His apprenticeship had to draw a close soon,and it did with his first hit single,'Space Oditty',written as a response to Stanley Kubrick's 2001:A space Odyssey.Commonly regarded as one of the best singles of his career,'Space Oditty' came in at Number 14 in a 2005 Virgin Radio poll of the Top 500 singles of all time.
'Space Oditty' remains a beautifully haunting,if dated,masterpiece,a tale of alientaion which thematically prefigured much of Bowie's work in the decade to come,telling the tale of astronaut Major Tom,destined to roam the universe for ever: 'Planet Earth is blue\And there's nothing I can do'.
Interestingly for a pop song from that era,'Space Oditty' has no chorus.It's a seamless dialogue,a perfectly paced unravelling of events,and is the possessor of an instantly memorable melody,a superlative acoustic guitar riff and echoey hand clap for the middle-eight,and a lyric which burned its way in all its childlike beauty into the public consciousness.
The BBC didn't allow it to be played until the guys got back from the moon. ( Apollo 11 ).As soon as they got back it started being played again,and subsequently charted and continued up.The single was given its first public airing on 6 July 1969,and it took three months to actually hit the Top 40.He collaborated for the single with Gus Dudgeon.
Tragically,Gus and his wife,Sheila were killed in a car crash on 21 July 2002.Dudgeon was 59.Before the fatal accident,Dudgeon's lawyers had initiated a legal action against David Bowie for unpaid royalties.Bowie sent flowers to his funeral,with the message: " Farewell to the Laughing Gnome".
Far from being simply a cash-in single,'Space Oditty' was the first indication of Bowie's interest in outer space as a metaphor for inner space.Paul Buckmaster remembers Bowie as being very taken with the whole sci-fi vibe at the time.
Tony Visconti also remembers Bowie being very bookish.He also remembers Bowie as a UFO-spotter,though Bowie has given the impression that it was a passing phase.
Given the comic-book nature of Bowie's interests at the time,as a piece of sci-fi writing 'Space oditty' is remarkably,perhaps deliberately,naive.Rather than dealing with the correct terminology,Bowie's lyrics are childlike and auaint.So we get 'ground control' for 'mission control','space ship' for 'rocket','Major Tom' instead of ,perhaps, 'Commander Tom'. The result is that Major Tom is a puppet,a Mr Punch launched into space in a atoilet-roll rocket covered in tin foil,slying around in the nursery ceiling rather than the cosmos.In this respect,'Space Oditty' is merely just another 'Laughing Gnome'.
Intentionally or not,the single 'Space Oditty' acted as a requiem for the flower power age "Planet Earth is blue\And there's nothing I can do".
'Space Oditty' was Bowie's first 'classic; single,and has also entered the ranks of the rock mondegreens,or famously misheard lyrics,with the line 'Ground control to Mao Tse-tung' ( :D ) . It has been followed up not only by Bowie's own 'Ashes to Ashes ' 1980 but also by Pete Schiling's Euro hit of 1984,'Major Tom (coming home)'.And ,of course,three years after 'Space Oditty' was recorded,producer Gud Dudgeon went on the cut the thematically very similar 'Rocket Man' with Elton John.
Sadly for Bowie,the single became a hit just a matter of weeks after the sudden death of his father from lobar pneumonia in August 1969.Without the support of his dad,Bowie increasingly turned to others for professional and emotional succour.Angie was the most important of these but other workmates such as Tony Visconti were by now very close to Bowie,too.After the death of his father,Bowie had only sporadic contact with his mum throughout the 70s,and she complained bitterly that her son had abandoned her,and Terry,during the period of his greatest fame.She did,however,attend her son's perfomance as the elephant man on Broadway in 1980,and his marriage to Iman in 1992,and,according to reports,the two became close again during the 90s.Peggy later moved into a private residential old people's home near Watford,where she lived until her death in April 2001.
Bowie's second album came out in the autumn of 1969.It was certainly more coherent and less scatty than his first Deram effort,but 'Space Oditty' aside,there was little to suggest the greatness to come.
Space Oditty ( 1969) content:
1.Space oditty
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 1
9.God Know's I'm Good
10. Memory Of A Free Festival ( part 1 and part 2)
11.Conversation Piece
My personal favourites are,besides Space Oditty,Letter to Hermione,Cygnet Committee and An Occasional Dream.
'Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed' is a country-meets-prog-rock collision of ideas.Lirically,however,the most important song is also the most direct - 'Janine'.On 'An Occasional Dream' and "Letter to Hermione",which concerns his first real love,Bowie is as vulnerable and quavering,almost feminised,as the love he sings about.'Space Oditty' itself was an exceptional song,and a deserved hit single in the UK,staying in the UK charts for fourteen weeks.
Despite the hit single,the new album flopped badly,as did the follow-up to 'Space Oditty','The Prettiest Star' ( ironically,while I'm writing this,my winamp is playing 'The Prettiest Star,from his 1973 album,Aladdin Sane :D ; anyway,this has nothing to do with the 60s.)
By 1970,Bowie had become skilful at communicating with music journalists: charming,good-looking and intelligent,he had already learned the art of keeping the caption-writers in the weekly music press fully employed.
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