“Station to Station” by David Bowie

"Station to Station" is the title track and the opening shot of David Bowie's tenth album, released in January 1976, and at over 10 minutes it's the longest thing he ever cut in a studio. It starts with a train chugging in from nowhere, a sly stand-in for the Stations of the Cross, then drags through a slow, sinister march before lurching into a new key and tempo, all prog muscle and disco pulse, with Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream hovering over the whole thing.

This is where the Thin White Duke steps out, and he brings baggage: Kabbalah, the occult, gnosticism, paranoia and cocaine, which Bowie was leaning on heavily while he wrote and recorded it in Los Angeles in late 1975. Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick's guitars, Roy Bittan's piano, George Murray's bass and Dennis Davis' drums hold the madness together. Harry Maslin co-produced, and the song bridges the funk and soul of Young Americans and the experiments to come in Berlin.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.