Why David Bowie would have “adored” working with Elvis Presley | CPT PPP Coverage

“The whole place just turned to look at me and I felt like a right cunt. I had brilliant red hair, some huge padded space suit and those red boots with big black soles,” Bowie added. “I wished I’d gone for something quiet, because I must have registered with him. He was well into his set.”

Despite the initial misstep, Bowie and Presley would later cross paths when Bowie was working on his 1975 single ‘Golden Years’. Sources differ on whether Bowie had specifically penned the track for Presley to sing or whether Presley simply was interested in singing the song. According to Bowie, Presley got interested in ‘Golden Years’ when he heard the demo.

“Apparently Elvis heard the demos, because we were both on RCA, and Colonel Tom [Parker, Presley’s manager] thought I should write Elvis some songs,” Bowie recalled in 2002. “There was talk between our offices that I should be introduced to Elvis and maybe start working with him in a production-writer capacity. But it never came to pass.”

The sliding doors moment was one that Bowie would come to regret. But he wasn’t left empty-handed: Presley gave Bowie an encouraging note after collaboration stalled. “I would have loved to have worked with him. God, I would have adored it. He did send me a note once. ‘All the best, and have a great tour.’ I still have that note.”

Instead, Bowie recorded ‘Golden Years’ himself, releasing it as a single at the tail end of 1974 and placing it on the tracklisting for 1976’s Station to Station. A top ten hit in both the US and UK, ‘Golden Years’ represented one of Bowie’s first real forays into disco, a genre that Presley himself was also toying with before his death in 1977.

Check out ‘Golden Years’ down below.