How do you top writing one of the defining records of an era? That was the question David Bowie faced as the seventies dawned. He’d already had an enormous hit with his single Space Oddity, forever to be known as “that Major Tom song”. As successful as it was though, there was the distinct smell of novelty hit about it and people were starting to talk of Bowie as a one-hit wonder. He needed to do something to rectify the situation and do it fast...
But never mind all that! Bowie was too busy enjoying the girls and the drugs that fame had brought him to put too much time into making the album. He entered the studio with only one song written and a mere three weeks in which to record the album. Over the years Bowie has earned a reputation as a fast worker and this was no exception. Not only did he finish the album, he also found time to bang out a couple of tracks that would later find a home on the astronomically successful Ziggy Stardust LP.
It may have been a rush job then, but remarkably, it doesn’t show. The Man Who Sold The World is a fabulous album. Given his almost continental shifts in sound over the years, it seems odd that Bowie has never made a full-on heavy rock record. This is probably the closest that he’s ever come to it, largely due to the arrival of guitarist Mick Ronson. Squalls of feedback and half-inched Bolan riffs replace the fey hippie-folk of Bowie’s earlier albums and there is a new found strutting confidence in Bowie’s vocals.
Controversially, the album cover features David reclining on a sofa – in a dress. America did not approve and the cover was changed, bizarrely, to a cartoon of a man in a hat. Bowie was not impressed and the situation exacerbated his already shaky relationship with his record company.
Fittingly for an album deeply concerned with madness (see All The Madmen and its alarming lyrics, “I can fly, I can scream, I will break my arm. I will do me harm” amongst others) it’s tonally schizophrenic. The furious Black Country Rock moves into the ghostly After All, with its spectral backing vocals. Running Gun Blues is hilarious and terrifying in equal measure. It’s hard not to laugh as he squeaks his way through lyrics about mass slaughter, even if you do feel slightly unnerved by it afterwards. This being Bowie, he also manages to smuggle in hymns to mad computer Gods and songs about mysterious supermen – a theme recurrent in much of his seventies work.
The Man Who Sold The World isn’t perfect. It’s certainly not Bowie’s best album (Low, Hunky Dory, ‘Heroes’ and Station to Station all have a claim to that title). The Supermen is pretty throwaway and Nirvana’s cover of the title track is better by miles. But it’s fascinating to hear Bowie sounding so stripped down and aggressive. It’s difficult and troubling but rewarding for people willing to give it a bit of time.
The album was released in America in 1970 and the following year in the UK. It didn’t sell particularly well, but it further boosted Bowie’s growing fanbase. His next album Hunky Dory would marry Rock Bowie and Hippie Bowie together and proved to be a huge success. It paved the way for the superstardom he had always desired and the birth of his iconic alter-ego, Ziggy Stardust.
Unfortunately it was also one of the first glam rock records and is therefore partly responsible for the existence of Slade and a generation of pub bands donning lip gloss and mascara. But then, nobody’s perfect.