Through the 1970s, David Bowie built his legend on a parade of changing persona and shrewd stylistic shifts. But his initial, late-1960s forays into the music industry illustrate that there's a fine line between "chameleonic" and "indecisive"-- in his early years, Bowie tried make his name variously as a mod bluesman, a traditional folksinger, an Anthony Newley-schooled theatrical raconteur and, on his 1967 self-titled debut, a music-hall dandy. Ironically, it was a song seemingly most susceptible to a brief, novelty-tune shelf life that would prove to be his first enduring work: the 1969 single "Space Oddity", which, of course, riffed on the similarly titled Stanley Kubrick blockbuster of the day, and was fortuitously timed to court a space-crazed populace still abuzz from that summer's lunar landing.
The ploy didn't quite pay off-- though the "Space Oddity" single cracked the UK Top 5, the sophomore album on which it appeared flopped, as the efforts to establish the David Bowie brand resulted in a confusing release strategy. His UK label, Phillips, issued the album in Britain as David Bowie (making it his second self-titled album), while his U.S. benefactors at Mercury christened it with a title that begged to have it relegated to the folk-section cut-out bin: Man of Words/Man of Music. But rather than prompt another career about-face, the album's prog-folk hymnals (complete with guest keyboard wizardry from Rick Wakeman of Yes) helped point the way to the artful glam-rock that would make Bowie a superstar-- upon which he would reissue the album in 1972 and rename it after its most famous song.
As such, this 40th-anniversary reissue of Space Oddity does not so much commemorate a great album-- it doesn't even rank among Bowie's 10 best-- but rather the true first chapter in an often brilliant career (not to mention the dawn of Bowie's fruitful collaborative relationship with producer Tony Visconti). Tellingly, the title track has opened pretty much every Bowie greatest-hits compilation of note, and rightfully so-- not only does its still-thrilling rocket-launch structure anticipate Bowie's own supernova ascent, the song's themes of splendid isolation and uncertain futurism would prove ever-present motifs in his work up through 1980's Scary Monsters. But if the song dramatically reinvents Bowie as a sci-fi folkie-- serving as the middle-man between late-60s hippie idealism and early-70s disillusionment-- with few exceptions, the rest of Space Oddity isn't quite as eager to thrust forth into the great unknown.
Instead, we hear a young dude who's still back home with his Beatles and his Stones (see: the perfunctory "Hey Jude" group-chorus coda of "Memory of a Free Festival" for the former; the extended blues boogie of "Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed" for the latter), with a well-worn copy of Love's Forever Changes close at hand-- all that's missing from the mellotronic psych-folk serenade "An Occasional Dream" is an Arthur Lee co-write credit. So amid these stately surroundings, side-one closer "Cygnet Committee" stands out not just by virtue of its nine-minute length, but for its strident disavowal of hippie platitudes ("[we] stoned the poor on slogans such as 'Wish you could hear!' 'Love is all we need!' 'Kick out the jams!' 'Kick out your mother!'"); likewise, Bowie's voice overpowers the song's languid folk-rock sway as if it were a shackle, introducing his signature technique of intensifying and accelerating his delivery to break free of the verses' pre-established cadences. It's the birth of the classic David Bowie Affectation-- the one that's been embraced/lampooned by everyone from the Frogs and Ween and Destroyer to Flight of the Conchords-- making "Cygnet Committee" as important a breakthrough for Bowie as Space Oddity's more celebrated title track.
Comparatively, Space Oddity's other epic set pieces-- the over-orchestrated fable "The Wild-Eyed Boy From Freecloud" and hippie-dream requiem "Memory of a Free Festival"-- are too baroque in their presentation to fully transcend the status of time-capsule curios. But they're still historically significant for introducing Bowie's future foil Mick Ronson, who makes an uncredited appearance on the former, while contributing some six-string muscle to the improved, two-part single version of "Free Festival", included on this set's 15-track bonus disc.
A handful of these rarities have surfaced previously-- namely on the 1989 Sound+Vision box set, the 1990 CD reissue of Space Oddity and the 2000 Bowie on the Beeb radio-sessions compilation-- and the set feels excessively padded with (not-so) alternate mixes. But taken together, they illuminate the rapidity of Bowie's evolution between the album's conception and its promotion, from an embryonic demo version of "Space Oddity" (sung in a higher register and different meter) to the superior, stripped-down versions of "An Occasional Dream" and "Freecloud", the Marc Bolan-backed single version of eventual Aladdin Sane track "The Prettiest Star" and the proto-Spiders From Mars swagger of "London Bye Ta-Ta". And throughout it all, Bowie even found the time to learn another language, cutting a lyrically revised Italian version of "Space Oddity" ("Ragazza Solo, Ragazza Sola") to compete with a wave of successful cover versions in Italy. It 's hardly the most flattering portrait of a man who would go on to sell the world, but still a quaint keepsake from a time when he was just trying to blag his way through mainland Europe.
