David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

Released - April 1973

Genre - Glam Rock

Producer - Ken Scott & David Bowie

Selected Personnel - David Bowie (Vocals/Guitar/Keyboards/Harmonica/Saxophone); Mick Ronson (Guitar/Piano); Trevor Bolder (Bass); Mick "Woody" Woodmansey (Drums); Mike Garson (Piano)

Standout Track - The Jean Genie

By the end of 1972, there could be no doubting that David Bowie had firmly established himself as one of the major figures in the popular musical firmament, at least as far as the UK was concerned. His own breakthrough The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars had catapulted him to iconic levels of stardom, and he'd followed it up by proving his talents went beyond being a solo artist in his own right by acting as a musical svengali figure to both Lou Reed, whose solo career had yet to gather any momentum, and the ailing Mott the Hoople, producing their respective albums Transformer and All The Young Dudes and launching both to some of the biggest successes of their entire careers, either up to that point or from that point onwards. But perhaps the greatest test of his ability would be how his own solo follow-up to Ziggy Stardust would fare - was the enormous success of that earlier record a fluke, or could he genuinely sustain this newfound attention? And for Bowie, there was one place that would lie at the heart of his next record - America.

Aladdin Sane has always essentially been summed up by Bowie's own description of it as "Ziggy goes to America." Rather than feeling any great need to throw out everything he had done before and totally reinvent himself (a habit he would become notorious for as the years went on), the conceptual and stylistic heart of the new record would be the same as Ziggy's. Indeed, no artist who had achieved such unanimous praise for something need even consider the idea of reinventing themselves, but while the heart of the album would remain the same, the new avenues it began to explore would end up making it a very different kind of album indeed. Essentially, Aladdin Sane, despite the continued presence of the red-mulleted Ziggy persona in the iconic artwork, has nothing to do with the Ziggy concept. These songs are devoid of the theatrical space-age narrative, but Bowie was still thinking and writing and working in character as Ziggy, which inherently influenced the direction of the music. But the US, the place that had spawned his heroes Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, both of whom had been key influences on the creation of Ziggy himself, had yet to really pay much attention to Bowie, and so the new album would take shape while on the road across the pond. As the 70s wore on, Bowie's relationship with the States would come to be a dangerous obsession for him. It was a place inherently characterised by its sense of drama and danger, and it was while on tour there that his drug problem first started. Years later, Bowie would speak disparagingly of LA in particular, saying "That fucking place should be wiped off the face of the earth," long after its paranoia and elitism had driven him to a coke dependency that nearly destroyed him both mentally and physically. At the time of recording Aladdin Sane, that dependency had yet to really take hold, but one can already feel the schizophrenic line between obsession and revulsion that the country had begun to root in his mind. The album is far darker and moodier than Ziggy Stardust, with the euphoric glee of "Let the children boogie" all but absent from this collection of dark, dangerous songs of drug addiction and egomania. From the wide-eyed fright and weirdness of "Panic In Detroit" to the snarling cynicism of "Cracked Actor," this album feels very much like the product of an alien figure struggling to stay afloat in a world that fascinates him almost as much as it overwhelms him.

Of course, this schizophrenia and megalomania drives the music into uncharted territory, too. While this is still very much in the vein of fairly traditional glam rock, Bowie does a lot to begin unsettling his listeners and giving them something far more challenging than the simple sing-along tunes of his earlier work. For a start, guitarist Mick Ronson is more prevalent here than perhaps anywhere else in Bowie's discography (except perhaps The Man Who Sold The World, on which there are moments where Ronson is calling the shots far more than Bowie himself). But many of the songs here, from the swaggering Rolling Stones-esque riff of "Watch That Man" to the raucous solos of "Panic In Detroit" and the irresistible dirty crunch of "Cracked Actor" are built around the hard-edged, raunchy guitar of Ronson far more than anything on Ziggy Stardust was. That's to say nothing of The Jean Genie, perhaps the finest riff Ronson would ever play (regardless of whether or not Bowie had ripped it off from the Yardbirds) and easily the standout track of Aladdin Sane. Loosely based on the figure of French author Jean Genet, its lyrics ape the gritty reportage of the Velvet Underground as they follow Bowie through his own imagined odyssey of America's seedy underbelly, but it's that unforgettable riff, echoed by Bowie's own harmonica wheezes, that make it an instant classic.

But while many of the album's highlights are its harder-edged rock songs, there are two songs that very nearly steal the show were it not for "The Jean Genie's" undeniable classic status, which have very little to do with rock music. The title track (with its apocalyptic parenthesised dates predicting the outbreak of a third world war) is undoubtedly the weirdest thing Bowie had put out at this stage. While touring America the pianist Mike Garson had been added to their band and gradually became an integral part of the new music, nowhere more so than on "Aladdin Sane." While getting to know Garson, Bowie had been fascinated by his training in avant-garde jazz, a style of music totally unfamiliar to the mainstream music audience, and to Bowie himself. Garson was initially reluctant to potentially sink Bowie's career by indulging in a full-on avant-garde solo, but at Bowie's insistence went to the max partway through the menacing groove of "Aladdin Sane" to create one of the weirdest things the buying public would ever have heard. Of course, avant-garde jazz had existed in rock music before this time - a piano solo in King Crimson's "Lizard" from the album of the same name explores similar territory to Garson's excesses in "Aladdin Sane," but Bowie was certainly the first person to deliver such experimental sounds to an inescapably mainstream audience. Then there's the wonderful "Time," Garson's other big showcase. This time, the influence is Brechtian cabaret, with the menacing, icy trills of Garson's piano providing a chilling backdrop to Bowie's overtly theatrical crooning. It's Ronson's explosive rocket of a guitar solo that really sends the song into delirious madness, but it's another deliciously weird slice of experimental songwriting from an artist who really didn't need to be so experimental in order to win over new fans, and is therefore all the better for pushing boundaries so readily. Vocally, Bowie feels more mature than he did a year before as well - just as the sunny disposition of the music has vanished, so too has the cheerful grin he was able to communicate through much of his singing. Here, he feels angrier and much more cynical, even on the relatively lightweight songs like "The Prettiest Star."

Ultimately, it's not a perfect album and perhaps suffers from being slightly less cohesive than Ziggy Stardust given that it lacks that album's conceptual core. Songs like "Drive-In Saturday" are fairly redundant, as is the perfunctory and unimaginative (if fun) cover of the Stones' "Let's Spend The Night Together." But, while his previous album had perhaps been one of the first major mainstream pop/rock albums to show a real depth of imagination and style, here Bowie pushed himself much further and indulged in the weirdest collage of sounds he could assemble using the same band, and creates a dark, breathless kaleidoscope of an album. The buying public would reward Bowie greatly for his efforts - it became his bestselling album up to that point both in the UK and the US, although major success in his beloved America was still to come - it wouldn't be until "Fame" in 1975 that he actually achieved a number one single there.

Still, for Bowie, the continued momentum of Ziggy Stardust as a cultural phenomenon was too much and had to be halted. Quite why Ziggy was "killed off" later in 1973 is still up for debate - even drummer Mick Woodmansey was totally unaware of what was going on when Bowie announced onstage that the Spiders From Mars would not play together again. Essentially, Bowie felt the need to reassert his own authority over his alter-ego and to return to some form of artistic honesty and to halt something that had spiralled out of his control. The "retirement" of Ziggy would come to be seen by many as something of a false start when Bowie's next project, a cover of 50s and 60s classics entitled Pin Ups, saw him still dressed like Ziggy and still playing with Ronson and bassist Trevor Bolder (Woodmansey having been replaced by Aynsley Dunbar). Pin Ups was a horribly tepid affair, with Bowie proving that interepreting the songs of others rather than indulging his own imagination really wasn't his strong point. It wasn't until 1974's Diamond Dogs that Bowie really tried to reassert himself as a solo artist in his own right, cutting himself off from Ronson and Bolder, and even then the music still seemed rooted in glam rock, though that wasn't to last. Aladdin Sane wouldn't quite be the last time Bowie would make music like this, but it was certainly the end of an era in many ways, and acts as a superb full stop to the Ziggy era.

Track Listing:

All songs written by David Bowie except where noted.

1. Watch That Man

2. Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?)

3. Drive-In Saturday

4. Panic In Detroit

5. Cracked Actor

6. Time

7. The Prettiest Star

8. Let's Spend The Night Together (Mick Jagger & Keith Richards)

9. The Jean Genie

10. Lady Grinning Soul