While 2001 was a primary influence, Bowie, an SF fan ( e.g., “ We Are Hungry Men“), may have raided other sources. So when at the end of 1968 Bowie’s manager asked him to write a new song for his Love You Till Tuesday promo film, Bowie had a scenario in mind. Bowie saw the film (stoned “off my gourd” he recalled) several times that summer and was especially struck by the final images of a “child” floating in space over the Earth. Visconti, in his autobiography, recounts a typical 2001 viewing-while high from drinking cannabis tea, Visconti had to talk down the tripping couple behind him who were terrified by the film’s “Star Gate” sequence. As in many cities, its most frequent repeat viewers were the young and the altered. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey opened in London in May 1968 and played for months. It’s a breakup song, an existential lullaby, consumer tie-in, product test, an alternate space program history, calculated career move, and a symbolic end to the counterculture dream-the “psychedelic astronaut” drifting off impotently into space ( Camille Paglia suggested the last) it’s a kid’s song, drug song, death song, and it marks the birth of the first successful Bowie mythic character, one whose motives and fate are still unknown to us. “Space Oddity” has come to define Bowie, perhaps because it’s as protean as its creator has tried to be. “Space Oddity” is close company to early Bee Gees hits like “ New York Mining Disaster 1941” and Zager and Evans’ dire “In the Year 2525”: it’s a gimmicky folk song dressed up in extravagant clothes. It began as a novelty song with a sell-by date (the first moon landing in July 1969), something like a grandiose, more dignified “ Laughing Gnome,” and Tony Visconti, for one, refused to have anything to do with it, considering the song a cynical sell-out. So it’s “classic” Bowie, its now-iconic status won slowly and circuitously, but then “Space Oddity” has always seemed slightly out of time (its biggest chart placings, both in the US and the UK, came years after its first release). When Bowie dies, the TV tributes will lead off with it. “Space Oddity” is an officially sanctioned beginning: Bowie’s first single for Philips/Mercury his first Top 10 hit (and, years later, his first UK #1) lead-off and title track of the subsequent LP lead-off track of every greatest hits compilation from ChangesOneBowie on lead-off track on his Sound and Vision career retrospective. Space Oddity (“1980 Floor Show” rehearsal, 1973). Space Oddity (first live TV performance, 1970). Space Oddity (Bowie and Hutchinson demo). July-August 1971, was a last-minute addition to the LP, replacing “Bombers” (probably still the right call) Bowie opened his set at Aylesbury with it, on 25 September 1971.ġ3 Comments | Hunky Dory: 1971 | Tagged: 1970, 1971, Biff Rose, David Bowie, Fill Your Heart, Mick Ronson, Paul Williams, Rick Wakeman, Tiny Tim | Wright, who had arranged Rose’s recording), Rick Wakeman gets the showcase piano solo and Bowie provides the saxophone.įirst performed at the BBC on 2 February 1970, and again on 21 September 1971 the Hunky Dory version, recorded ca. Mick Ronson does the light-orchestra arrangements (the LP sleeve credits the influence of Arthur G. In its way, “Fill Your Heart” is the most disturbing track on the record. Bowie, on Hunky Dory, is so committed to the song’s treacly philosophy that he descends into pure tastelessness-at times gurning like a gruesome holiday camp performer. Rose delivered those lines with the trace of a smirk, while Tiny Tim, who covered the song as the b-side of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” sang it with glee and amazement, as though he’d finally found a lyric that topped his own extravagant persona. But you can see why “Fill Your Heart” entranced Bowie-its lyric offers comfort and peace ( “fear is in your head/only in your head, so forget your head”), promising that the pain of consciousness can be alleviated by love, by losing yourself entirely in someone else. It goes far beyond the realm of squares, really: it seems best suited to appeal to delusional old people, toddlers and good-tempered dogs. Where the other Rose song Bowie covered, “Buzz the Fuzz,” was a hippie drug joke, “Fill Your Heart” is music for squares. Bowie seemed to adore “Fill Your Heart,” a collaboration between the hippie comedian Biff Rose and ’70s malignance Paul Williams: it was in his live sets by early 1970 and he led off the second side of Hunky Dory with it, his first cover song on record since “I Pity The Fool.”
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