3 - The Man Who Sold The World

And then David Bowie got married. He and his wife would sit on the couch listening to the rest of the band jam, and every once in a while he'd get up and play some random chords or go to another room and write a whole set of lyrics in 10 minutes, and that's The Man Who Sold The World. It's his hard rock album that nobody cared about until Curt Cobain broke the rules of Unplugged to specifically use distortion for the solo on his cover of the title track, thus confusing an entire generation of children younger than me who thought Nirvana wrote it.

That's the standard rock history 101 description. Bottle will of course add that, that's what mainstream music was doing: Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were trying to invent heavy metal without a trail map, and Bowie said "yeah, sure, i can do that too i guess, if you guys aren't going to leave me alone." We still haven't left that "David Bowie's version of it" feeling i keep mentioning. You may or may not know that nobody actually cared until Ziggy Stardust (still another album away); sure he had fans, but remember how nobody gave a crap about ZZ Top until Eliminator? Same difference.

The original cover art is a cartoon of a cowboy carrying a rifle in front of an actual insane asylum, but Bowie wasn't sure so he hired a photographer and really played up the lying on a couch context. Not surprisingly the songs are about insanity and war and Lovecraft and technology, and if you're thinking Thomas Dolby is about 10 years younger than Bowie and this is about 10 years before Golden Age of Wireless then your right here in the confusion seat with me, and that's why i think it might be a British thing, 'cause this is what Dolby would have been nostalgically channeling.

Regardless, Man Who Sold The World is considered pretty dark and bleak. I don't disagree, but it's not actually different from the first two albums. The studio experimentation has always been there, the individual/social antagonism is nothing new. Really, the only new thing happening is that now the direction the world is going is the problem and he doesn't want to be a part of it. Basically, as soon as you grow up you realize all the rules are gone and everybody is actually a monster, that's why all the things you remember from your childhood are creepy as hell.

There's that christ figure again, but this time it's a computer that comes to the same conclusion: stop trying to create an idol to blame for your own foolish need to suffer.

The original title was Metrobolist (yes a play on the famous Metropolis). I don't know, i think Man Who Sold The World is better. It fits with the "reality is pretty terrible and i'd rather live in my own imagination, at least i KNOW that's not real" theme of Bowie's work so far.

If you're wondering where the stuff i don't like is, we haven't got there yet. We're in "classical period" Bowie now, and it's all quite enjoyable. Everybody good so far?

4 - Hunky Dory