Space Oddity

As soon as Ziggy Stardust broke for David Bowie in the U.K. in 1972, David Bowie: The Man, His Music, the original album from 1969 was re-released as Space Oddity, which is how most of the world knows this album.

David Bowie: Space Oddity

Any publicity is good publicity and the back cover has Bowie doing his best drugged Space-fag impersonation with what looks like a small asteroid hanging around his neck but that didn't matter, the U.K. had gone Bowie mad and much of the world was following developments with considerable interest.

However, the Space Oddity album depicted a very different Bowie than Ziggy / Aladdin. This Bowie was a twisted folkie with a good sense of theater...  

David Bowie: Space Oddity

If you've read The Early Years you'll get the picture that Bowie was experimenting with a number of different styles and in mid-1969 he stumbled upon the disturbing, existential "I'm doomed, we're all doomed" schtick of Space Oddity, a theme he would mine for many years.

The single was a major leap forward both stylistically and musically (there hadn't been many hits yet that featured a mellotron) was also a brilliant piece of lateral thinking, because while the world was celebrating Neil Armstrong's:

"...One step for man, one giant leap for makind..."

...walk on the moon, Bowie's doomed spaceman's story unravelled as:

"...Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit's dead
There's something wrong
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you hear me Major Tom?
Can you...

...Here am I floating in my tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do..."

            Space Oddity

With a major hit single under his belt, Bowie quickly set about recording an album containing an interesting collection of odds and sods. Admittedly, there wasn't one really memorable song in the batch and eventually sold dismally...but Bowie watchers should definitely pay attention to Space Oddity as it gives fascinating glimpses of the talent to come.

First up, the dross:

Janine a truly awful write-it-by-numbers love song

Janine is brilliant. It's a pop song that sounds like - and I'm honestly not joking- Italian country pop (if such a thing exists!)..." Amazon reviewer B.E. Jackson

....and the much more interesting...God Knows I'm Good, one of the best of Bowie's best narrative songs, this time about a senior citizen shoplifter. Unfortunately its empathy doesn't fit the tone of the album and the song seems sadly out of place, which is a real shame, because it's not a bad song by any means.

"...I had a friend whose mother was a kleptomaniac and food was her forte. We played it for her one time after she returned home with enough lobster and crab to give gout to an entire army. She was not amused and all we got that day were cold cuts!..." Amazon reviewer Scott T. McNally

What's left is Bowie as a twelve-string troubador, singing two types of songs. The first are love songs that "sound" sincere though the poetry seems somewhat awkward e.g. Letter To Hermione

"...The hand that wrote this letter sweeps the pillow clean
So rest your head and dream a treasured dream
I care for no-one else but you
I tear my soul to cease the pain
I think maybe you feel the same
What can we do?
I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to do
So I've been writing just for you..."

                  Letter To Hermione

&
 
and the very sincere-sounding An Occasional Dream

"...I recall how we lived on the corner of a bed
And we'd speak of a Swedish room of hessian & wood
And we'd talk with our eyes of the sweetness in our lives
And tomorrows of rich surprise...

...Time, an occasional dream..."

                         An Occasional Dream

while Unwashed & Somewhat Slightly Dazed sees Bowie miffed that some society girl has spurned his advances, haranguing her with an outrageous series of claims:

"...I'm a phallus in pigtails
And there's blood on my nose
And my tissue is rotting
Where the rats chew my bones..."

Unwashed & Somewhat Slightly Dazed

etc. etc. and a cool slice of harmonica war. The point is, though, that the songs somehow "work"...and even then, it's apparent that there's something very individual about Bowie. 

The other style that our David began to explore was the "movie-in-a-song", which would later blossom spectacularly into Ziggy Stardust...but on Space Oddity there are two, perhaps three early examples:

Cygnet Committee a sprawling tale of A Messiah and violent Anarchy

"...And I open my eyes to look around
And I see a child laid slain
on the ground
As the Love machine lumbers through desolation rows
Ploughing down man, woman, listening to its command
But not hearing anymore
Not hearing anymore
Just the shrieks from the old rich..."

                  Cygnet Committee

The Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud, about a mystic who is about to be hanged until a mountain er...rescues him...

'..The Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud would have worked wonderfuly well in any epic Andrew LLoyd Webber stage musical, the orchestral arrangements...are quite spellbinding..." Amazon reviewer Darragh O'Neill

...and then..the fey Summer Of Love memory (though it was actually referring to a later FREE concert), Memory For A Free Festival which gets interrupted by er...a spaceship from Venus...

"...We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes and saw machines of every shape and size
We talked with tall Venusians passing through
And Peter tried to climb aboard but the Captain shook his head
And away they soared
Climbing through
The ivory vibrant cloud
Someone passed some bliss among the crowd
And We walked back to the road, unchained

...and fades out with a massed repeated chorus of...

"...The sun machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party..."

                          Memory For A Free Festival

Hmmm.

Don't get caught up in the kooky words...there's plenty of good Bowie junk food here, providing a fascinating intro to an artist who would blossom spectacularly to become hugely influential throughout the 1970s.

By the way, the RCA cover pictured above which most fans relate to the album that they knew originally is now gone and the CD has been reissued with the original 1969 cover.  

David Bowie: Space Oddity

"...It's a gentle introduction to David Bowie and listening to this album, you'd never believe there was a glam rock monster waiting to be spawned..." Amazon reviewer Sun Dog

"...This is...laden with the kind of narrative songs that came out of the Deram era... it even includes a track Bowie recorded while at Deram (Space Oddity) tho this isn't that version... it is just a beautiful picture of a man alienated from what we call England..." Amazon.co.uk reviewer Paul S. Whiston

"...This is a great album for those times when your in a depressed mood and want to just be left alone. Put your helmet on and fly away..." Amazon reviewer John Hill

Space Oddity T-shirt

For more info, see:

• wikipedia Space Oddity
• George Underwood's original back cover for the 1969 UK release, illustrating a number of the songs
• David Bowie singing Space Oddity in Italian

Bowie At The Beeb is a remastered collection of LIVE performances during the years 1969-1972, containing LIVE versions of the following Space Oddity tracks:

• Janine
• God Knows I'm Good
• Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed
• Cygnet Committee
• Memory Of A Free Festival
• The Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud &
• Space Oddity

David Bowie: Bowie At The Beeb

"...the first CD of Bowie at the Beeb collects several early LIVE performances of a red-hot Bowie, fresh off the high of Space Oddity, performing an eclectic set of solo, small-group acoustic and rock performances. Leaving aside the annoying BBC host...Bowie turns in a strong yet tentative collection of his early songs, some joined by Mick Ronson toward the end of the disc..." Amazon reviewer Todd and In Charge

In early 1970, Bowie released his follow-up to the Space Oddity hit single, The Prettiest Star, supposedly for new lover Angie, who he would marry the next year. There are a couple of things in the Bowie story worth remembering, here: 

1     friend Marc Bolan from T. Rex, who were then just months away from cracking the big time, played guitar on the track

2     the single stiffed

The song itself is pleasant but a bit plodding and Bowie's later reworking of it on 1973 album, Aladdin Sane is really a much more presentable version.

However, the utter failure of The Prettiest Star led Bowie's record company to reissue a track from the Space Oddity album, getting him to rework Memory Of A Free Festival by upping the tempo and poppifying it. 

The result was even more bizarre than the original track and kinda sounds like a hippy version of Macarthur Park.  Understandably, Memory Of A Free Festival also stiffed.

Obviously a change of direction was needed and Bowie was up for the challenge. He soon came up with the heavy metal album, the threatening The Man Who Sold The World, which, while it didn't sell well, was to initiate the global buzz that became Ziggy.