The gang’s all here…for the recording of “Hunky Dory” Mick Ronson and Woody Woodmansey introduced their boss to bass player Trevor Bolder, also from Hull, putting together the band than in just a few months would become known to the world as The Spiders From Mars. Tony Visconti’s producers chair has been filled by TMWSTW engineer Ken Scott. So for his 4th album David Bowie produced his first classic.

You’d not know that back in 1971 tho’. The album and accompanying single “Changes”, despite receiving glowing reviews, failed to chart on release. RCA didn’t put much effort into promoting either as they knew a drastic change of image and style was imminent. It’s incredible to think that as Bowie was preparing to release “Hunky Dory” his next album was already recorded and ready to go, the long haired be-flared singer/songwriter pictured on this record sleeve was about to transition into a flame haired, jump suit clad, rock ‘n’ roll alien.

“Hunky Dory” opens with 2 bona fide Bowie gems. “Changes” is as much a metaphor for what the writer is about to do as it is a warning to us all that change is inevitable. The jaunty “Oh! You Pretty Things” was successfully covered by Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits fame, giving the writer his 2nd hit.

“Eight Line Poem” leads us to the astonishing “Life On Mars ?”. Now this is not just a Bowie classic but, flat out, one of the greatest songs written by anybody, anywhere, ever. Where did the guy who just 18 months ago was writing about splitting up with his girlfriend like a lovesick teenager drag this one from? The song is magnificent, Mick Ronson’s arrangement and orchestration frame it perfectly and Rick Wakeman’s piano elicits from me just about the only good thing I have to say about Rick Wakeman. If the world didn’t already know it this was Bowie serving notice that he was something special.

That is followed by “Kooks” a lovely if slightly silly nursery rhyme to his son Zowie/Joe/Duncan. “Quicksand” closes out Side 1, a beautiful song with references to Buddhism, Nietzsche, Himmler, Churchill, Nazis and not a lot of hope, “Don't believe in yourself, don't deceive with belief, Knowledge comes with death's release” as the lyric goes, cheery huh ?

Biff Rose’s “Fill Your Heart” is a throwaway cover version and then we reach what can be viewed as 3 tribute songs in a row. Bowie had developed a fixation with Andy Warhol, the Factory scene and the Velvet Underground since being presented with an acetate of “Andy Warhol Presents The Velvet Underground and Nico” by former manager Ken Pitt. He’d added “Waiting For The Man” to his live set before it had been released in the UK. Here he writes a tribute to Mr Warhol, “Andy Warhol”, it’s been said Andy hated it.

“Song For Bob Dylan” is exactly that, another tribute to a hero. This is followed by another nod to an influence and a pointer to the next album. “Queen Bitch” is practically a rewrite of “Waiting For The Man”, a backhanded compliment to Lou Reed. It would also have sat very comfortably on Bowie’s next album, the pointer.

“The Bewlay Brothers”, said Bowie, was a song for the American market. Americans love to overthink things, looking for clues in lyrics and on record sleeves that aren’t there, so he wrote a purposefullly cryptic song for America.

“Hunky Dory” is regarded as a classic in hindsight, it almost got lost due to a lack of attention from both artist (Bowie didn’t tour the album) and record company. The next step was ready, Bowie was about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Quicksand - https://youtu.be/9PrnGo-lOVA (a later live version that not even Reeves Gabrels manages to ruin!).

Now we’re almost ready to fly. The release of “The Man Who Sold The World” in April 1971 marks the start of arguably the greatest run of studio albums by anyone. From here right up until the release of “Scary Monsters” in 1980 (11 consecutive studio albums, I’m not counting “Pin Ups”) Bowie didn’t put a foot wrong.

The pieces are coming together. Bowie has found his right hand man and guitarist, Mick Ronson from Hull, who bought along drummer Mick “Woody” Woodmansey. Tony Visconti is again producing and playing bass. It’s falling into place.

On its release the album proved quite controversial, not so much for the musical contents but for the cover image of Bowie reclining on a chaise longue at his home at Haddon Hall clad in a “Mans dress” designed by British fashion designer Michael Fish (no, not the weatherman). It’s one of 4 sleeves the album has lived in over time, alongside the US “Cartoon” cover, the hugely elaborate German foldout cover and the later RCA re-issue black and white Ziggy cover (I have 3 of the 4, although the Dress and US covers in my collection are re-issues. The German one will likely remain out of my reach unless I win the Lottery !).

Musically the 60’s hippy stylings that dominated “David Bowie (2)” are being swept away.  Small remnants of them linger on “After All” but this album is more muscular and rock ’n’ roll (pointed at by “Cygnet Committee” on the previous record, lyrically if not entirely musically). It starts well with a song Bowie was still coming back to on the Earthling tour over 25 years later. “The Width Of A Circle” perfectly introduces not only the new rockier sound but one of its architects. Ladies and gentleman say a big hello to Mick Ronson. Not only had Bowie found himself a guitar player for the next few years but Ronno was also a master arranger and budding orchestrator on whom Bowie would lean heavily through this and his next three albums. It all starts with a squeal of feedback and Ronno slides into the first of many classic riffs he’d conjure up for Bowie. Very quickly it’s obvious this is a very different David Bowie album. This is a hard rock 4 piece as evidenced by Ronson’s first solo which is anything but your stock-in Blues Rock solo of the time. Lyrically, here and throughout the whole album, Bowie is singing of isolation, paranoia, mental illness, fantasy, sex, God and the devil, there are no love songs on “The Man Who Sold The World”.

Next up is “All The Madmen”, the title says it all. It’s a song about mental illness, deeply rooted in Bowie’s fears for his own and the plight of his half brother Terry who was by this time resident in Cane Hill Hospital, the institution pictured on the cartoon cover of the US release. More crushing guitars and a great riff from Ronson with Tony Visconti’s bass very high in the mix, as it is on the whole album, Ronson having told him to play like Jack Bruce.

“Black Country Rock” is another hard rocker featuring a ver accurate Marc Bolan impression toward the end. “After All” is the only real relief from the rock, an acoustic-centred song with the repeated refrain of “oh by jingo”. Another song about childhood.

Side 2 opens with “Running Gun Blues” telling of a soldier and his killing spree. “Saviour Machine” has computers controlling everything that people do and eventually exterminating humans…sound familiar ? “She Shook Me Cold” has Ronson running wild and Bowie singing about sex.

And then we come to the title song…it actually sits a little uneasily here. A friend has a theory that every Bowie album has a track on it pointing straight to the next album. “Cygnet Committee” was that song on the last album and “The Man Who Sold The World” fulfils that position here, pointing toward “Hunky Dory”. It’s one of my favourites, even more so the version Bowie and Ronson cooked up for Lulu featuring one of DB’s wonderfully asthmatic sax performances. Midge Ure also had a crack at it if I remember right. The less said about a well known unplugged cover the better.

Everything comes to a close with “The Supermen”. It draws influence from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche who Bowie was reading a lot at the start of the 70’s. A look back to a long lost race of, errrr, Supermen who brutally ruled the world, “pre-facists” as he later described them. It’s a great tune regardless of the heavy nature of the subject matter.

Toni Visconti has said that TMWSTW is one of his top 3 Bowie albums, he has great memories of making the record. This would be the last time Visconti would work with Bowie for some years, partly because he was very busy producing Marc Bolan and partly as he didn’t trust Bowie’s new manager, Tony De Fries. For Bowie things were certainly on the upswing. His next 4 albums may well be as good a quartet as anyone has ever made…

All The Madmen - https://youtu.be/KrlvgARHdzc

Those of you paying attention will note that this is the second album titled “David Bowie” and it has an aka title. What’s going on ? Well, in July 1969 Bowie released the single that would finally give him a hit, “Space Oddity”. In November Philips Records released his 2nd studio album, imaginatively titled “David Bowie” (or the excruciating “Man Of Words/Man Of Music” as it was retitled by Mercury in the USA). When a deal was done in 1972 to allow RCA, Bowie’s new record company, to re-issue the album it was given new artwork featuring a contemporary Ziggy picture front and back (lifting a leaf from the Decca playbook there) and retitled “Space Oddity”.

Right, now we’ve got that out of the way what about the music. The album opens with “Space Oddity”…we all know “Space Oddity” right ? So no need for me to go into detail here, other than to say there was a time I heard it so much I stopped listening to it, but on the rare occasions I now come back to it, like today, boy oh boy what a thing it is.

The rest of the album is a strange thing, equal parts almost there (most of “Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed” and “The Wild Eyed Boy Freecloud”) versus some real Hippy-drippy-folky nonsense (“Letter To Hermione” and “An Occasional Dream”) with a sprinkling of weird (“God Knows I’m Good”).

I know he was broken hearted but “Letter To Hermione” (that being Hermione Farthingale who had dumped him to go off and make a film in Norway, or something like that) is the ramblings of a love sick 14 year old. “An Occasional Dream” sounds like a hangover from the (never in a) show-tunes he was writing 2 years earlier. And there can’t be many who’ve woken up thinking “I know I’ll write a song about an OAP who goes shoplifting for a tin of stewing steak” but Bowie did with “God Knows I’m Good”.

My favourites here are “The Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud” and “Memory Of A Free Festival”. “…Freecloud” had been the B-side of “Space Oddity” a few months earlier and was obviously liked enough to include it here too. “Memory Of A Free Festival”, in a Parts I & II format, was re-recorded and released as a single in the summer of 1970 but obviously flopped. It tells of a Festival arranged by the Beckenham Arts Lab, but whether “tall Venusians” had actually passed by or were a result of the “bliss” that passed through the crowd is unconfirmed.

“David Bowie (2)”/“Space Oddity” is a trying to get there record. Some elements are in place (Tony Visconti for instance) but all is not ready. It does however start to point to where Bowie was going in a year or so. 

The Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud - https://youtu.be/gDCor7efUOc