David Bowie - the Studio Albums

[Slim]

I've quite enjoyed these journeys through the studio catalogues of various seminal bands and artists. It's interesting to hear them in sequence and writing a few lines about them helps me to crystallise my thoughts.

I thought I'd have a go at David Bowie next. I've been a fan since I was 14 or 15 and I have all of his records. I've listened to all of them at least once, sometimes through clenched teeth. This will be a lengthy project; there are 26 of them. So let's begin ..

David Bowie [June 1967]

If you're not familiar with this early phase of David Bowie's career, you'd probably be very surprised to hear this first album. It's not easy to describe what this is, really .. very lightweight, very theatrical frothy pop songs with Bowie channelling the voice of Anthony Newley in all its overtly vaudevillian, cockney hamminess. Really strange. Mostly camper than a row of pink tents.

On the plus side, it's clear the young Bowie has an ear for a melody and there's certainly a fair helping of downright oddness. Despite the lightweight, gaily orchestrated music hall mood that pervades the record there's some startling lyrical content here, albeit tongue-in-cheek. Take We Are Hungry Men for example, with its casual references to mass abortion and infanticide. Wild.

This was, until I downloaded it a few days ago, the only Bowie album I didn't have. Back in 1975 or so I did buy a compilation album entitled The World Of David Bowie that has most of its tunes along with the well-known single Laughing Gnome and a couple of other tunes that aren't on here.

I suppose the best-known tune from this era is Love You 'til Tuesday.

A very odd album and quite honestly, it's a bit of a cringe-fest. I don't know who the natural audience for this stuff might have been. I can well imagine that it would appeal to middle-aged folks more than teenagers.

There's no way you could have seen Ziggy Stardust or Diamond Dogs coming. I always think of Bowie as being a few steps ahead of everyone else, but when you think of his contemporaries in the mid '60s - The Beatles, The Who, Pink Floyd especially - it's hard not to conclude that he was a few steps (or a few miles) behind at this point. This was released five days after Sergeant Pepper.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Looking forward to this tome unfolding, not least because I don't have many of his albums despite always considering myself a fan.

[Thenop]

Never really took the time to properly listen to all of his output.
I have some clear favourites going into this, one of which is not under the Bowie moniker at all: Tin Machine, fantastic album that is probably one of his most straightforward ones.

Bring it on.

[captainkurtz]

Huge fan.  Looking forward to your deep dive.
That run from 1970-80 is unsurpassed.

[Slim]

I have some clear favourites going into this, one of which is not under the Bowie moniker at all: Tin Machine, fantastic album that is probably one of his most straightforward ones.

I really liked the Tin Machine albums as well and I'm not sure why they were so poorly received. Certainly I don't think they're peak Bowie but for me they definitely improved on the couple of albums that preceded them which I've never liked at all. Perhaps I'll revise that opinion when I come to them, but I doubt it.

On their own terms, ie as more down-to-earth rock music, the Tin Machine records definitely work for me (mostly). "Pinstripes and Purple Haze" was the term coined by Q Magazine and somewhere I still have my copy of that issue.

Just found an online transcription, apparently Reeves Gabrels came up with that pithy phrase. Scroll down to June 1989 - Q Magazine

https://www.bowiewonderworld.com/press/press80.htm

People were confused by this idea of Bowie as a band member rather than solo artist and I think that was a bit of a sham, given that he wrote most of the songs and I can't really doubt that he was in charge even though he pretended that they were a democratic band. I must admit I hadn't thought about those two albums, I'll add them to the list.

[Slim]

David Bowie [November 1969]

Though usually known as Space Oddity, Bowie's second album was originally, like his first, titled David Bowie - perhaps reflecting a view that his debut, over two years earlier, had been something of a false start. And certainly it's a very different proposition.

It was retitled in the early '70s to cash in on the success of David's big hit single.

I've had this since the late '70s. It's not a great album on the whole. I hadn't listened to the whole thing for years, though I dip into it quite often for its two exceptional tunes - Space Oddity of course, and the brilliant Letter to Hermione which is a beautiful, wistful, atmospheric farewell song to the girlfriend young David had just lost. Best love song ever. I quite like Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud as well, although the musical theatre style orchestration is a bit OTT and puts me off.

I would suppose everyone's heard the haunting Space Oddity, which was a hit single in 1969. The BBC even used it as a theme for some of their Apollo 11 coverage, before someone at the corporation took the time to listen to the lyrics. I can remember hearing it on the radio when I was still in junior school. I still think the Stylophone sounds great; somehow less dated than the synthesisers used on early prog records. But it's used very judiciously. Did Rolf Harris ever use one on one of his own records?

Elsewhere, it's an interesting and quite eclectic record. Some of it seems to foreshadow the Ziggy Stardust sound, and curiously there's some decidedly Ronson-esque guitar work here and there, despite the fact that Mick Ronson doesn't actually play on it. It's mostly definitely a rock album, though there's plenty of folky strummed acoustic guitar and a bit of grand orchestration. It all blends together nicely.

A couple of these tunes are pretty ordinary hybrid acoustic / electric rockers. Some feel a bit drawn out and overwrought.

Years before I had this record I had a David Bowie chord book that featured some of these songs. I couldn't read music so I had no idea what the melodies or the tempo were, but I made up my own versions from the lyrics and the chords. I admit that David's were better.

Promising but patchy. A bit unfocussed. And still nowhere near the quality of some of his later work.

[Slim]

The Man Who Sold The World [November 1970]

I've loved this album since 1975, but I must admit I haven't listened to it much in the present century. There's just too much music, isn't there? But it was a joy to reacquaint myself with it on Tuesday.

I suspect casual listeners, familiar with the great man's later work from the likes of Heroes or Let's Dance might be quite surprised by this record if they were to give it a listen. It's undoubtedly a hard rock album for the most part, albeit an unconventional one. It's quite dark as well, a little unsettling. Clever stylistic touches throughout. Lots of heavy guitar riffola.

It defies specific classification really but it's fair to say that there are elements of prog here as well as well as heavy rock. Take the opening tune Width Of A Circle for example - definitely my favourite from this album. It lasts more than eight minutes, and goes through a few changes of mood and pace. It has a sort of extended jam session as well, with Mick Ronson and Tony Visconti, who plays bass as well as producing the record, going at it like Jeff Beck and Jack Bruce.

Elsewhere there are punchier, more compact tunes - the brilliant, haunting title track, Black Country Rock which reminds me of T Rex, and the psychopathic Running Gun Blues. The lovely After All has a touch of psychedelia. She Shook Me Cold is heavier and nastier than any Sabbath tune I can think of.

The one criticism I have is that the album finishes on what I think is its weakest tune, The Supermen. Feels a bit anti-climactic. I think After All should have been the closing tune, to end on a wistful note - a bit like Rock & Roll Suicide does for Ziggy Stardust.

Anyway - this is a terrific record, the first album from Bowie's classic period.

[Slim]

Hunky Dory [December 1971]

Again, an album that I played to death as a teenager. A year after Man Who Sold The World, David has moved on from his progressive heavy rock phase. This album has more of a singer / songwriter vibe. It's a bit eclectic. It is, I suppose, a hybrid pop / rock record in the main but the most striking thing about it is the sheer quality of the songwriting.

There are at least three tunes on this record, which, had he never written another decent tune in his life, Bowie would be remembered for to this day. I suggest that any one of Changes, Oh! You Pretty Things or (especially) Life on Mars? would be career-defining for any other artist. It's only because the Thin White Duke wrote a couple of dozen other masterpieces that they're not remembered as such. If Elton John or Freddie Mercury had somehow written Changes, it would be their signature song. No question.

Elsewhere there's a sort of electric folk ode to Bob Dylan, a darkly satisfying Velvet Underground pastiche, a partly experimental tune about Andy Warhol that segues from atonal synthesiser oddness into a brisk acoustic ditty. And a very endearing and witty upbeat lullaby to David's firstborn.

The only tune on the album I don't really get is Eight Line Poem which is a bit of a piano dirge with a simple vocal and boring low key bluesy guitar on top.

Clearly the standout tune is Life on Mars?, probably my single favourite Bowie tune of all, perhaps with the exception of Aladdin Sane's title track. But perhaps I shall revise that opinion as I trawl through the canon. Originally conceived as a sort of answer to the Sinatra classic My Way with which it shares a similar structure in some respects, but harmonically even more ambitious. An unbelievably clever song but more than that, I find it so powerful and inspiring. Life-affirming, even.

It's the cherry on top of a spectacular album.