Stay

Station To Station, 1976

Based on a dynamite riff of significant funk conjured up by David Live lead guitarist and latterly long-term Bowie associate Earl Slick, Stay was recorded, according to second guitarist Carlos Alomar, “very much in our cocaine frenzy”. Station To Station’s third single, it achieves everything that the ‘plastic soul’ of Young Americans only promised. Here, a watertight band (Slick, Alomar, bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis) sound so comfortable in each other’s company that they take ‘off the leash’ to beyond the point of ‘off the hook’. By 1976’s Isolar tour, Stay tore the roof off at every venue.