9.Hunky Dory

Tony Defries and David Bowie


   Tony Defries may have put Visconti off,but without him it's arguable wheter Bowie would have ever attained superstar status.Once Defries realised what he had,he channelled all his energies into making Bowie big.
   Visconti remembers about his decision to leave Bowie: " I decided to concentrate on Marc's blossoming career instead.It seemed more stable and more positive.I can't remember what we said to each other,but David had a very hurt expression on his face and I just turned and left quickly.I didn't feel all that great,but I couldn't stand Defries and I couldn't get it across to David that Defries awas not all that he seemed."
   With Defries,a new phase in Bowie's career was about to begin.


Zowie Bowie

    1971 was an enormously disciplined and prolific year,productive in more ways than one.On 30 May 1971,Bowie's son,named Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones was born in Bromley Hospital.

     It was a painful birth for Angie,who cracked her pelvis during the thirty0hour labour.Bowie himself was at home when the news of the arrival of his son was relayed to him,listening to a Neil Young record.Trading on the vibe of wistful folkiness,Bowie wrote "Kooks" ,a pastiche of early-70s Neil Young and a present for his new son.
     For their part,the arrival of little Zowie had little discernible impact either on David and Angie as a couple,or on Bowie's muse.Bowie had always liked children.His friends and work associates often comment that he;s good with their sons and daughters and finds time to play with them.Therefore,Angie and David were part-time mum and dad.It was onlt in the late 70s that Bowie realised he was missing out,and that his son needed his dad around.


   Profesionally,things really kicked into gear during 1971.
   Bowie began this period more as a songwriter than performer.He also spent a week in the hospital after he got the starting handle of the car impaled in his thigh narrowly missing a main artery.He also had many separate projects during 70-71s,mainly as a songwriter for other bands.


Hunky Dory

   Hunky Dorry is many people's favourite David Bowie album.It is one of my favourite albums aswell,and I think this the album I have listened to the most.I was absolutely in love with this album,and for a long period,this was my favourite.You can check my last.fm account :D.
   The work for the album started in late May 1971,and completed in August.
   Ken Scott says about the album: " On The Man Who Sold The World" he was still more of a trend-follower than a trend setter and it wasn't until Hunky Dory  ,when it was "To hell with everyone.I'm gonna do what I want to do",that he began to hit his stride.'
   Along with its successor Ziggy Stardust and Let's Dance from the 80s  Hunky Dory  is the album most likely to be found in the non-Bowie fan record collection.

Content:

Side one

1. "Changes" – 3:37
2. "Oh! You Pretty Things" – 3:12
3. "Eight Line Poem" – 2:55
4. "Life on Mars?" – 3:53
5. "Kooks" – 2:53
6. "Quicksand" – 5:08

Side two

1. "Fill Your Heart" (Biff Rose, Paul Williams) – 3:07
2. "Andy Warhol" – 3:56
3. "Song for Bob Dylan" – 4:12
4. "Queen Bitch" – 3:18
5. "The Bewlay Brothers" – 5:22

   Side two has 3 tribute songs : to Warhol (Andy Warhol),(Dylan Song for Bob Dylan ) and The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed ( Queen Bitch ).With these three ,bowie redefined the notion of pop star as fan,and  elided the boundaries between the two.Of the three homages,Queen Bitch  works the best.It's probably Bowie's poppiest song from the earlt 70s never to be released as the A-side of a single,and is made all the more interesting by Bowie's curious and quite wonderful,vocal accenting.

   For The Bewlay Brothers ,Bowie looked inawrd.Thematically,the song updates and improves The Man Who Sold The World 's central concern of familial dysfunction.A series of weird-angle snapshots concentrate firmly on the concept of identity,its mutability,and its eventual disintegration: "I was Stone and he was Wax / So he could scream,and still relax,unbelievable" . The Bewlay Brothers  remains one of Bowie;s most disquieting moments on tape,and encapsulation of some distant,indefinable quality of expressionistic terror.

   Oh You Pretty Things  is a sort of 70s update of McCartney's Martha My Dear .Seeing ' cracks in the sky',certainly qualifies the young Bowie for a course of psychoanalysis,and the 'homo superior' and 'the golden ones' are direct references to the teachings of occultist Aleister Crowley.



   Another perennial favourite is the twee Kooks ,written for the newly born Zowie




  Quicksand  is almost Buddhist in its spiritualism - "Knowledge comes with death;s release "



Song for Bob Dylan  is probably the weakest song on the album,but its lyric analyses the lack of a hero figure in rock.Bowie had been much enamoured with Dylan.



    One song,the opening track,Changes ,was Bowie's edict for the 1970s.Bowie sings: " So I turned myself to face me / But I've never caught a glimpe / Of how the others must see the faker / I'm much too fast to take the test".The lyric emphasises the themes of identity,the mutability of character,and a sense of play with first and third person,providing us an important anticipatory signal for the creation of Ziggy Stardust.In the 1970s he had an almost pathological fear for repeating himself,not just musically but visually too.Most important,Bowie gave himself the epitet ' faker'.He announced himself as a pop's fraud;the arch-dissembler.In the middle-eight section Bowie sings: " Strange fascination,fascinates me / Changes are taking the place I'm going thru".
     The line in the last verse "Look out you rock'n'rollers",is crucial.Bowie is not only throwing down the gauntlet to existing rockers,but putting a distance between himself and rock fraternity.



   Life on Mars,a soaring,cinematic ballad,was an intentional parody of the quintessential standard My way .In fact,in Life on Mars Bowie settled a little-known musical score.Back in February 1968,Bowie was asked to submit a set of English lyrics for a French song,Comme D'Habitude .Bowie version Even a Fool Learns to Love  was rejected,and lyrics by Paul Anka were used instead - the result being Frank Sinatra's My Way. In 1993 David Bowie says : There was a sense of revenge in that because I was so angry that Paul Anka has done My Way I thought I'd do my own version.There  are clutches of melody in that were definite parodies."




    As for me,I love almost all the songs on the album - Life on Mars is a legendary song,that I would listen to any time,The Bewlay Brothers is one of the most listened  songs in my playlist,Changes is the track I always recommend to my friends when it comes to David Bowie,Oh You Pretty Things  is one of my personal favourites,and it's also the song I'm always singing in class with one of  my friends - which I salute now - btw,you're famous now!All my readers would love to meet you (Oh,the irony..what readers?).Kooks sounds really happy,and Bowie sings it in a different way.Quicksand has been one of my favourites David Bowie tracks,esspecially the line "Don't believe in yourself / Don't deceit with belief/Knowledge comes.....".I'm not that much into Queen Bitch  but it sounds very interesting,and I enjoy listening to it.

   Released just before Chrstmas,Hunky Dory had failed to dent even the lower reaches of the charts,and single Changes,also failed to chart.By this time,however,Bowie had another trick up his sleeve.Another album was already in the can,and he knew it was his best yet.

6.Space Oddity (1969)

For Bowie,the first part of 1969 ran much as 1968 and 1967 had done : plenty of ideas,plenty of energy,but no commercial success.

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.