bowie 1971

And further to the final Ziggy Stardust show I had fun with a bizarre collocation of Bowie tracks from 1971. This bunch of songs included some demos of tracks that made it to Hunky Dory, some demos that didn't, some other completely finished songs, some rough and ready rehearsals, some sung by DB, some sung by his friends, some excellent, some… not quite so excellent…

The ones I can remember include -

"Rupert The Riley". Yes indeed, a song about Dave’s car… sung by a slightly seedy character David and Angie had met at the Sombrero nightclub called Mickey King. He was apparently murdered in the mid 1970s after some sort of narcotic deal went bad. Anyway, the song is terrific. Daft as heck, but great fun and the beep beeps were recycled nine years later on "Fashion".

"Lightning Frightening" which is basically the song "Dirty Dirty" from Crazy Horse’s 1971 debut album sans Neil. Exactly the same music and arrangement but with Bowie’s vocal melody and lyrics instead. What a cheek. Still not a terribly good song in either incarnation.

"Miss Peculiar (How Lucky You Are)" – a very melodramatic piano tune in a sort of waltz time. With its oddly staged singing this wouldn’t have been out of place in some sort of musical theatre and shows how Bowie’s writing in 1971 was all over the place.

"Lady Stardust" – recorded at the same session in March 1971 as "Miss Peculiar" is this demo version. Which is pretty much identical to the finished version that appeared on the Ziggy album in 1972.

"Looking For A Friend" from the Arnold Corns sessions. AC was a made up band fronted by Bowie’s costume maker Fred Burrett, who styled himself as the more exotic Freddie Burretti. Although Bowie deemed even that name was too ordinary and for AC purposes Freddie became Rudi Valentino! Although he had the looks, Freddie couldn’t actually sing terribly well, but this didn't matter as DB was basically using Arnold Corns as a front - so he could still keep issuing songs whilst trying to extricate himself from his Mercury Records contract. "Looking For A Friend" was attempted on numerous occasions throughout 1971, firstly with Arnold Corns, then with a mix of the Corns musicians and the Spiders and later still during the Ziggy sessions in the Autumn. It’s a pretty good song, a bit ramshackle but in a good Mick Taylor era Stones manner. Pity it never really got finished.

"Shadowman" – another somewhat ramshackle recording of a terrifically good song. Elements of this were nicked from a Biff Rose tune called "The Man" (Rose was a big favourite of Bowie’s – he also wrote "Fill Your Heart" which DB covered on Hunky Dory). Bowie himself re-recorded the track as a gorgeous Mike Garson led ballad for the Toy project in 2000.

"Man In The Middle" – another Arnold Corns song and mainly sung by co-writer and AC guitarist Mark Carr-Pritchard. Bowie joins in the harmonies and Mick Ronson adds some urgently stabbing guitar work which he then recycled into the main riff of "Hang On To Yourself" later in the year.

"Moonage Daydream" – the earliest version of this song from January 1971 is horridly weak and limp. Nothing like the tour de force from the Ziggy album. This is also peppered with embarrassing Americanisms as DB weedily mutters things like "far out" with very little conviction. The hopelessly lumpen drumming doesn’t help either.

"Bombers" - one of the most famous Hunky Dory out-takes as it was on the album until a very late stage when, for reasons unknown, it was replaced by "Fill Your Heart". It’s another very stagey song and DB sings in an oddly mannered way, but it’s quite good fun in its way.

There are lots of other songs from this hugely prolific period. I doubt that Bowie ever again wrote quite as many songs in such a short period of time; and most of them were absolutely brilliant.