With “Hunky Dory” David Bowie began to feel at ease

“Hunky Dory” is the fourth album by David Bowiea record released on 17 December 1971 which is still considered crucial in the artist’s career and in the construction of sound and identity. At the time Bowie was twenty-three years old, he was increasingly looking for affirmation, but also for a way to best express his creativity and ambiguity. He will fully achieve the goal in the next album, the masterpiece “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” (read here the review) in 1972, fully legitimizing a new form of rock, glam, full of all the influences he had made his own up to that point.

.“Hunky Dory” (the name in slang means “all is well”) was appreciated by critics, but did not initially achieve great commercial success and was only re-evaluated afterwards with the explosion of the Ziggy Stardust phenomenon, reaching third place in the English charts over a year and half after its publication.

However, it remains a central project, with some timeless songs, an important gem to understand the evolution of Bowie, who declared: “I started to feel comfortable as a songwriter with ‘Hunky Dory’: I really felt that I understood how to write songs at that point. There were a couple of things where I kind of tried to brain transplant a cabaret song onto a rock song. One was ‘Life on Mars?’ and the other was ‘Changes’.”

“Hunky Dory” it is not a granitic album, it appears in fact as a collection of very varied and different songs, in which dramatic themes are crossed by sometimes exuberant pop. Inside there are some fixed points: homages and references to Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol and we begin to perceive autonomous and new sound approaches, which will find completeness in “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”. The songs “Andy Warhol”, “Song for Bob Dylan”, “Queen Bitch” (homage to Velvet Underground) are true rereadings of songs by his masters.

There is a sonic departure from the previous one “The Man Who Sold The World”. The dark and visceral themes remain, but are not expressed through equally sanguine music, here they are covered in pop sauce and a growing glam rock that would find fulfillment and recognition some time later. The nascent glam taste, in fact, can already be felt in the altered timbre of Bowie’s voice. After the experience of Hype in 1970, Bowie recalls the guitarist Mick Ronson who are joined by the bassist Trevor Bolder and the drummer Mick “Woody” Woodmansey: the future Spiders from Mars. Orphan of Tony Viscontiwent to support Marc BolanBowie relies on the producer and sound engineer Ken Scottfresh from the triumph of “All Things Must Pass” Of George Harrison.

The opening track is “Changes”a pop song with an immortal refrain. Then there’s the hit “Oh You Pretty Things”which hides obscure Nietzschean references and after the interlude “Eight Line Poem”here it appears “Life on Mars?”a Bowie classic. Besides the ballad “Quicksand” and the tribute songs to his masters, there is still time for the folkish “The Bewlay Brothers”which closes the project. “Hunky Dory” it is a symbolic work by Bowie, conceived in the moment before transforming into Ziggy Stardust, it is a cultured pop album on both the musical and textual fronts. “Hunky Dory” it is pandering, magical, accessible, but full of lofty references. After all these years it is still a lighthouse in the night, a anticipation of the landing on Earth of the alien Bowie’s spaceship.