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David Bowie is the eponymously-titled debut album by rock musician David Bowie, released in 1967 by Deram Records, a Decca offshoot. Its content bears little overt resemblance to the type of music that later made Bowie famous, such as the folk rock of "Space Oddity" or the glam of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have said, "a listener strictly accustomed to David Bowie in his assorted '70s guises would probably find this debut album either shocking or else simply quaint", while biographer David Buckley describes it as "the vinyl equivalent of the madwoman in the attic".

Influences
Bowie's influences at this stage of his career included the theatrical tunes of Anthony Newley, music hall numbers by acts like Tommy Steele, some of the more whimsical and 'British' material by Ray Davies of The Kinks, Syd Barrett's slightly cracked nursery rhymes for the early Pink Floyd, and the Edwardian flam shared by such contemporary songs as The Beatles' "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite". The desire of Bowie's then-manager, Ken Pitt, for his charge to become an 'all-round entertainer' rather than a 'rock star' has also been cited as impacting the songwriter's style at this time, which virtually eschewed any rock 'n' roll trappings. Bowie himself has said that his debut album "seemed to have its roots all over the place, in rock and vaudeville and music hall. I didn't know if I was Max Miller or Elvis Presley".

Style and themes
Written wholly by Bowie, the album was arranged by the composer and Dek Fearnley, having reportedly taught themselves the craft using the Observer Book of Music. "Rubber Band" was a marching tune that employed tuba as the lead instrument. "Little Bombardier" and "Maid of Bond Street" were in waltz time, and also made extensive use of brass and strings. "Love You Till Tuesday" and "Come and Buy My Toys" were among the few songs on the album with a lead (acoustic) guitar, the former heavily augmented by strings. "Join the Gang" was a rare excursion into contemporary youth culture, an acerbic observation of peer pressure and drug use, which included sitar in its instrumentation. The final track, "Please Mr. Gravedigger", was "a macabre duet for voice and sound effects", and has been described as "one of pop's genuinely crazy moments".

Despite the album's incongruity in the Bowie catalogue, some commentators have discerned embryonic themes that inform the artist's more mature work. "We Are Hungry Men" is told by a self-styled "messiah" whose persona would reappear in different forms in the songs "Cygnet Committee" (from the album Space Oddity), "Saviour Machine" (from The Man Who Sold the World) and "Oh! You Pretty Things" (from Hunky Dory), as well as in the protagonist of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The track also explicitly referenced subjects like abortion, infanticide and cannibalism. "There is a Happy Land" was an early manifestation of Bowie's vision of children as a race apart from their elders, a theme revisited on The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust. "She's Got Medals" was a gender-bending tale with gay and lesbian connotations that predated the 'dress cover' of The Man Who Sold the World and the bisexual/androgynous character of Ziggy Stardust.

Singles
Prior to releasing the album, Deram issued two singles with the same personnel, "Rubber Band" b/w "London Boys", in December 1966, and "The Laughing Gnome" b/w "The Gospel According to Tony Day", in April 1967. "Rubber Band" was a different recording to the album track. "London Boys" has been lauded as Bowie's first mini-masterpiece, a melancholy observation of the London Mod scene of the time. "The Laughing Gnome" was a novelty record featuring chipmunk-like vocals but the varispeed technique used to create this effect would serve Bowie in more serious fashion on many future songs including "After All", "The Bewlay Brothers", "Fame" and "Scream Like a Baby". A re-recorded version of "Love You Till Tuesday" b/w "Did You Ever Have a Dream" was released as a single in July 1967.

Release and aftermath
David Bowie was released in the UK, in both mono and stereo, on 1 June 1967, the same date as The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was issued in the US in August 1967, minus "We Are Hungry Men" and "Maid of Bond Street". The album and its associated singles were all commercial failures at the time and Bowie did not release another record until "Space Oddity", two years later. The songs from the debut album and its singles, plus later Deram works, have been recycled in a multitude of compilation albums, including The World of David Bowie (1970), Images 1966–1967 (1973), Another Face (1981), Rock Reflections (1990), and The Deram Anthology 1966–1968 (1997). A number of the songs also appeared in Ken Pitt's promotional film Love You Till Tuesday, shot in 1969 but kept on the shelf until 1984, when it was released to video with a companion album on CD.

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Love You till Tuesday was a promotional film designed to showcase the talents of David Bowie, made in 1969. The film was the latest attempt by his manager, Kenneth Pitt, to bring Bowie to a wider audience. Pitt had undertaken the film after a suggestion by Gunther Schnedier, producer of German TV show '4-3-2-1 Musik Für Junge Leute' for the ZDF network.

Production

Pitt hired his friend Malcolm J Thomson to direct the half-hour film, which showcased seven of Bowie's songs (four from his debut album, plus new compositions "When I'm Five" and "Ching-a-Ling". It would also include a mime piece, "The Mask". Before shooting started on 26th January 1969, Bowie added another new song to the planned film - "Space Oddity". His girlfriend at the time, Hermione Farthingale, and his friend John Hutchinson also performed in the movie. Bowie himself wore a wig throughout the shoot, having cut his hair to army regulation length to audition for the film of 'The Virgin Soldiers'. German language versions of three songs, and the narration for the mime sequence, were also recorded. Filming was finished by February 7th, 1969.

The film was considerably more costly than Pitt had anticipated, and he clashed with Thomson, who wanted to make the "Space Oddity" segment (featuring Bowie playing both 'Ground Control' and 'Major Tom', with the latter becoming seduced by space maidens) considerably more risqué. The film failed to interest any buyers, however, and Schneider had left ZDF. Pitt shelved the results, and would continue to be Bowie's manager until 1971.

In 1984, with Bowie's global fame at an apex, the growing success of home video led Pitt to contact Polygram, who released the film in May of that year. Deram issued a 'soundtrack' compilation in the same month.

The film was re-released on DVD in 2005.

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Space Oddity is a 1969 album by rock musician David Bowie. Originally released by Philips in the UK as David Bowie and by Mercury in the U.S. as Man of Words/Man of Music, it was reissued by RCA Records in 1972 under its current title.

Regarding its mix of folk, balladry and prog rock, NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have said, "Some of it belonged in '67 and some of it in '72, but in 1969 it all seemed vastly incongruous. Basically, David Bowie can be viewed in retrospect as all that Bowie had been and a little of what he would become, all jumbled up and fighting for control..."

Held to be "the first Bowie album proper",[2] and his first deemed worthy by record companies of regular reissue, Space Oddity featured a notable list of collaborators, including session players Herbie Flowers, Tim Renwick, Terry Cox, and Rick Wakeman, as well as cellist Paul Buckmaster, multi-instrumentalist and producer Tony Visconti, and bassist John Lodge (not to be confused with The Moody Blues' bassist of the same name). Before recording for the album commenced, "Space Oddity" had been selected as the lead single based on an earlier demo. Tony Visconti saw it as a "novelty record" and passed the production responsibility on to Gus Dudgeon. Visconti thus produced all the songs on the album bar what would become, from its 1972 reissue onwards, the title track.

Still considered one of Bowie's best-known songs, "Space Oddity" was a largely acoustic number augmented by the eerie tones of the composer's Stylophone, a pocket electronic organ. The title and subject matter were inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and introduced the character of Major Tom. Some commentators have also seen the song as a metaphor for heroin use, citing the opening countdown as analogous to the drug's passage down the needle prior to the euphoric 'hit', and noting Bowie's admission of a "silly flirtation with smack" in 1968. His 1980 hit "Ashes to Ashes" declared "We know Major Tom's a junkie".

"Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed" reflected a strong Bob Dylan influence,[4] with its harmonica, edgy guitar sound and snarling vocal. "Letter to Hermione" was a farewell ballad to Bowie's former girlfriend, Hermione Farthingale, who was also the object of "An Occasional Dream", a gentle folk tune reminiscent of the singer's 1967 debut album. "God Knows I'm Good", Bowie's observational tale of a shoplifter's plight, also recalled his earlier style.

"Cygnet Committee" has been called Bowie’s "first true masterpiece". Commonly regarded as the album track most indicative of the composer's future direction, its lead character is a messianic figure "who breaks down barriers for his younger followers, but finds that he has only provided them with the means to reject and destroy him". Bowie himself described it at the time as a put down of hippies who seemed ready to follow any charismatic leader. Another track cited as foreshadowing themes to which Bowie would return in 1970s, in this case the fracturing of personality, was "Janine", which featured the words "But if you took an axe to me, you’d kill another man not me at all".

The Buddhism-influenced "Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud" was presented in a heavily-expanded form compared to the original guitar-and-cello version on the B-side of the "Space Oddity" single; the album cut featured a 50-piece orchestra and was also notable for Mick Ronson's debut on a Bowie record, playing uncredited guitar and handclaps midway through the song. "Memory of a Free Festival" was Bowie's reminiscence of an arts festival he had organised in August 1969. Its drawn-out fade/chorus ("The Sun Machine is coming down / And we're gonna have a party") was compared to The Beatles' "Hey Jude"; the song has also been interpreted as a derisive comment on the counterculture it was ostensibly celebrating. In 1970 Bowie cut the tune in half for the A- and B-sides of a more rock-oriented version featuring the band that would accompany him on The Man Who Sold the World later that year: Mick Ronson, Tony Visconti and Mick Woodmansey - an embryonic form of Ziggy Stardust's Spiders From Mars.

Although the opening song had given Bowie a #5 hit in the UK earlier in the year, the remainder of the material bore little resemblance to it and the album was a commercial failure on its initial release, despite some decent reviews. However the November 1972 reissue, released in the wake of Bowie's breakthrough The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and featuring a contemporary Ziggy photo on the cover, made #17 in the UK charts and #16 in the United States.

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The Man Who Sold the World is the third studio album by David Bowie. It was originally released on Mercury Records in November 1970 in the United States and in April 1971 in the UK. The album was Bowie's first with the nucleus of what would become the "Spiders from Mars", the backing band made famous by The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in 1972. Though author David Buckley has described his previous record Space Oddity as "the first Bowie album proper",[1] NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have said of The Man Who Sold the World, "this is where the story really starts"

Production and style

The album was written and rehearsed at Bowie's home in Haddon Hall, Beckenham, an Edwardian mansion converted to a block of flats that was described by one visitor as having an ambience "like Dracula's living room".[3] As Bowie was preoccupied with his new wife Angie at the time, the music was largely arranged by guitarist Mick Ronson and bassist/producer Tony Visconti.[4] Regarding the songs' composition, however, Bowie maintains that "I really did object to the impression given in some articles that I did not write the songs on Man Who Sold ... you only have to check out the chord changes. NO ONE writes chord changes like that."[5] Despite his exasperation with the singer's working methods, Visconti would later rate The Man Who Sold the World his best work with Bowie until 1980's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).[6]

Much of the album had a distinct heavy metal edge that stands it apart from Bowie's other releases, and has been compared to contemporaneous acts such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.[2] The record also provided some unusual musical detours, such as the title track's use of Latin rhythms to hold the melody.[6] The sonic heaviness of the album was matched by the subject matter, which included insanity ("All the Madmen"), gun-toting assassins and Vietnam War commentary ("Running Gun Blues"), an omniscient computer ("Saviour Machine"), and Lovecraftian Elder Gods ("The Supermen").[2] The album has also been seen as reflecting the influence of such figures as Aleister Crowley, Franz Kafka and Friedrich Nietzsche.[6]

Cover

The UK cover of the first release of The Man Who Sold the World, on which Bowie is seen reclining in what he called a "man's dress",[4] was an early indication of his interest in exploiting his androgynous appearance. The original US issue employed a cartoon-like cover drawn by Bowie's friend Michael J. Weller, featuring the Cane Hill mental asylum,[7] while the 1971 German release presented a winged hybrid creature with Bowie's head and a hand for a body, preparing to flick the Earth away. The 1972 reissue by RCA used a black-and-white picture of Ziggy Stardust on the sleeve. The 1990 Rykodisc reissue reinstated the original UK "dress" cover, which also appeared on the 1999 EMI remaster.

Singles

None of the songs were released to the public as singles at the time, though a promo version of "All the Madmen" was issued in the U.S. in 1971. The same song appeared in Eastern Europe in 1973, as did "The Width of a Circle". "Black Country Rock" was released as the B-side of "Holy Holy" in the UK in January 1971, shortly before the album. The title track appeared as the B-side of the U.S. single release of "Space Oddity" in 1972; it also provided an unlikely hit for Scottish pop singer Lulu (produced by Bowie and Ronson) and would be covered by many bands over the years, including Nirvana. It also featured on the reality show Rock Star: INXS, performed by Jordis Unga.

Release and aftermath

The Man Who Sold the World was generally more successful commercially and critically in the US than in the UK on its original release in 1970-71.[2] Rolling Stone called it "uniformly excellent", while Melody Maker and NME found it "surprisingly excellent" and "rather hysterical", respectively.[4] Sales were not high enough to dent the charts in either country at the time, however it made #26 in the UK and #105 in the US following its rerelease on 25 November 1972, in the wake of Bowie's commercial breakthrough The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The album has been cited as influencing the goth rock, darkwave and science fiction elements of work by artists such as Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Cure, Gary Numan, John Foxx and Nine Inch Nails.[6]

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After the freakish hard rock of The Man Who Sold the World, David Bowie returned to singer/songwriter territory on Hunky Dory. Not only did the album boast more folky songs ("Song for Bob Dylan," "The Bewlay Brothers"), but he again flirted with Anthony Newley-esque dancehall music ("Kooks," "Fill Your Heart"), seemingly leaving heavy metal behind. As a result, Hunky Dory is a kaleidoscopic array of pop styles, tied together only by Bowie's sense of vision: a sweeping, cinematic mélange of high and low art, ambiguous sexuality, kitsch, and class. Mick Ronson's guitar is pushed to the back, leaving Rick Wakeman's cabaret piano to dominate the sound of the album. The subdued support accentuates the depth of Bowie's material, whether it's the revamped Tin Pan Alley of "Changes," the Neil Young homage "Quicksand," the soaring "Life on Mars?," the rolling, vaguely homosexual anthem "Oh! You Pretty Things," or the dark acoustic rocker "Andy Warhol." On the surface, such a wide range of styles and sounds would make an album incoherent, but Bowie's improved songwriting and determined sense of style instead made Hunky Dory a touchstone for reinterpreting pop's traditions into fresh, postmodern pop music.

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