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Man Who Fell to Earth

David Bowie's Golden Years

19

The Deram Years

The Deram Anthology 1966–1968 is a compilation album by David Bowie, released in 1997. It collects together most of the material Bowie recorded for Deram Records that has been previously released in some form, including the 1967 debut album in its entirety (tracks 5-18), in chronological order. Tracks 24-27 were mixed/recorded in 1969 after Bowie was dropped from Deram Records and were for the promotional video "Love You Till Tuesday", made to sell Bowie to a new label. Thus Deram originally had nothing to do with these tracks.


Originally this was planned to be a two-disc release featuring several previously unreleased tracks, but Bowie vetoed the inclusion of such material.[5] Reportedly the tracks Bowie vetoed included songs called "Pussy Cat", "Back to Where You've Never Been", "Funny Smile", "Bunny Thing", a cover of The Velvet Underground's "Waiting for the Man" and German-language versions of "Love You 'Till Tuesday" and "When I Live My Dream" (the last three have been widely bootlegged).[6]

A reel to reel copy taken directly from the master tapes exists of the songs "Funny Smile", "Bunny Thing", and "Pussy Cat" and is owned by a previous employee of Decca Records who worked for the company at the time the tracks were recorded. In 2019 these recordings have been put up for auction by Omega Auctions.



Deram Bowie History

Space Oddity

David Bowie’s one-time manager Kenneth Pitt said that he knew the singer-songwriter had created something special with ‘Space Oddity’ during a break from filming the original version of the song on 2 February 1969.

That this was an unusually clever song was apparent from the first hearing, but it was only during the course of the day’s shooting that its wide appeal became evident,” Pitt, who died in February 2019, at the age of 96, recalled in his book Bowie: The Pitt Report. “During the break for lunch, freed from the silence imposed on them on the set, people were laughing, chattering and singing about the unconventional hero Major Tom. When David came through a doorway someone said, ‘Well, if it isn’t Major Tom.’”



Space Oddity History

Hunky Dory

When David Bowie began writing songs for Hunky Dory, in 1970, he had little to show for the six years he spent trying to make it as a singer. His first three albums had tanked, and he didn’t have a record deal. Then, in January 1971, Bowie arrived in the United States for a three-week promotional tour, a journey that broadened his universe and inspired his first great artistic statement.

“The whole Hunky Dory album reflected my newfound enthusiasm for this new continent that had been opened up to me,” Bowie said in 1999. “That was the first time a real outside situation affected me so 100 percent that it changed my way of writing and the way I look at things.”



Traveling by bus from Washington, D.C., to California, Bowie fell in love with the country and penned tributes to some of its most iconic artists: “Andy Warhol,” “Song for Bob Dylan” and the Lou Reed-inspired “Queen Bitch.” Inspired by folkie singer-songwriters like James Taylor and Cat Stevens, who were dominating the U.S. charts at the time, Bowie began composing pretty acoustic tunes with surreal lyrics like “Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow.”



Rolling Stone December 2019
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