Is this one of the weirdest debuts of a major artist? Released in 1967, a moment when English rock started really coming into its own, and yet there's not a rock (or even conventional pop) track on it - except maybe for Join The Gang, which is ironic anyway. It's all over the place, although the music hall influence is the strongest - songs like There Is A Happy Land or When I Live My Dream could have been made 15 years earlier. The risible 'We Are Hungry Men' has a sort of prototypical Diamond Dogs theme to it. I'm not sure the album hangs together very well but there are some gems on it: 'Maids Of Bond Street', 'Love You Til Tuesday'
I think it's terrific stuff, for a lot of 'very me' reasons.
1. Despite attempts at a kind of Tommy Steele / Tony Newley 'mainstream entertainer' feel, this is Bowie's weirdest record, and I like weird.
2. It's his least rockist record. No ham-fisted attempts to compete with Jagger et al.
3. The songs are like short stories. Characters like Uncle Arthur or the Little Bombadier are middle aged British cranks and misfits. The 'otherness' of childhood' is also dealt with very sympathetically.
4. Bowie's 'insanity' meme is here in lines like 'Don't be afraid of the man in the moon because it's only me'. The lunatic!
5. The arrangements are actually lovely, rather in the style of french variete of the period.
6. You sort of feel you get Bowie young and you get him to yourself when you listen to this stuff, because it hasn't been played to death or given a commemorative issue of Uncut.
7. You can imagine Bowie doing mime to these or performing them with Hutch from Feathers down at the Beckenham Arts Lab.
8. The climate of these songs is warm, sunny, non-macho, although there are some disturbing themes of social maladjustment. This makes them arguably more subversive and disturbing than the shock rock of, say, 'Future Legend', which fails because it says, Marilyn Manson-style, 'Look out, I'm here to shock you!' It's much more shocking to be shocked in a surprising way.
Interesting to read. However, too many technical terms for me still.
You say this is a wierd album, but the cover presents us a beautiful boy. Wierd ideed.
