The song that began it all…

Even after all these years ‘Space Oddity’ remains Bowie’s best-known, most influential and perhaps most remarkable song. Having been a hit twice over, it also enjoys the distinction of being his biggest-selling single in the UK, knocking ‘Let’s dance’ and ‘Dancing In The Street’ into second and third place.
      The story of Major Tom’s fateful trip into space has become part of pop mythology, and Bowie has wisely preserved the song’s mystique by declining to discuss it at length. "It was about alienation," he once said, adding that he had "a lot of empathy," with Major Tom. Certainly the sudden and painful end of his relationship with Hermione Farthingale is part of the story: the quarrel that attended Hermione’s final contribution to the Love You Till Tuesday film, which Kenneth Pitt believes was probably the couple’s last gasp, occurred the day before David recorded his first studio version of the song. The melancholic subtext ("planet earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do") and the submission to a pre-ordained fate ("I think my spaceship knows which way to go") bolster the sense of ‘Space Oddity’ as a song of withdrawal and resignation. The tantalizing uncertainty about whether Major Tom’s fate is of his own making (is his circuit really dead, or is he simply ignoring Ground Control’s pleas at the end?) adds a further dimension to an almost Hamlet-like meditation on the consequences of inaction. Bowie’s anxiety about the loss of "control" (a word to which he repeatedly returns in songs like ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, ‘I Am Divine’ and ‘No Control’), sponsors the notion that Ground Control itself is a metaphor for motherhood, a nurturing environment of spiritual comfort and moral certainty, an environment lost to the individual as he lifts off into life. Some have found a drug-fixated subtext in Major Tom’s "trip", suggesting that the countdown, "lift-off" and "floating in a most peculiar way" reflect the process of injecting heroin and waiting for the hit. David later claimed to have had "a silly flirtation with smack" in 1968, "but it was only for the mystery and enigma of trying it. I never really enjoyed it at all."
      One undisputed source is Stanley Kubrick’s epoch-making 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which furnishes Bowie’s "odd ditty" with its punning title. An anonymous friend records in Christopher Sandford’s biography that 2001 had a "seismic impact" on Bowie at the time of its release. "It was the sense of isolation that I related to," David later explained. And, of course, July 1969 was also the month that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. It’s nigh on possible for us to recall the extent to which spacemen had suddenly become the darlings of the media, but in 1969 the Observer’s Tony Palmer considered ‘Space Oddity’ a welcome breath of cynicism "at a time when we cling pathetically to every moonman’s dribbling joke, when we admire unquestioningly the so-called achievement of our helmeted heroes without wondering why they are there at all." Certainly ‘Space Oddity’, with its pressmen who "want to know whose shirts you wear", is one of Bowie’s key meditations on the vanity and transience of fame, prefiguring Ziggy Stardust’s conflation of the different meanings of "star" and questioning the criteria of celebrity like many other lyrics (‘Fame’, ‘It’s No Game’, ‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’). But the most ingenious and delightful theory of all regarding the song’s provenance is that Bowie might have named his astronaut after a name he saw as a boy on a variety bill posted in Brixton: Tom Major, father of the future Prime Minister.
      Musically, ‘Space Oddity’ demonstrates the new acoustic bent David’s compositions had taken since the formation of his multimedia trio Feathers in 1968. The style, arrangement and indeed lyrics owe a debt to the transatlantic folk-rock sounds of the late 1960s, in particular the Bee Gees’ 1967 debut hit ‘New York Mining Disaster 1941’, whose chorus ("Have you seen my wife, Mr Jones?") is almost too close for words. "‘Space Oddity’ was a Bee Gees type song," Bowie’s colleague John "Hutch" Hutchinson told the Gillmans. "David knew it, and he said so at the time … the way he sang it, it’s a Bee Gees thing."
      There exists a bewildering array of versions, edits and re-recordings of ‘Space Oddity’. A very short and poor quality snippet from an early demo, which fizzles out after the "lift-off" sequence, has appeared on bootlegs and is difficult to date. On 2 February 1969, the day after Hermione’s departure, the earliest full version was recorded at Morgan Studios, Willesden, for inclusion in the Love You Till Tuesday film. For this one-off session, produced by Jonathan Weston, David and Hutch were joined by Dave Clegg (bass), Tat Meager (drums) and Colin Wood (Hammond organ and Mellotron). Taken at a rattling pace and with a curiously jaunty and dated arrangement, this recording is markedly inferior to the later, more famous version. It’s also notable for the fact that Hutch sings lead vocal for the "Ground Control" sections while David plays Major Tom, their close vocal harmonies emphasizing the Bee Gees connection. It was later released on the Love You Till Tuesday album, while the shorter edit used in the film appears on The Deram Anthology 1966-1968. "Quaint" is probably the kindest description of the accompanying film clip, which features the young David heading for the stars in what looks like a moped helmet, to be accosted and undressed by a dodgy pair of proto-Blake’s 7 space sirens.
      The acoustic demo recorded with Hutch not long afterwards (and later released on Sound + Vision) secured Bowie his contract with Mercury Records, and the song’s most famous version was recorded on 20 June 1969. Tony Visconti, who produced the remainder of the album, hated the song, regarding it as "a cheap shot - a gimmick to cash in on the moon landing". It was he who delegated the track to his colleague Gus Dudgeon, later explaining that "David was writing such beautiful songs then, and suddenly he comes up with ‘Space Oddity’ which was just so topical. Men were going to be walking on the moon within weeks, and he comes up with something like that. I told him he would probably have a hit with it, but I didn’t want anything to do with it." More recently Visconti has relented, saying "when I saw the way this song fitted into the scheme of things, I wished I’d dropped my peacenik hippie ideals and recorded this classic track." The chance to produce ‘Space Oddity’ represented a considerable feather in Gus Dudgeon's cap, although many years later he would claim that he had received only his recording fee and was never paid an agreed 2 per cent of royalties on the track. In June 2002 reports circulated that Dudgeon was intending to sue the relevant record companies for a one-off settlement of £1 million.
      The album version of ‘Space Oddity’ was considerably longer than the single edit, but contrary to some reports it’s not a re-recording. Among the track’s gimmickry was its use of a new musical toy, the Stylophone, whose manufacturers roped Bowie into an advertising campaign that ran "David Bowie plays Stylophone in his greatest hit!" Bowie later revealed that it was Marc Bolan who had introduced him to the Stylophone’s electronic warble: "He said, you like this kind of stuff, do something with it. And I put it on ‘Space Oddity’, so it served me well. It was just a little signal responding to electrodes. Sounded atrocious."
      The topicality of ‘Space Oddity’ was lost on neither Mercury nor the many broadcasters they lobbied, several of whom adopted the song as an unofficial accompaniment to the momentous events of 20 July 1969. The single was rush-released on both sides of the Atlantic, appearing on 11 July – only three week after recording – to catch the Apollo 11 landing. BBC television played ‘Space Oddity’ during its coverage of the event, and the song has popped up in documentaries about space exploration ever since.
      Released in different edits in Britain and America, the single turned out to be a slow burner despite some excellent reviews. "I have a bet on in the office that this is going to be a huge hit," wrote Penny Valentine in Disc & Music Echo, adding that she "listened spellbound throughout … the sound is amazing … It’s obviously going to do well in America, which is nice."
      Although Ms Valentine won her bet – eventually – her final prediction was wide of the mark. Six weeks after release the single still hadn’t charted, and Kenneth Pitt’s half-hearted attempt at chart-rigging ("I don’t defend my conduct," he later wrote, "I explain it") was a failure. He had paid £140 to a shady figure called Tony Martin, who promised to get the single into various music weeklies’ charts but instead vanished with the money. However, in Britain at least, ‘Space Oddity’ prospered without such assistance. The single finally charted in September, slowly rising to number 5 by early November. In America it flopped completely, despite a brazen letter sent to thousands of American journalists by Mercury’s publicity director Ron Oberman, describing it as "one of the greatest recordings I’ve ever heard. If this already controversial single gets the airplay, it’s going to be a huge hit." It didn’t, it wasn’t, and not even a relaunch in November succeeded in getting the single into the US chart.. Kenneth Pitt has raised the intriguing possibility – hinted at by Oberman’s mysterious use of the word "controversial" – that the single was clandestinely banned by radio stations and other outlets across the States because of its un-American attitude to the space programme. There are certainly reports of radio stations ignoring repeated requests to play the single, and even one account of an American schoolteacher who stopped pupils listening to it because of the lyrics.
      The number of different versions continue to grow with the release of the British single in both mono and stereo. The latter was still a comparative novelty in the singles market, and Rick Wakeman later recalled that it was Bowie’s own persistence that led to the innovation: "To the best of my knowledge nobody released stereo singles at that time, and they pointed that out to David … and I can remember David saying, ‘That’s why this one will be stereo!’ And he just stood his ground … he wasn’t being awkward, but he had a vision of how things should be."
      The UK single saw yet another innovation. Although 7" picture sleeves were common in America and mainland Europe, they were practically unheard of in Britain. As recently as 1996 collectors discovered two previously unsuspected UK ‘Space Oddity’ picture sleeves, showing David strumming his acoustic guitar – the image used in most other territories. Initially dismissed as fakes, they were authenticated by Bowie discographer Marshall Jarman, who traced a third copy in the hands of a former Philips employee. Only these three copies are known to exist, prompting Record Collector to nominate the UK picture-sleeve 7" of ‘Space Oddity’ not only as the rarest single item of Bowie merchandise, but also the fourth rarest record in existence, valued at around £3000.
      Still the alternative versions came. With an eye on European markets, Bowie recorded and Italian vocal with lyrics by Ivan Mogol. ‘Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola’ means ‘Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl’, and the rest of the words are equally at variance with the original. "I thought it ridiculous that David should be recording this lyric," recalls Kenneth Pitt, "but it was explained to us that ‘Space Oddity’ could not be translated into Italian in a way that the Italians would understand." This version was recorded at Morgan Studios on 20 December 1969, with production and accent coaching by Claudio Fabi. Released in Italy in 1970, it later appeared on Bowie Rare. Covers of the Italian version by Equipe 84 and The Computers were released in Italy before David’s own recording – indeed, according to Gus Dudgeon, Bowie’s version was only recorded at all because his publisher wanted to eclipse the Italian releases. A French translation was also made by Boris Bergman, entitled ‘Un Homme A Disparu Dans Le Ciel’ (‘A Man Has Disappeared In The Sky’), although opinions differ about whether Bowie ever recorded a version of this.
      Unsurprisingly the success of the ‘Space Oddity’ single let to a rash of public appearances, beginning with a performance on Dutch TV’s Doebidoe recorded on 25 August 1969 and shown five days later. On 2 October Bowie made his first ever appearance on Top Of The Pops, playing his Stylophone against a black background at the express request of Kenneth Pitt, who dreaded David being upstaged by a studio audience "less interested in seeing the artist than itself on the monitor sets." The performances was transmitted on 9 October and repeated the following week, propelling the single to its number 5 peak. Further performances came on Germany’s 4-3-2-1Musik Für Junge Leute (recorded 29 October, shown 22 November) and Switzerland’s Hits A-Go-Go (2 November). On 10 May 1970 David performed ‘Space Oddity’ at the Ivor Novello Awards, receiving a Songwriters’ Guild award for the composition. It’s perhaps not surprising that as early as December 1969 David responded to an interviewer’s question , "Space Oddity – are you bored with it?", with the frank reply, "Oh, yes. It’s only a pop song after all."
      ‘Space Oddity’ was to be Bowie’s only taste of chart success until ‘Starman’ three years later. While it was a useful dry run for the fame and fortune that would one day be his, in its day ‘SpaceOddity’ was destined to be nothing more than an example of that most despised of phenomena, the novelty hit. 1969, which began with the Scaffold’s ‘Lily The Pink’ and ended with Rolf Harris’s ‘Two Little Boys’ in the number 1 spot, was a year curiously dominated by such confections, and it’s worth noting that Zager And Evan’s sci-fi hit ‘In The Year 2525’ sat atop the singles chart for the three weeks immediately preceding ‘Space Oddity’’s top 40 entry. To an extent Tony Visconti’s misgivings were justified – ‘Space Oddity’ emerged into a world already tiring of space-age novelties, and only retrospectively did it transcend such associations to become a genuine classic. In 1983 Bowie opined that "it was, unfortunately, a very good song that possibly I wrote a bit too early, because I hadn’t anything else substantial at the time."
      ‘Space Oddity’ was included in a BBC radio session recorded on 22 May 1972, later appearing on BBC Sessions 1969-1972 sampler and on Bowie A The Beeb. In a sideswipe at Elton John’s then number 5 hit, Bowie cheekily interjected "I’m just a rocket man!" between verses. In Backstage Passes Angela Bowie claims David was piqued by the Gus Dudgeon-produced ‘Rocket Man’, considering it an opportunistic rip-off of ‘Space Oddity’ at a time when ‘Starman’ had yet to enter the chart. Intentionally or otherwise, the similarities in Bernie Taupin’s lyric certainly extend beyond the basic spaceman theme – there has never been much doubt that ‘Rocket Man’ is a metaphor for drug-taking, and the line "I miss the earth so much, I miss my wife" is remarkably familiar.
      In December 1972, during the ‘Aladdin Sane’ sessions at New York’s RCA Studios, a new video was shot by Mick Rock featuring a guitar-strumming Bowie amid the pseudo-space-age paraphernalia of the deserted studio. The clip supported RCA’s American reissue in January 1973 (which reached number 15 in the Billboard chart, becoming Bowie’s first US hit) and was later used to promote the British re-release in September 1975, which pushed Art Garfunkel’s ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ from pole position in November to give David his first British number 1. With Bowie firmly ensconced in Los Angeles recording Station To Station at the time, the BBC's legendary dance troupe Pan's People were pressed into service for a Top Of The Pops performance.
      In 1980 yet another new version, recorded for Kenny Everett’s New Year’s Eve Show the previous December, was released as the B-side of the ‘Alabama Song’ single (and latterly on 1992’s Scary Monsters reissue). The lush arrangements of the Gus Dudgeon-produced original were stripped down to the bare essentials of acoustic guitar, drums and piano, , and accordingly the message ‘Sorry Gus’ could be found scratched into the run-out vinyl. The idea for the re-recording had come from the Everett show’s director David Mallet. "I agreed as long as I could do it again without all its trappings and do it strictly with three instruments," David explained. "Having played it with just an acoustic guitar on stage early only, I was always surprised at how powerful it was just as a song, without all the strings and synthesizers." Tony Visconty, who produced this version, later added that the recording "was never meant to be a single. Andy Duncan is on drums and a Bowie lookalike, Zaine Griff, is on bass. I temporarily forget the pianist. David again, played twelve-string."
      Later in 1980 came Bowie’s disinterring of Major Tom in ‘Ashes To Ashes’, which appropriately enough became his second British number 1. Nor was this the only Major Tom revival: ‘Space Oddity’ itself has been subjected to a vast number of live and studio covers by artists including Rick Wakeman, Pentangle (whose drummer Terry Cox had, like Wakeman, contributed to the original single), The Flying Pickets (whose extraordinary 1983 a capella version was later compiled on David Bowie Songbook), Hank Marvin, Jonathan King, The Barron Knights, Rudy Grant, Cut, Saigon Kick and Natalie Merchant. The recording by the Langley School Music Project, a 60-voice choir of Canadian children recorded in the late 1970s and reissued on CD in 2002, is one of Bowie's favourite versions: "The backing arrangement is astounding. Coupled with the earnest if lugubrious vocal performance, you have a piece of art that I couldn't have conceived of, even with half of Colombia's finest export products in me." The revived Langley School Music Project formed part of Bowie's 2002 Meltdown programme.
      In 1984 the German vocalist Peter Schilling had a one-hit wonder with his ‘Space Oddity’ sequel ‘Major Tom (Coming Home)’, also included on his album The Different Story (World Of Lust And Crime). The little-known Panic On The Titanic produced a song called ‘Major Tom’, while Def Leppard's ‘Rocket’ (from their 1987 album Histeria) also resurrected the character. ‘SpaceOddity’ has been sung by both Chandler and Joey in the US sitcom Friends, by comedian Vic Reeves on Shooting Stars, and even by the BBC's intrepid journalist Louis Theroux during his 1998 Weird Weekend in the company of UFO-spotters in the American west.
      ‘Space Oddity’ has remained a live favourite throughout Bowie’s career, featuring in his 1969-1971 sets and on the Ziggy Stardust, Diamond Dogs, Serious Moonlight and Sound + Vision tours. On 19 October 1973 a fine Pin Ups-era version, leaning heavily on piano and saxophone, was shot for The 1980 Floor Show, accompanied by NASA footage of rockets taking off. In 1997 Bowie closed his fiftieth birthday concert with an acoustic rendition of ‘Space Oddity’, later included on a limited- edition CD-ROM issued with Variety magazine in March 1999. A sumptuous new version orchestrated by Tony Visconti, with string accompaniment by the Scorchio and Kronos Quartets, was the highlight of Bowie's set at the Tibet House Benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in February 2002.