hunky dory - david bowie

Hunky Dory isn't my favourite David Bowie album, and although I understand the praise that this record rightly receives, I prefer many of his other records. But… having said that I really can’t fault anything about Hunky Dory. And listening to it again recently, every track reveals itself to be a little marvel.

“Changes”, for all its iconic status in Bowie’s canon (and virtually every feature writer can’t help themselves in referencing this song) but it’s perhaps my least favourite on the record. It’s beautifully put together, the lovely piano work, the dreamy saxophone, the overlapping vocals, it’s all good, but there’s something about this song that I’ve never warmed to.

“Oh! You Pretty Things” is better for me. The twisted sci fi lyrics could have come from The Man Who Sold The World, but music most definitely couldn’t, what with that tremendous clumping piano in the style of Macca’s “Martha My Dear” and a soaring vocal as DB hits some very high notes.

“Eight Line Poem” I always found rather Dylanesque – oblique and obtuse to the point of incomprehension. But it’s a very pretty little interlude before…

“Life On Mars?” which is truly epic. Mick Ronson’s gorgeous orchestral arrangement is astonishing (check out the "Also Sprach Zarathustra" timpani at the end) and Rick Wakeman’s lyrical piano is beautiful. But both are swept along by one of Bowie’s most stirring melodies in what is surely one of his most mature songs thus far.

“Kooks” takes it down a step with this charmingly gauche dedication his newborn son. Never mind that it’s largely a steal from Neil Young’s “Till The Morning Comes” even down to the playful trumpet. There’s another stirring string arrangement here too. And on the next song –

“Quicksand” which battles with “Life On Mars?” for the most beautiful song on the album. For my money “Quicksand” wins as it’s less obvious and the chorus creeps up but totally floors me every time.

“Fill Your Heart” – a throwaway cover, but a cheery, summery one. Bowie’s gleeful vocal stays just on the right side of twee.

Then we get the three tribute songs for Bowie’s 1971 heroes.

“Andy Warhol” is brilliantly constructed, all overamped acoustic anger and some cracking bass. The instrumental coda is marvellous.

“Song For Bob Dylan” is perhaps the most conventional song here. Straightforward 1971 rock and instrumentation, but it stands out because little else on this album is recorded this way.

“Queen Batch” was ostensibly inspired by Lou Reed - ‘some white light returned with thanks’ say the sleeve notes, but musically it owes more to songs like “Sweet Jane”. I love the way that Bowie’s 12 string is doubled by Ronson’s trusty ‘Black Beauty’ (a Gibson Les Paul that stuck with him for most of the 1970s) and at times Ronno overdubs a further guitar line. The superbly overdriven sound simply makes the song.

“The Bewlay Brothers” – no-one ever got a sensible explanation of this song from Bowie. One of his earliest comments about it ‘Star Trek in a leather jacket’ makes as much sense as anything. It is clearly about him and his older step brother Terry, a fact that was tacitly acknowledged many years later, but DB refused to go any further with that line of questioning. Terry had lived with David and Angie for quite some time during 1970 but despite their best efforts it was clear that his schizophrenia and manic depression were no longer manageable in the real world. One of the reasons that David would never discuss the song was that, by early 1971, Terry had been committed to the Cane Hill asylum. (This was a vast Victorian hospital in Coulsdon in South London, which could house 2,000 patients. Cane Hill closed in 1991 and was partially demolished a few years ago to allow for redevelopment but before work could begin the rest of the building was destroyed in a fire in 2010.) Anyway, Terry would call Cane Hill his home for the next 14 years; he never recovered sadly, and he took his life in 1985 by laying on the railway tracks nearby.

The song itself dislocates the mind of the listener, the disparate and fragmentary imagery exactly mirroring the frightening visions in Terry’s mind. (Many of the wilder lyrics on The Man Who Sold The World were also influenced by what Terry could apparently ‘see’.) That “The Bewlay Brothers” is underpinned by a gently strummed and very beautiful melody makes that song all the more sad. Ronno’s backwards guitar is another melancholy and disturbing touch. But it’s the astonishing coda that is really chilling. A myriad of varispeeded voices takes the cheekiness of the Laughing Gnome into altogether darker territory. A genuinely unsettling and discomforting end to this album.