I know we've featured a collaboration between David Bowie and another artiste before, and that in itself is significant, as Bowie seldom works with other musicians, but this one is pretty special. Perhaps because it's Bowie working with a legendary figure outside of the rock spectrum, one who has plied his trade, and become a respected and even revered figure in the often tough and competitive world of jazz.
Pat Metheny, with his Pat Metheny Group, has been around since 1975, though he began his career a year earlier, and had been teaching music since he was eighteen. He has released over seventy albums, has won almost twenty Grammy awards, and that's to say nothing of the many soundtracks he has composed or played on. A true virtuoso, the often insular nature of jazz nonetheless makes Metheny something of an unknown outside his own sphere of expertise, and so it was with a sort of a “Pat who?” that the world greeted his only collaboration with Bowie, in 1985.
This is not America --- Pat Metheny Group and David Bowie
Despite the misleading hierarchical credits shown on the sleeve of the single, this was very definitely a Metheny project, coming from the movie “The falcon and the snowman”, for which Metheny composed the soundtrack, and this song was in fact a rewriting with lyrics by Bowie of another piece on the soundtrack, called simply “Chris”. Now, I have not heard the soundtrack, nor seen the movie, and when I heard the single I of course thought “Bowie”, because his is the only voice you hear singing. I don't think (but I can't confirm) that Pat Metheny sings, at all. I think his field of professionalism lies in the guitar playing on which he has made his name, and composing. But he definitely doesn't sing on this song.
You can though hear the subtle but very obvious differences between this and Bowie's own material. Even music he has sung on from other soundtracks, like “Absolute beginners”, sound like his own sort of thing, whereas the laidback, dreamy nature of the musical accompaniment on this song puts you in mind of a different type of sound. It's certainly hypnotic, and while no-one would venture to claim that Bowie does not sing excellently on it, and for most people would have been the single's major selling point (how many would have bought the record had it been by the Pat Metheny Group? As it was, this hit number 14, and surely that has to be mostly attributed to Bowie fans buying the single?), it's the music that really characterises the song, and marks it out as so much different to anything we've heard before, even from Bowie.
Of course, if you were and are a Metheny fan already, you're reading this and rolling your eyes. But I don't know that many who are, and even though I enjoyed this single, I'm not a fan of jazz so would think it unlikely I would ever listen to one of Metheny's albums. But then again, when it's as good as this...