David Bowie - Space Oddity

Released - November 1969

Genre - Psychedelic Folk

Producer - Tony Visconti (Gus Dudgeon on "Space Oddity")

Selected Personnel - David Bowie (Vocals/Guitar/Stylophone); Rick Wakeman (Keyboards); Terry Cox (Drums); Tim Renwick (Guitar); Tony Visconti (Bass/Flute); Herbie Flowers (Bass); Paul Buckmaster (Cello)

Standout Track - Space Oddity

1969 saw the true arrival of the artist who would go on to be one of the few figures who managed to merge both enormous widespread mainstream success with genuine critical acclaim and artistic liberation. Throughout his career, David Bowie has always divided his time between indulging his creative impulses and creating pioneering new work that challenged the mainstream audiences, and then making concerted and calculated efforts to launch at the mass market, and his lack of contentment to settle for one or the other has caused him to lose and win his audience more times than any other artist. It also makes him one of the most endlessly fascinating, refreshing and genuinely interesting musicians of all time, and certainly one of my biggest idols. However, the messianic following and iconoclastic experimentation were all still to come in the late 60s, and at this stage Bowie had already been dabbling in music for several years. What's notable about Bowie's early work is the fact that, from the moment he struck out as a solo artist, he was interested in doing things his way. Although he spent a couple of years playing old-fashioned rock & roll with bands such as the Lower Third or the Manish Boys, as soon as he was signed to the Deram label in 1966, his work immediately took on a more theatrical and idiosyncratic quality, consisting largely of bizarre little children's songs in an outlandish music hall style, with his vocal delivery influenced by the nasal whine of Anthony Newley. The gem in all this weird material was the brilliantly stupid "The Laughing Gnome," a song he seems embarrassed of these days even though it's an absolute masterpiece when taken for the silly novelty piece it is.

After indulging these rather odd whims on his self-titled debut album, Bowie rethought his approach for its follow-up (technically also entitled David Bowie, though generally referred to as Space Oddity to avoid confusion with the earlier album). Clearly, while his earlier work marked him out as an artist to take interest in, there was little commercial future in such weird music. So what if the same sense of theatricality and iconoclasm could be applied to more traditional songwriting forms? The first outcome of this approach was the song that, to this day, remains one of his best-known and most enduring, the haunting "Space Oddity." A tale of a lonely astronaut trapped floating above the Earth, a life away from his family, it's a fairly standard acoustic folk song rendered weird and alien and unsettling by Bowie's menacing two-note Stylophone part, plus the orchestral flourishes and lurid electric guitar parts that are introduced later. It was his first hit single, though Bowie and his management were disappointed it didn't catapult him to success as much as they would have hoped (that would come much later with the birth of Ziggy Stardust in 1972).

Though "Space Oddity" is the obvious standout, this album in general is unjustly forgotten about, and showcases a particular Bowie we would never see again anywhere else in his career - Bowie as a purveyor of starry-eyed psychedelic folk - and it's got some truly wonderful stuff on it. "Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed" is a Dylanesque romp, and "Memory Of A Free Festival" is another heartfelt tribute to, and sly comment on, the hippie folk generation, and its extended "Hey Jude-esque" fadeout of "The sun machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party" is a jubilant summing up of the whimsical, lazy feel of the album in general. "Cygnet Committee" is a hugely overdramatic classic, starting as a haunting acoustic number and exploding into orchestral pomp and Bowie's melodramatic proclamations, telling a tale that foreshadows the Ziggy Stardust days with its preoccupation with a cult figure who attempts to control his followers and ends up enabling them to destroy him. Though Bowie intended it to be a derisive attack on hippie counterculture, he would end up knowingly adopting the exact same persona in order to win mainstream acclaim.

Perhaps the best song, however (other than the obvious title track) is the simplest. "Letter To Hermione" is a heartfelt and poetic goodbye to Bowie's recent girlfriend Hermione Farthingale, and, other than the vaguely stargazing lyrics, is the most emotionally honest and least theatrical thing here, and still one of the most beautiful songs Bowie has ever written. In general, Bowie has always avoided overt honesty in his writing, preferring to indulge in allegory and surreal imagery, and it means that in the moments when something heartfelt and true emerges, it hits home far stronger than it might if it was one of several romantic ballads. "Letter To Hermione" remains one of my favourite Bowie moments for its striking simplicity.

Bowie's vocals have also come on a long way from his debut album, where he was essentially a chuckling, whining jester. Here that nasal quality has been honed into something more affecting, more powerful and in control of the material it's dealing with. In fact, in general on this album, one gets the sense that Bowie really cares about the material in a way that was lacking before, where the parlour songs lacked any sense of real significance or depth, neither for Bowie himself nor for his audience. I've often heard it said that The Man Who Sold The World was Bowie's first essential album, and it's an opinion that does a really cruel disservice to this wonderful album. The Man Who Sold The World may be the first arrival of the qualities we would truly go on to associate with Bowie, but the unusual folk singer showcased briefly here, who would soon be transformed into a wholly different person in the first of a number of personality changes throughout his career, is not somebody who should be forgotten, and this album deserves more attention than it gets.

Track Listing:

All songs written by David Bowie.

1. Space Oddity

2. Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed

3. (Don't Sit Down)

4. Letter To Hermione

5. Cygnet Committee

6. Janine

7. An Occasional Dream

8. Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud

9. God Knows I'm Good

10. Memory Of A Free Festival