David Bowie
The Man Who Sold The World

THE REVIEW

The beginning of David Bowie's golden era is often marked by the release of best-sellers like "Hunky Dory" (1971) and especially "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars" (1972). In reality, the maturation of our chameleon had already begun with the forgotten classic "The Man Who Sold The World" (1970).

Having definitively distanced himself from the music hall influence of Anthony Newley that characterized his derivative beginnings, Bowie let the trip-acid-acoustic of "Space Oddity" ferment, formed a band, and with it decided to create a new sound, a new approach to new music.
He could not foresee the incredible results that his newborn collaboration with Mick Ronson would bring, nor could he predict his musical destiny; he only knew this was one of the last attempts he had to finally forge the personal and autonomous style he had been trying to achieve for years. Commercially, the work was a partial failure, not only due to the almost absent commercial appeal of these nine substantial tracks but also because of the lack of a true chart-topping "hit single." Given the artist's talent even in composing more mainstream pieces, we can deduce that at this moment Bowie's interest was completely absorbed by the effort to develop his own solid artistic dignity. Laying the foundations not only for his subsequent evolutions but also for much of the future developments of modern rock, the album not only meets expectations but ends up becoming the "proto" album par excellence: we can identify proto-metal, proto-glam, proto-grunge germs (not just in the title track covered by Cobain), proto-punk, proto-new wave etc., along with an original absorption of the insights of the previous period (a deformed crossover between the Beatles, Cream, Kinks, Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, and something magical unknown to us).

Thus, a truly seminal album is born, whose purpose of existence—as it is not yet complete in itself—lies precisely in this function of generational input. A young artist finally offers us a new perspective from which to view the world, light-years away from that of the flower children (which he will help to fade) and that of Elvis's children. A magnifying glass that introduces us lucidly into a new more introspective vision, where what is strange, ambiguous, bizarre, alienating finally reigns.
A post-modern universe that will mark us all and begins to be traversed in these first inexperienced journeys, sitting on the ground under the influence of drugs, or swaying between car rides in the English countryside, the same one recently traversed by the Fab Four's Magical Mystery Bus.

Bowie appropriates the collective desire for freedom and emancipation of the "Summer Of Love" to reflect it back onto the individual, onto their ancient repressions. Thus, the sense of modesty is abandoned, now free to confess, indeed shout our paranoias, fetishes, our most murky joys. It is here that David Bowie delineates a gap, dividing him from a past he is nonetheless grateful for but cannot truly call his own. And no one will remain indifferent in front of a cover depicting the singer dressed as a woman (proto-N.Y. Dolls?) who, slumped on a bed, plays cards with the fate of the world. The amazement for an unprecedented artwork does not, of course, fade in the face of the record itself, wrapped in its own powerful sound, enriched by Ralph Mace's synthesizers and excellently produced by Tony Visconti with an atmosphere of almost gothic-fairy-tale rock-opera. The pieces, one after another, undergo the fascinating torments of the leader, and his distorted, shrill, painful, and ringing voice is curious and excited like never again in the future. The band, for its part, knows how to weave melodic embroidery with rare skill: it has the ability to take us in a few minutes from grotesque and sarcastic tones, so sharp and true that they intimidate the tender hippies of the time, to more intimate ones that almost move us.
But here, there is not only skill or professionalism; there is an excited group discovering and bringing to light its identity, as men and musicians (they will be the future Spiders From Mars), and each member seems to contribute to the devastating emotional success of the tracks.

If you will allow me, I will skip the description of the individual tracks because this is one of those works that must be unwrapped alone, gradually discovering the beauty of the surprise, smiling as you find in some wonderful sketches the embryo of one of your favorite classics of future glam, plastic-soul, or Berlin phases, or something else entirely. But you might also fall in love at first sight with one of these gems, renouncing a Bowie must-have that you thought was unbeatable. One thing is for sure: whether you are enthusiastic or disappointed, there are no replicas of "The Man Who Sold The World": it is an album that has been imitated and updated endlessly but never repeated, never recreated in its perpetual, insane freshness. Here a 23-year-old has become aware of the means necessary to create his longed-for new music: now he will only have to take possession of it.