The title, of course, was a clumsy pun upon Jean Genet.I wanted to get the same sound the Stones had on their very first album on the harmonica. It originally had the working title ‘Bussin’’, and originated after Mick Ronson began playing the central riff on his new Gibson Les Paul guitar.Bowie later claimed that the song was written in New York City. We have over 50000 guitar chords … I didn’t get that near to it, but it had a feel that I wanted – that ’60s thing.All rights reserved. Occasionally Bowie played the Beatles‘ ‘Love Me Do’ on the harmonica during performances of the song. Mixed in Nashville. ‘The Jean Genie’ may have been a furious album track on Aladdin Sane but was released some months before the LP. Each of the Aladdin Sane songs, apart from the cover of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’, was accorded a geographical location on the record label, to signify where it originated: ‘Watch That Man’ (New York); ‘Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197? ‘The Jean Genie’ was released as a single on 24 November 1972. I think George Underwood was playing around with chords that were very similar to the Yardbirds’ cover of Bo Diddley’s ‘I’m A Man’. Review Changes The melody and phrasing was not too dissimilar to the part of the chorus in ‘The Jean Genie’.Starting out as a lightweight riff thing I had written one evening in NY for Cyrinda’s enjoyment, I developed the lyric to the otherwise wordless pumper and it ultimately turned into a bit of a smorgasbord of imagined Americana. ‘The Jean Genie’ was performed by Bowie during almost all his major tours, with the exception of the Outside, Hours and Heathen tours. View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1972 Knockout Centre Vinyl release of The Jean Genie on Discogs. It was promoted with an advertisement which stated: “Written on the road. The Jean Genie statistics and form. He spent several nights in the city either side of a 28 September show at Carnegie Hall, and is likely to have written the lyrics around that time.‘The Jean Genie’ was performed by Bowie during almost all his major tours, with the exception of the Outside, Hours and Heathen tours.A live version recorded on 20 October 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was included on the 30th anniversary edition of The Bowie Bible is run for the love of anything and everything to do with David Bowie. Its central character was based on an Iggy-type persona and the setting was inspired by Max’s Kansas City. Shared in November of 1972, the track was another dousing of fuel to the already brightly-burning Bowie bonfire, as his persona Ziggy Stardust begun to capture the hearts and minds of those on both sides of the pond. It’s one of the few that I can keep going back to.
"The Jean Genie" is a song by English singer-songwriter David Bowie, originally released in November 1972 as the lead single to his 1973 album Aladdin Sane. People really love this one.
I know much of that has something to do with the great ‘The Jean Genie’ is believed to have emerged from a jam on board the Spiders From Mars’ Greyhound tour bus, as they travelled between Cleveland and Memphis on 23 September 1972.