Actors - Drive-In Saturday

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	Actors - Drive-In Saturday

Drive-In Saturday was a single by David Bowie. A nostalgic song heavily influenced by 1950s doo-wop, as part of the Aladdin Sane
narrative it detailed the films watched by the inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic world who can no longer reproduce, and need to see how it’s done. It was influenced by the barren landscape between Seattle and Phoenix as seen from a train on Bowie’s 1972 US tour. The lyrics name-checked Mick Jagger ("When people stared in Jagger's eyes and scored"), the model Twiggy ("She'd sigh like Twig the wonder kid") and Carl Jung ("Jung the foreman prayed at work").

The song was initially offered to Mott the Hoople, but they turned it down. In his 1972 tour narrative, Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Star, Mott leader Ian Hunter seems nonplussed by the song's pop complexity when Bowie plays it to him, writing that it has "a hell of a chord rundown." Bowie’s version, recorded on his return to Britain, stayed in the charts for 10 weeks, reaching #3 in the UK charts.

The B-side, “Round and Round”, was a cover of Chuck Berry’s track “Around and Around”, and was a left over from the Ziggy Stardust
sessions.

At the Entertainment Arena (or Music Hall) in Cleveland, OH on 25 November 1972, Bowie introduced the song as follows:

:"This is the bit where all the people with the tape recorders have to leave, because I'm gonna do a new number and you mustn't record it. I'll tell you where we wrote this. We wrote this from Phoenix down to Seattle--no, see, it's the other way around, isn't it--from Seattle down to Phoenix, and it was about the future, and it's about a future where people have forgotten how to make love, so they go back onto video-films that they have kept from this century. This is after a catastrophe of some kind, and some people are living on the streets and some people are living in domes, and they borrow from one another and try to learn how to pick up the pieces. And it's called 'Drive-In Saturday.'"

Track listing

# "Drive-In Saturday" (Bowie) – 3:59 # "Round and Round” (Berry) – 2:39

Production credits

Producers:
* Ken Scott
* David Bowie
on “Drive-In Saturday”

Musicians:
* David Bowie
: vocals, guitar
* Mick Ronson: guitar
* Trevor Bolder: bass
* Mick Woodmansey: drums
* Ken Fordham: saxophone
* Mike Garson
: piano

Live versions

A live version recorded at The Public Hall, Cleveland November 25th, 1972 was released on the bonus disc of the Aladdin Sane
- 30th Anniversary Edition in 2003.

Other releases

It appeared on several compilations:
* Sound + Vision box set (1989)
* Bowie: The Singles 1969-1993 (1993)
* The Singles Collection (1993)
* The Best of 1969/1974 (1997)
It was released as picture discs in both the RCA Life Time picture disc set and the Fashion Picture Disc Set.

Cover versions

The Diamonds on the album Million Copy Hit Songs Made Famous By Elton John & David Bowie
Joe Jackson on the album Live: New York Club Dates
The Turn on the album Ashes To Ashes: A Tribute To David Bowie in 1998

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