![]() ![]() He became rock royalty in 1972 with the album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars - so much so that his American label RCA bought the rights to his old material and reissued Space Oddity in the States. With the release of this album and the follow-up, Hunky Dory, Bowie was well on the way to becoming a genuine superstar. The musician seemed doomed to become a one-hit wonder - that is, until he released an album called The Man Who Sold The World at the end of 1970. However, the accompanying self-titled album was a commercial failure and Bowie’s follow-up single, The Prettiest Star, in March 1970 failed to make any impression on the charts either. It was released on Friday, 11 July 1969 - five days before Apollo 11 was due to set off and land the first man on the moon.ĭavid Bowie - Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola - english lyrics (Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl) Produced by Bowie’s long-term collaborator Gus Dudgeon, the remade Space Oddity was a mini-masterpiece: it was dramatic, unusual and very much of its time. You can hear the Stylophone buzzing low in the track during the first couple of verses. On the new version of Space Oddity, Bowie played the Stylophone - a brand new electronic toy instrument which gave the song a “futuristic” sound. Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix / Alamy Stock Photo On bass was Herbie Flowers, later known for his work on Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side.Īn orginal Stylophone, in September 1967. He went into London’s Trident Studios on 20 June 1969 to lay down a new version, which featured star keyboard player Rick Wakeman on the ancient pre-synthesiser sampling keyboard the Mellotron. This left Bowie clear to re-record Space Oddity as a single for his new label, Phillips. Unfortunately, Kenneth Pitt couldn’t get any TV stations interested in his Bowie TV special, and the film remained on the shelf until 1984, by which time Bowie was playing Let’s Dance to stadium audiences around the world. Take a listen to the Love You Til Tuesday version of Space Oddity here:ĭavid Bowie- Space Oddity Original Video (1969) The sound of the song is far from the epic production that would eventually appear as a single. In the Love You Til Tuesday version of Space Oddity, Major Tom is kidnapped by some “space maidens” who lead him off for a life of bliss. In the finished version, Bowie plays both roles - he’d become an expert at taking on different personalities as his career progressed. Space Oddity was written about the fears and loneliness of space travel - the real-life astronauts were taking huge risks leaving and re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere while 2001 featured an astronaut that was cut adrift from his craft, while another had to find mankind’s destiny in the inky blackness of the cosmos.ĭavid Bowie in the Space Oddity sequence from the film Love You Till Tuesday.īowie originally designed Space Oddity as a two-hander with John Hutchinson as “Ground Control” communicating with Bowie as “Major Tom”, the doomed spaceman. This was the first manned spacecraft to reach the moon and orbit around it: the stage was set for man to set foot on the moon. Partly inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which had been released in the UK the previous May, the song was written around the time that the Apollo 8 space mission was taking place. Gary Lockwood is drifting away from Keir Dullea's space pod in a scene from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. This would propel Bowie into the big time, thought Pitt.įilmed at the end of January 1969, the resulting film was titled Love You Til Tuesday and included a new track, written at the request of Pitt - it was called Space Oddity. ![]() As a last ditch attempt to get some attention for his protege, Bowie’s manager Kenneth Pitt decided to showcase his songs with a promotional film that featured Feathers - which also included Bowie’s musical partner John Hutchinson - and some solo performances from the singer-songwriter. He’d recorded a silly novelty song called The Laughing Gnome, which also did nothing.ĭavid Bowie promotes the release of his album Space Oddity in November 1969.Īs the final year of the decade dawned, his folk-poetry-performance group Feathers was in the process of disintegrating, following his split with colleague and girlfriend Hermione Farthingale. He’d released one, self-titled, album in 1967, which had flopped badly. ![]() The former David Jones from Bromley had been performing in groups and recording music for the previous five years. ![]()
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