David Bowie
Space Oddity

THE REVIEW

SONGS FROM THE MEMORY OF A FREE FESTIVAL

or "we played our songs and felt the London sky resting in our hands"

"Control tower to Major Tom... Control tower to Major Tom"...
with these famous words, we connect to the universe of the young David Bowie's second album. The boy tried in many ways... he was a mime, a painter, a decorator, a spaced-out mod... one day we see him rummaging through the trash with Marc Bolan looking for discarded clothes from London's most "in" shops, we hear him imitate a laughing gnome, the next day he writes a space ballad about an astronaut lost among the stars (or a boy on overdose?), gets photographed like an antihero straight out of "A Clockwork Orange" or "2001: A Space Odyssey," and works on new and old sounds with Tony Visconti and a very young Rick Wakeman. The sci-fi atmospheres that would later heavily influence the future successes in "Space Oddity" are not yet present, but Bowie's voice stands out unmistakably and uniquely in the English scene of 1969, as he makes strange noises in the fast and frenetic "Unwashed And Somewhat Slightly Dazed" or chuckles in "(Don't Sit Down)." The other absolutely original element that defines this somewhat oddly dressed curly-haired young man is the ability to combine a new country-folk with different, original, critical, disillusioned, ironic, descriptive lyrics and to be as romantic and melancholic as any young man, without any pretense, as in the acoustic "Letter To Hermione."
And if we believe that with the first four tracks we have already heard everything, we're gravely mistaken, because suddenly, from his hat, David pulls out a critique of society, wandering and poetic, as in the nine and a half minutes of "Cygnet Committee"... but this hat has no bottom!: there is even room for the orchestra and the energy of the immense "Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud," perhaps one of the most beautiful ballads written by the future Ziggy Stardust. Following the same wave of folk madness already heard in the second track, we listen to the fun farewell to "Janine," followed by the intimate echoes of "An Occasional Dream." The exceptional expressiveness of this "beginner" is revealed again in "God Knows I'm Good": only Bowie can tell us in such a peculiar way the story of a lady caught shoplifting at the supermarket!
This brilliant and colorful patchwork of country and symphonic images and impressions ends with "Memory Of A Free Festival": it's the tale of the end of hippie ideologies, it's the disillusioned celebration of the last summer party, where the organ bids farewell to Bowie's sweet visions and the sun sets forever, placing its vibrant rays on a fresco where Peter Pan and Captain Hook chase each other carefree, where we talk to the Venusians, where we cross God's land without chains while the London sky rests in our hands...

The control tower is ready to launch into the ether the ballads (and the fame) of a boy who, with a long floral robe and hobbit hair, steps onto the stage of a Free Festival to paint with the pastel sounds of the twelve-string the dreams, images, and characters born of his imagination... we can do nothing but abandon ourselves to these so-playable inspirations and the fresh simplicity of the present...

from "Cygnet Committee"

"It's been a long time
and there is so little new
And when the dawn floods me
With glimmers
My friends talk
Of glory, dreams never told, where everything is God and God is just a word"