The “Queen Bitch” demo and live recordings are tame and melodic compared to the acrobatic talk-singing of the album cut, where the verses take on an intensity already present in the chorus. It’s a souvenir of the song’s emotional essence-an eccentric new father’s playful imagination of his child’s future-that adds an endearing new dimension to the Joplin-esque veneer of the studio version. With just gentle guitar strums below his voice, the John Peel version of “Kooks” is a lullaby compared to its oom-pah-driven final product though recorded for broadcast, it feels as though Bowie is singing directly to his son. The live recordings offer special insight, illustrating which of his instinctual choices Bowie opted to keep. Before he was venting about a “God-awful small affair” in crystal-blue eyeshadow and auburn hair, he was just a man at a piano singing softly about a “simple but small affair.” His growth as a lyricist can be seen in the melodrama of one line. A similar bareness can be heard in the “Life on Mars?” demo, a short piano skeleton of the cinematic masterpiece to come. A curious vaudevillian spirit was brewing that would appear more fleshed-out on tracks like “Fill Your Heart” (a Biff Rose tune ultimately recorded by Rick Wakeman on a Bechstein grand). Songs like the forgotten “How Lucky You Are (aka Miss Peculiar)” are early examples of him working on the keyboard his playing is rudimentary, with buoyant hits on every beat in the waltz. The piano offered a palette that was both rich and mellow, allowing Bowie to play around with a malleable and unique yet still classic tool. On Ziggy and albums to follow, Bowie would reinvent the interstellar, guitar-centric sound of “Space Oddity” and The Man Who Sold the World with a mature glamor that grew from Hunky Dory’s grounded orchestration. He’s also stitching together the tapestry of his next record, a little project called The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.ĭivine Symmetry’s demos and offcuts strip back the warm, piano-centered framework that makes Hunky Dory feel like it always belonged on Earth. In this collection, we hear him begin to construct the theater of Hunky Dory: He’s practicing, testing lyrics, workshopping different arrangements, messing up, joking around. The stakes feel higher: We want to see his path to the success we already know exists. The music is accompanied by a 100-page book featuring facsimiles of primary documents, insights from insiders like co-producer Ken Scott, and liner notes by Tris Penna there’s also a separate booklet in Bowie’s own hand that gives an intimate look at his process through sloppy footnotes, scrapped chords, and fashion doodles. It’s a look into his mind during the most consequential transition of his career, a retrospective peek at him rehearsing the character of himself.ĭivine Symmetry is by no means the first attempt at chronicling Bowie’s musical development, but it feels especially personal, perhaps because of its smaller size ( Five Years was a whopping 12 discs), perhaps because of the volatility of this time in his life. The 4xCD collection surveys the year leading up to the album’s release it includes previously unreleased tracks, demos, live recordings, and studio sessions from the era, as well as updated mixes. But the following year his third album, the eclectic and single-less The Man Who Sold the World, found most of its success in his town of Beckenham, England.ĭivine Symmetry, subtitled An Alternative Journey Through Hunky Dory, is the latest box set to explore Bowie’s oeuvre. He landed at Mercury thanks to some lucky connections, and remained relatively off-radar until five days before the Apollo 11 launch in 1969, when his cosmic single “Space Oddity” briefly catapulted him into mainstream consciousness. He stayed at a Buddhist monastery in Scotland, joined a mime troupe, and dabbled in experimental performance art. In 1967 he released a self-titled album of music-hall-style rock on a small label, but they rejected some of his singles and the partnership collapsed. He hopped from small band to small band in high school, rebranding as Davy Jones and then, to avoid confusion with the Monkees singer, as David Bowie. His first instrument at age 13 was not guitar or piano, but saxophone. In 1971, radio host John Peel introduced the 24-year-old musician featured on a broadcast of Pick of the Pops as “a young man who writes good songs and makes good records, but never seems to get the recognition he deserves.” In his early career, the artist born David Robert Jones didn’t seem like he was headed toward stardom.
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