Great Albums 40: Hunky Dory (David Bowie, 1971)

First appearance by David Bowie, but by no means the last.  I wrote about Hunky Dory at some length earlier this year, so I won't labour things here.

Instead I'll point out two cool Hunky Dory facts and reprint Bowie's own publicity notes on the album.

1.  William S Burroughs, chatting to Bowie in 1974, told him that 'Eight Line Poem' reminded him of TS Eliot, specifically 'The Wastelands'.  Bowie replied that he'd never read Eliot.

2.  'Life on Mars?' was deliberately written round the same chord structure as 'My Way' - a tune to which Bowie had written rejected lyrics in 1968.  He described the well-known lyrics to the song as 'evil'.

Bowie's Own Notes

Changes - This album is full of my changes and those of some of my friends.

Pretty - The reaction of me to my wife being pregnant was archetypal daddy - Oh he's gonna be another Elvis. This song is all that plus a dash of sci-fi.

Eight - The city is a kind of high-life wart on the backside of the prairie.

Life On Mars - This is a sensitive young girls reaction to the media.

Kooks - The baby was born and it looked like me and it looked like Angie and the song came out like - if you're gonna stay with us you're gonna grow up Bananas.

Quicksand - The chain reaction of moving around through out the bliss and then the calamity of America produced this epic of confusion - Anyway, with my esoteric problems I could have written it in Plainview - or Dulwich.

There is a time and space level just before you go to sleep when all about you are losing theirs and whoosh void gets you with its cacopfony of thought - that's when I like to write my songs.

Fill - Biff Rose song.

Andy - A man of media and anti-message, with a kind of cute style.

Bob - This is how some see B.D.

Queen - A song on a Velvet Underground-Lou Reed framework s'about London sometimes.

Bewlay - Another in the series of David Bowie confessions - Star-Trek in a leather jacket.

Hunky Dory on Spotify
Life on Mars? video