(Credits: Far Out / David Bowie / Album Cover / Neil Young)
Fri 31 October 2025 2:00, UK
David Bowie was a musician whose influences were hard to pin down. Lucky for all those interested, he was always forthcoming with them.
The reason why it can be so hard to pin down who Bowie’s influences will have been is because he was so elusive as a performer. When he made a new album, he didn’t just lean into a new sound, he adopted a completely new look. Nobody threw themselves into concept quite as well as Bowie did, as he adopted a new image, sound, and thematic approach with each record.
When you have albums as varied as Hunky Dory, Blackstar and Diamond Dogs in your discography, you aren’t leaving much room for your audience to guess which artists you draw inspiration from. It’s incredibly hard knowing where Bowie was drawing his different influences from, as when someone’s breakout song is about them floating through space and realising how insignificant we are as a species, it’s hard to trace him back to one specific artist.
Bowie was never shy about coming forward with which artists provided him with inspiration, though. There were a number of different artists who played a part in shaping who Bowie was as a person, songwriter, musician, and artist. Some of them are more cult figures. Meanwhile, other artists were mainstream musicians whom people might initially struggle to pair with Bowie.
Bowie’s reliance on exploring different concepts came from his initial love of musicals and artists such as Anthony Newley. “When I was around 17-18, what I wanted to do more than anything was write something for Broadway – I wanted to write a musical,” explained Bowie. “I had no idea how you did it or how musicals were constructed, but the idea of writing something that was rock-based for Broadway really intrigued me. I thought that would be a wonderful thing to do.”
Of course, while Bowie loved storytelling, he also had a penchant for straightforward, top-quality songwriting. This means that even artists who didn’t lean heavily into concepts, but still wrote great songs, he had a lot of time for. One of these artists was Neil Young, someone who has always been celebrated as one of the world’s greatest songwriters, touching upon various themes and narratives throughout his discography.
Bowie never kept his adoration for Young as a secret; in fact, he covered one of his songs on the album Heathens when he realised he had room for some covers. When the opportunity for some homages on the album presented itself, Bowie thought it would be a good idea to dedicate some runtime to the songwriters he admired the most. One of these was Young, and his excellent offering on ‘I’ve Been Waiting For You’.
“I do three covers on this album, in homage to the writers as much as any other reason. The Neil Young song ‘I’ve Been Waiting For You’ was from his very first album. When I got that album in 1969, I was dazzled by the overall complexity of sound,” Bowie concluded. “It was so majestic but aloft or lonely sounding at the same time. A real yearning. And I’d always wanted to do that song on stage or someplace.”
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