David Bowie: "Drive-In Saturday" Single (1973)

David Bowie’s "Drive-In Saturday" backed with "Round And Round", was released as a 7-inch vinyl single in the UK by RCA Records (catalog number RCA 2352) on April 6, 1973, a week before the album Aladdin Sane, becoming a Top 3 hit in the UK.

Strongly inspired by 1950s doo-wop, "Drive-In Saturday" portrays a scenario in a future post-apocalyptic world (Bowie mentioned the year as 2033) where people have lost the ability to make love and must rely on old films to relearn it. This narrative is often referenced as an example of Bowie's "futuristic nostalgia," where the tale is narrated from the viewpoint of a future resident reflecting on the past.

It's composition was inspired by strange lights amidst the barren landscape between Seattle, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona, as seen from a train at night on Bowie's 1972 US tour. The music featured Bowie's synthesizer and saxophone, while 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 reference to Jung is significant according to artist Tanja Stark, and heralds the pivotal influence of Jungian depth psychology frameworks upon his career. She suggests the lyric "crashing out with sylvian" is a cryptic reference to the Sylvian fissure in the brain associated with visionary and hallucinatory experiences.