Bowie: Aladdin Sane/The Man Who Sold the World

Simply put Aladdin Sane/The Man Who Sold the World (TMWSTW) are David Bowie's most debauch records of all time and I love 'em.  As a child I bought TMWSTW and was quite scared of it to start with.  Then the insaneness and blackness of the record really caught hold.  The obvious single was a great hit but there is some really dark heavy rock here: Width of a Circle, and She Shook Me Cold to name two.  So that was 1970.  I used to play this with my first real friend Mark.  he didn't really get it but he did like Space Oddity which was a little more safe as an album.  We did play Life on Mars b/w The Man Who Sold the World to death!

Move on to 1973, just three years, and Bowie comes out with Aladdin Sane.  A drug and illicit sex driven album of such greatness that I personally don't believe any artist, including Bowie, has even matched it.  Watch that Man, Aladdin Sane, Panic in Detroit, Drive in Saturday and of course The Jean Genie.  It's just a brilliant album.  Listen to Aladdin Sane - Mike Garson's mental piano solo is unbeatable.  When I first heard it I though: what the hells that?  But the way it goes way out of key and then back in is - well you listen!

As with TMWSTW, quite scary at first for a fourteen year old boy.  I remember my mum and dad taking me and my brother on our annual pilgrimage to London for pre-Christmas shopping and to take in yet another tediously dull musical.  We did a shop one dark afternoon (it was cold) and there was Bowie in full Aladdin Sane make-up on a full length poster in the HMV, Oxford Street window.  Dad I said, I have to have that album.  Dad said Bowie looked like a poof but I think he secretly quite liked it - not batting an eyelid he bought it for me.  Bowie was one of those artists you were allowed to fancy, even as a male.  I cant remember how much it cost BUT I do remember just wanting to go home right there and then to play it.  I stayed in HMV for over an hour listening to it.   When Drive in Saturday came on I almost cried - it was just something.

When we did eventually get home I rushed up to play it.  When the first track side two "Time" came on I threw the stereos volume to 11 and blasted out "He flexes like a whore, falls wanking to the floor".  So shocking, so androgynous and so Mick Jagger.  Over the years I still feel debauch and slightly scared every time I play this album and TMWSTW.  None of my friends were into Bowie in the 70's so it was a lone crusade for me which kept me a bit isolated from the rest of the world.  I don't think some of my friends knew what to make of me into Floyd, van Der Graaf Generator, Bowie and Iggy - Bowie was mine and I was really glad I didn't have to share him with anyone.......and I still don't!  As Bowie says on David Live - Love on ya!