Beauty and the Beast

Album: Heroes (1977)
Charted: 39
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Songfacts®:

  • The follow-up single to "Heroes," this ode to Bowie's love/hate relationship with cocaine during his addiction to the drug in the mid 1970s was considered an unconventional choice for release. The song only just scraped into the UK Top 40 and failed to chart at all in the US.
  • The song featured Robert Fripp on lead guitar with synthesizer work by Brian Eno. The King Crimson axeman recalled to Mojo in 2015: "I was in my apartment in New York and the phone went. Brian (Eno) said. 'Do you think you could come along and play some hairy rock 'n' roll guitar?'"

    "I got to the studio and asked to hear something they'd been working on," he continued. "Brian said, 'Why don't you plug in?' They hit the tape, 'Beauty And The Beast,' and what you hear on record is what I played after hearing it for the first time without anything being said."

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