Originally posted to Instagram on January 9, 2020.
My good friend Maya sent me a big package of records the other day- just in time for me to play this one in honor of Bowie's birthday! (And to post this a day late... shhh...)
I have no idea what people must have thought about this album when it came out in 1973. Glam rock was in full swing, Ziggy Stardust had captivated rock fans worldwide... and David Bowie's next move was to make a Sixties cover album.
What?
Why?
Who knows, but the lyrics to the Kinks' "Where Have All The Good Times Gone" printed on the album's inner sleeve might be an indication of what he was thinking. And as odd as the idea of doing a Sixties cover album must have been at a time when the songs being covered weren't classics yet, just kind of old, the songs of that era lend themselves well to Bowie's signature brand of theatrical weirdo-pop. I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to the Easybeats' original version of "Friday On My Mind" without wishing for David Bowie's quirky backing vocals in the chorus.
One of the interesting things about this album, to me at least, is how even though Bowie didn't write any of the songs on this record, it still says a lot about who he was as an artist. When looking at which artists he chose to cover, you can see where his influences came from- the unselfconscious quirkiness of early Pink Floyd, the shock and spectacle of the Who, the campy sexual ambiguity of the Kinks. If Bowie's artistic vision was stranger than those that came before him, he saw it by standing on the shoulders of giants.
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