David Bowie: “The man who sold the world”, the album (part 1)
The first note is guitar feedback, almost a calling card of Mick Ronson. But above all a signal, for those few who were following David Bowie’s strange path, that they had to be ready for anything. For example, to a rough and sometimes deliberately heavy rock album, with lyrics that paid homage to Aleister Crowley and Friedrich Nietzsche. And this from a twenty-three year old who on the cover had a feminine dress, the delicate air and the pose of Canova’s Paolina Borghese.
The third album is one of the most appreciated by Bowie radicals for the large amount of unexpected that pervades it, always miraculously within an overall sonic cohesion. Thanks to the band, put together quickly with yet another shuffling of cards in an attempt to find the fateful direction. It is camped almost permanently in the
Bowie’s new Victorian residence, in a climate of “creative commune” in which even his new traveling companions had the opportunity to explore their own inclinations.
Bowie’s new great accomplice, Mick Ronson, twenty-four years old, a guitarist gifted with very useful skills as an arranger and multi-instrumentalist, he had entered Bowie’s sound universe with negligible ease, dragged into it by the drummer John Cambridge.
According to Bowie, the new drummer Mick “Woody” Woodmansey, brought into the band by Ronson “was also decisive”.
Woodmansey adapted to the idea of being part of a group whose leader had decided that each member would appear on stage with personalized costumes: gangster (Ronson), superhero (Tony Visconti) and cowboy (the drummer), while he would be Rainbowman. Glam rock was definitely starting to come knocking.
In addition to the image, the group had also changed its name: with Ronson’s arrival it had become The Hype.
With Hype, Bowie finally felt something click. In order not to let them escape – and there was a risk – he hastened to take them first to his home, to a studio set up under the stairwell of the suburban villa in which he had settled, Haddon Hall in Beckenham, and then to the recording room. He was in a hurry to leave behind the ideas that hadn’t worked.
Already in the first weeks of 1970, as evidenced by an interview with “Music Echo”, David had “a more solid record” in mind. But at the moment he had few songs ready for that kind of combo. Consequently, more than one song was born directly from the group’s jam sessions without its singer who, as per the widespread practice of rock’n’roll bands, ended up adding the lyrics only when the musical part had already been completed.
Bowie was distracted by other things that involved him as much as music: his recent marriage, public relations, his brother’s problems and important administrative and managerial vicissitudes. So, Visconti and Ronson ended up putting a lot of themselves into this album, with the important colors of Woodmansey and Ralph Mace, keyboardist but also record producer for Philips.
It cannot be denied that songs like “Black Country Rock,” “Running Gun Blues” and “She Shook Me Cold” evoke the band even in their titles. However, the recordings prove that songs like “The Width Of A Circle” and “The Supermen” were already born some time ago, although certainly perfected by the group; furthermore, the pieces that really stand out on the album are branded
Bowie also for the musical construction.
(Paolo Madeddu)
The complete text of this sheet is published in the book “David Bowie” by Paolo Madeddu, published by Giunti, courtesy of the author and the publisher. The book recounts all the songs published by David Bowie in the first part of his career, from 1964 to 1976: all the songs contained in the albums, the singles with their B-sides and the unreleased ones that appeared on live performances and, in two specific appendices, the song outlines, the auditions, the unreleased songs officially published after the artist’s death.
