When Dudney was away with the Navy, Barbara visited her family in Tennessee.
One evening, she attended a taping of The Porter Wagoner Show before the Grand Ole Opry.
As Barbara watched the performers, something came back.
She leaned toward her father, Irby Mandrell.
She told him she could do what she was watching onstage.
More importantly, she wanted to do it again.
She asked whether he would manage her.
Her father believed in her.
The decision made that night changed everything. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Barbara soon signed with Columbia Records.
In 1969, she entered the Billboard country chart with her version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”
More hits followed.
By 1972, she had joined the Grand Ole Opry — the same institution connected to the night that helped convince her to return.
Then the career accelerated.
“Sleeping Single in a Double Bed” reached No. 1.
Her version of “If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want to Be Right)” also topped the country chart.
But Mandrell was becoming more than a recording artist.
She could sing.
She could dance.
She could play multiple instruments.
And onstage, she could move between traditional country, pop, soul, gospel, and show-business spectacle without losing her identity.
By the beginning of the 1980s, Barbara Mandrell was everywhere.
From 1980 to 1982, she starred with her sisters Louise and Irlene on NBC’s Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, bringing country music into millions of American homes every week.
And the industry recognized what was happening.
The Country Music Association named Mandrell Entertainer of the Year in 1980.
Then she won again in 1981.
She became the first artist in CMA history to win the award in consecutive years. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
That same period produced the song that would become inseparable from her name.
“I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.”
The song looked back at a time when openly loving country music was not always fashionable.
Then country culture exploded into the American mainstream.
George Jones appeared on the recording, and the song became another No. 1 country hit for Mandrell
The title almost seemed to describe Barbara herself.
She had been playing steel guitar as a child long before television superstardom.
She had toured before she was old enough to drive.
She had quit.
She had started again.
And she had reached the top.
Her life would still bring serious challenges.
In 1984, a devastating automobile accident left Mandrell with multiple injuries and required a long recovery.
Yet she returned again, continuing to record, tour, and act before eventually retiring from performing in 1997. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
In 2009, Barbara Mandrell was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
It was a remarkable ending to a story that could easily have stopped decades earlier.
At 18, Barbara Mandrell thought she was finished with music.
Then she sat in an audience in Nashville and watched other performers doing what she had once done.
Something inside her changed.
She told her father she wanted another chance.
He believed her.
And the young woman who had retired before her career truly began eventually became one of country music’s defining entertainers.
