SPACE ODDITY: DAVID BOWIE'S FIRST SPACE FACE

When I was about 10 I loved David Bowie. That would be circa 1970. I followed his every move in all the pop magazines here in the UK. My unerring teenage adoration of Bowie lasted till I discovered heavy rock proper around 1976. I still have my old scrap book of those Bowie clippings.

I also bought my first LP record around 1972 - and it was Space Oddity by, yes, David Bowie. I bought it on offer through a mail order ad in the pop newspaper Disc, which may have been a forerunner of Sounds. Not sure. I still have the mail order offer cut-out!

Space Oddity was Bowie's first proper RCA LP under that name. It had been released earlier in 1969 as simply David Bowie. He had done even earlier stuff, for the Deram label, captured on the Images double album but he was with the Lower Third and others then.

Space Oddity was wrapped around the chart topping single of the same name released in 1969. Such lines as 'Ground Control to Major Tom' have made it famous and a staple of space-related adverts and jingles. 

The song itself was a rather poignant reflection on the rise and death of an astronaut and coincided with the worldwide euphoria after the 1969 moon landing. It was part of the zeitgeist of the time and an obvious nod to Kubrick's cinematic opus, which influenced so many things including our very own Project SWORD Annual.

The album is full of fabulously rich and surreal songs just as Bowie was waking up to his space-age talent and before he became a superstar. For me the stand-out tracks were and still are Letter to Hermione, Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud and the quite brilliant Memory of a Free Festival and his grand opus, Cygnet Committee.

Cygnet Committee, for me, set the standard on this LP and for all future Bowie albums for his other long complex tracks. On Hunky Dory he did the Bewley Brothers and on Man Who Sold The World we got The Width of a Circle. There isn't really one on Aladdin Sane - maybe Time perhaps or Lady Grinning Soul.

Memory of a Free Festival was personally relevant to me as Bowie used a particular organ on the track, an organ which I had as well as a kid and still have for that matter. It was the electronic Rosedale and mine was lime green like the one below. 

With its distinctive raspy childish church sound you can clearly hear it at the start of and throughout Bowie's Memory of a Free Festival, which you can listen to below. I loved my Rosedale and thought it sounded quite beautiful! Did you have a Rosedale readers? Did you or do you still like Bowie?

The Sun Machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party!