David Bowie said John Lennon revealed his three rules for songwriting to him (Guitar Player magazine, (9/14/25)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.guitarplayer.com/guitarists/john-lennon-songwriting-advice-to-david-bowie

“We were talking about writing, and John said, ‘It’s very easy. This is all you have to do.’” David Bowie said John Lennon revealed his three rules for songwriting to him
Features
By Elizabeth Swann published 2 days ago
The two musicians met in New York City in 1974 and went on to build a friendship that led to their hit co-write, "Fame"

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The two artists collaborated soon after meeting. Bowie had just completed recording his album Young Americans in Philadelphia. But in January 1975, he and Lennon got together at New York City’s Electric Lady Studios to cut two more tracks for it: a cover of Lennon’s 1968 Beatles tune “Across the Universe” — included on the group's 1970 swan song, Let It Be — and a new song composed by Bowie, Lennon and Carlos Alomar, Bowie’s guitarist and the player behind the tune’s signature funk electric guitar riff. Titled “Fame,” it became Bowie’s first number-one single.

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“I’ll never forget something John Lennon told me,” he recalled in a 1983 interview, in which he reflected on Lennon’s death three years earlier. “We were talking about writing, and I would always admire the way he used to cut through so much of the bullshit and just come straight to the point with what he wanted to say.

“He said, ‘It’s very easy, all this. All you have to do is say what you mean, make it rhyme, put a backbeat to it. I keep coming back to that principle.”

Bowie added that “Fame” came about in just that way.

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Much more at the link.

And more than two pages in Tony Visconti's autobiography about that first long meeting between Bowie and Lennon.

[eShirl]

1. that's great

[speak easy]

2. Interesting. Bowie seldom came straight to the point;

everything was filtered, mashed up, woven into a story, or expressed in a character.

A good example was Station to Station (the song). The underlying emotion was an Englishman's anxiety about mainland Europe, about English identity in a larger whole.


the song was largely interpreted as Bowie (the Thin White Duke) deciding to live in Europe, but wait, there's more,

The song was written after the 1975 UK referendum decision to stay in the EU (the European Economic Community at that time), hence -

It's too late to be grateful
It's too late to be late again
It's too late to be hateful
The European canon [law] is here.

The UK famously joined the EU Late.

But wait, there's more. The Thin White Duke was seen as a fascist figure. He was, but the character was historical - Edward, [family name David] The Duke of Windsor, the former Edward VIII, whom the Nazi's plotted to put back on the throne, and make Britain a vassal state. It might be drawing a long bow, but I see Mrs. Simpson in this verse.

I must be only one in a million
I won't let the day pass without her

And finally something Bowie said himself, that Station to Station referred as much to the Roman Catholic stations of the cross as train stations.

Again the fear of England being subsumed in the larger church. The Spanish Armada failed, Hitler failed, but now Europe won.

The music of the song is dread then release: Bowie own decision to leave the U.S. and to live in Europe - but the places he chose, Switzerland and West Berlin were outside the EU.

[highplainsdem]

3. Thanks for the background!