Songfacts®:

• David Bowie lived in the early 1970s with his then-wife Angie in an expansive flat at Haddon Hall, a Gothic Victorian villa just north of the Beckenham town centre in south east London. Bowie wrote most of the material for The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust there.
• Bowie cooked up this blues-rocker in a basement jam, adding the words at the last minute in the studio. It was named after its apparent resemblance to Birmingham rock group, The Move. (The area west of Birmingham is known as "The Black Country.")
• The song featured on the soundtrack of the 2010 movie The Kids Are All Right.
• "Black Country Rock" was the B-side for a 1971 Bowie single titled "Holy Holy," which was recorded after the release of The Man Who Sold The World in an attempt to boost the sales of the album. The attempt failed. The single sold as poorly as The Man Who Sold The World initially did (it rebounded in '72 off the success of Hunky Dory).