David Bowie: The Man Who Sold The World

The Man Who Sold The World

Best song: The Width of a Circle

Worst song: She Shook Me Cold

Overall grade: 4

Following the success of the single ‘Space Oddity’, David Bowie started trying to put together a more stable group of musicians to work with. This group would then go on to become one of the most famous backing bands of any musician, ever (save for Bob Dylan). Yes, this album does indeed feature a very rough blueprint for what was to become the Spiders from Mars. Micks Ronson and Woodmansey make their first appearance on this album, and Trevor Bolder was the only missing link… but that’s later. For now, we’re just talking about this album, which, although clearly a vital step in Bowie’s evolution, is overlooked and even criticised by fans as often as it is praised.

So, where do I stand on this album that divides the opinions of those who actually remember it exists? Well, I like it. Truth be told I liked it quite a bit more before I found out that Bowie himself wasn’t massively involved in the songwriting process. Maybe that factor shouldn’t be such an influence on my opinion, but it is. David Bowie is one of the most creative and imaginative men in music, and for him – or any musician, for that matter – to put his name on a project, I’d hope that he’d want to have written a set of songs he was really happy with, and that he thought were the best he could write, rather than make a start and then hand the job over to somebody else. Maybe I’m just idealistic.

I’m not going to surprise anyone with my pick for best song here. Opener ‘The Width of a Circle’ is as good as it gets – so good, that one particularly devoted fan in Russia pressed so many copies of it onto 7” that lots of people think it was released as an actual, official single. Don’t be fooled by the 1970 release date. This song has the open, anything-goes kind of quality that makes one think of the 60s, and the second part has a space rock quality that almost reminds me of Hawkwind. Hearing Bowie, generally regarded as a camped-up glam rock singer, try his voice at the heavy metal influenced song might seem like a bit of a stretch, but his voice fits in surprisingly well. There’s some spacey atmospherics in the wobbly guitar solo passage between the first two verses, and the lyrics… ‘And the rumour spread that I was aging fast/Then I ran across a monster who was sleeping by a tree/And I looked and frowned and the monster was me’. Or, I could just quote the entire song. Yes, sleeping with the devil in Hell might sound like dubious subject matter and it’s certainly not the kind of thing I’d expect to enjoy a song about, but there are so many excellent lyrical turns of phrase here that I’m forced to have a lot of respect for the way it’s written.

OK, let’s talk about some of the other songs. This album doesn’t have a concept like ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and doesn’t even flow like ‘Hunky Dory’ but most of the songs are worth checking out, and they do continue to prove Bowie’s often underrated lyrical talents. Seriously, sometimes I think this album could hold up well if you just read the lyrics booklet, and the only other people who can do that are Bob Dylan and Jarvis Cocker. ‘All the Madmen’ carries things on in an equally progressive style with creepy vocals and a guitar opening full of anticipation. Its more stripped back arrangement means it acts as a counterpoint to the first song, but it also builds as it goes on, giving it status on its own. I’m a big fan of the spoken word section in the middle that comes out of nowhere, where the band forget to play for a bit, surprising the listener and making the song memorable and unique. It’s the Syd Barrett song that Barrett never wrote.

‘Black Country Rock’ is not one of my favourites; its blues-rock influence is a bit too overpowering for my tastes, and the hook I hear while I listen to it is lying about being a hook, because it isn’t any kind of memorable. The quietly intense ‘After All’ is more my kind of thing, setting Bowie’s whispered, world-weary vocals against the more innocent and choral sound in the background.

I’ll be dull and predictable again in saying that my least favourite track is ‘She Shook Me Cold’, because it just ad no structure… seriously, most jam sessions are better organised than this song, which is nowhere near album-worthy. It feels like it’s trying to be great art but coming off as a bit of a mess. ‘Saviour Machine’ is nothing particularly special either, and ‘Running Gun Blues’ is notable for being the heaviest song, a bit psychotic in places, interesting enough but more controversial than it is good.

 The title track is probably most famous for being covered by Nirvana in the early 90s, but I can think of much better versions. Namely, this one. More than anything else on the record, this is a pop song, and Ronson provides us with a wonderful guitar hook just to prove that point. Closer ‘The Supermen’ is probably the most obvious nod to Bowie’s sci-fi leanings, sounding alternately cold, futuristic and otherworldly, and it’s another bullseye in my book. Its fantastical qualities elevate an otherwise averagely good song to epic status. Another powerful vocal over the grandiose instrumentation bring the album to a crashing, explosive finish that’s well worth the disappointing moments.

So yeah. They say the only constant in life is change, and that’s definitely true of Bowie’s life. It doesn’t matter how much you like or dislike any one album of his, you always know that the next one’s going to be completely different.

Ouch, I haven’t reviewed anything ridiculously positive for quite a while. Tomorrow or Thursday I’ll give something a 7.

I also haven’t been particularly controversial about anything in a while… that’s coming. Oh, it’s coming.

David Bowie: Space Oddity

Space Oddity

Best song: Come on, really? Do I even need to say it? …Space Oddity.

Worst song: Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed

Overall grade: 3

After spending a few weeks powering through Floyd, dealing with a bunch of requests and random side projects, and generally having to put off writing reviews in favour of completing university applications, I’m finally doing what I promised I’d do a month ago, and starting on a couple of new artists. First of these is David Bowie, and I’m planning to tackle his entire 70s discography as well as selected later works.

Bowie did have an album before this one, officially, but to all intents and purposes his career started when he released the single ‘Space Oddity’. In June 1969 it managed to capture the heart of a generation of people who were fascinated by space and had it constantly on their minds in the wake of the first moon landings. Its rise up the charts is one of those pivotal moments in music history, one that always makes you wonder what would have been without it.

Almost forty-five years later, space is still a source of interest to a lot of people, and the song hasn’t lost any of its power. It’s a crushingly sad tale, but we should have seen it coming all along – the opening is creepy and ominous, which both represents Major Tom’s fear of the unknown and foreshadows the climax. Slowly, torturously, it ripples and builds, until we hear the first call of ‘Ground control to Major Tom…’. I forget just how cool the lyrics are sometimes; organised as a conversation between Major Tom up in his spacecraft and the people back on the Earth who are monitoring him. They carefully give him instructions: ‘Take your protein pills and put your helmet on’, and he’s just excited and overwhelmed by the whole experience: ‘I’m floating in a most peculiar way/And the stars look very different today!’ There’s the poignant moment of ‘Tell my wife I love her very much/She knows!’ coming right before the unexpected shock of ‘Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong/Can you hear me, Major Tom?’ They sound panicked, but Tom can’t hear them, so he interrupts with his ‘Planet Earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do…’ All communication between them is dead, and the implication is that he soon will be too, out there on his own. In around three minutes, Bowie’s managed to create a character that I care about so much and who seems so real that it breaks my heart when he’s left stranded in outer space.

This portion of the song is, of course, focused on the vocals (although there are the obligatory spacey whooshing noises) but there’s a two-minute jam session to finish, featuring the lovely Mellotron sounds of the wonderful Rick Wakeman, while Bowie himself plays a Stylophone (I heard that he only included that on a dare) and it feels like a much needed release of tension spiralling out.

I’ve heard a few different interpretations of the song – that it’s a metaphor for heroin use and that it’s criticising the British space program – but I prefer to take it at face value, as an excellently crafted story perfectly matched with its accompanying music. It may have mostly become famous due to the circumstances of its release, but I think it would have stood out at any time.    

Sadly, this album is not just ‘Space Oddity’, though it’d probably be better if it was. I don’t really see why anyone would choose to listen to this all the way through. A case in point is second track ‘Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed’, a ridiculous Dylan pastiche that completely makes a mockery of Bowie. In ‘Letter to Hermione’, Bowie himself sounds bored and like he’s not all that interested in the song. I’m not either, the melody’s pretty dull.

The one other good song on this album is ‘Cygnet Committee’, which uses prog influences (maybe from hanging out with Wakeman) and an outstanding and emotional vocal performance to completely justify its ambitious 10 minute length. Lyrically it doesn’t always make sense, although it has its moments of clarity, but the music is actually probably more dynamic than the title track, seamlessly transitioning through a few distinct phases that show Bowie’s innate songwriting talent even this early on in his career. I love the ending, where the vocals become more echoey, gradually getting further away, as the drums become more rhythmic and staccato – cool effect.

Sadly, the second side is basically filler. ‘Janine’ is a fairly forgettable finger of folk-pop, ‘An Occasional Dream’ is very pretty and nostalgic at the beginning and has some occasional nice flute playing but gets kind of stagnant, ‘Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud’ begins in a very similar way to the title track and so disappoints me when it’s not, ‘God Knows I’m Good’ has really annoying, almost unlistenable vocals and a melody that’s repetitive and nowhere near good enough to make up for it. And ‘Memory Of A Free Festival’… it’s in two parts, the first quiet and reflective and the second slightly louder and with more of a sense of community. Honestly, both parts should have been cut out of the song. But if I had to pick one to cut, I’d pick the second part. Bowie’s singing on autopilot and it all sounds very clunky, the different parts out of time with each other.

TL;DR version: Listen to ‘Space Oddity’. The song, that is. Listen to it every day for the rest of your life. Never get tired of it. Listen to ‘Cygnet Committee’ pretty often too if you like it, which I do. Everything else should be treated as more of a historical document than something that’s still supposed to be listened to. I know I can look back on it, shake my head in bewilderment and think ‘who would have predicted…?’