The Man Who Sold the World
| The Man Who Sold the World | ||||
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| Studio album by David Bowie | ||||
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Publication |
November 4, 1970 (USA) |
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admission |
1970 |
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| Label (s) | Mercury Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP |
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Title (number) |
9 |
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running time |
40 min 37 s |
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| occupation |
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Tony Visconti |
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Studio (s) |
Trident Studios and Advision Studios, London |
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The Man Who Sold the World is the third studio album by British singer and musician David Bowie . It was first released in the United States in November 1970 by Mercury Records . It was published in Europe in April of the following year. In 1972, in the wake of the success of the concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars , The Man Who Sold the World was re-released, this time by RCA Records , to which Bowie was under contract at the time.
In 1984 the album was also released on CD by RCA. Rykodisc released a 24-bit remaster version of the album in 1990 with four bonus tracks. At Virgin / EMI finally in 1999 a digitally reworked CD was released, but this time without the bonus tracks.
Origin and production
The Man Who Sold the World is the first album on which Bowie worked with Mick Ronson and Mick Woodmansey . They later formed the core of his backing band The Spiders from Mars , with which he achieved his commercial breakthrough as Ziggy Stardust and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in 1972.
All the tracks on the album were written and rehearsed in Bowie's home in the Beckenham district of London . Tony Visconti , who took over the production in addition to various instruments, later explained that only the first part of The Width of a Circle had been composed and written before the recordings of the album began in April 1970 in Trident Studios in London.
Since Bowie was newly married to Angela Barnett at the time and, according to Visconti, preferred to occupy himself with her rather than taking care of the recordings, the arrangements of the songs were almost completely taken over by Visconti himself, Mick Ronson and Mick Woodmansey.
Style and Influences
After the quieter predecessor album Space Oddity , which was influenced by folk music and acoustic guitars, Bowie turned to harder styles of rock with The Man Who Sold the World . The music from the early stages of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin , which can be attributed to what was then understood as hard rock , are named as influences as well as The Yardbirds , Jimi Hendrix and Cream , of which David Bowie was a big fan.
Stephen Thomas Erlewine describes the music as "compact, twisted heavy guitar rock that seems simple on the surface, but sounds rougher every time you listen."
Thematically, the album describes a bizarre vision shaped by madness, paranoia and violence. Elements from science fiction , philosophy and social criticism also influence the texts.
Songs
The Width of a Circle, for example, describes Bowie's schizophrenic encounter with himself as a monster, as well as homosexual and sadomasochistic fantasies. The text contains allusions to the philosophical texts of Friedrich Nietzsche and Khalil Gibran , in which Bowie showed great interest.
In All the Madmen , Bowie dealt with his half-brother Terry's schizophrenia and his admission to a psychiatric hospital . In his review of the album in Rolling Stone, John Mendelsohn interpreted the lyrics as an expression of Bowie's "unhappy relationship with the world" and "his inability to perceive it sane."
Black Country Rock is a musical homage to Marc Bolan , the T. Rex singer . Especially in the last chorus, Bowies imitates Bolan's singing partly with the help of technical effects.
After All , which in the 3 / 4 - stroke written, reminiscent of circus or carnival music and slowest of the pieces that is thematically linked to earlier Bowie works as There Is a Happy Land from the album David Bowie on of the 1967th In contrast to their cheerfulness, however, the song portrays the world of childhood as a counterpart to a rejectable, frightening adult world.
The Vietnam War is discussed in Running Gun Blues . Bowie describes killing in war in the style of a first-person narrative. The narrator, maddened by these experiences, turns against civilians at the end of the song.
In Savior Machine , a supercomputer created to end wars and help people turns against its creators. Out of boredom, the computer threatens to overwhelm humanity with war or an epidemic.
She Shook Me Cold tells the story of a sexual encounter with a stranger. The song has been compared by Ron Ross to the music of Cream and Jimi Hendrix's Dolly Dagger .
The Man Who Sold the World is influenced at least in part by William Hughes Mearn's poem Antigonish . Bowie himself stated that the piece was an attempt to express his feelings as a teenager during his personal development.
The theme of The Supermen is in turn influenced by Nietzsche's Übermenschen and describes a superior, immortal form of life that is said to have populated the earth in earlier times.
Bonus tracks (Rykodisc CD 1990)
Lightning Frightening was first published here.
Holy Holy was released as a single shortly after the album was completed in January 1971. In November of that year, it was re-recorded during the production of the album The Rise an d Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars . The song was not published on the B-side of the album as originally planned, but in 1974 as the B-side of the single Diamond Dogs from Bowie's 1974 album of the same name. Contrary to the information on the CD, it is this version of the song and not that of the January 1971 single.
The pieces Moonage Daydream and Hang Onto Yourself had been released as a single by Bowie in 1971 under the pseudonym Arnold Corns . Both songs appeared in new, improved recordings on the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars .
Success and reception
At the time of the first releases in the USA and Europe, the album had not yet reached any chart positions, even if it was received very positively by critics. John Mendelsohn from Rolling Stone described it as - apart from Running Gun Blues - "uniformly excellent" (consistently excellent). The American Record Guide wrote, "This is David Bowie's third album, and it ranks among the GREAT records in the history of pop music" ("This is David Bowie's third album, and it joins the GREAT albums in the history of pop music." ).
Only in the wake of the success of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars , The Man Who Sold the World reached 26th place in the UK and 105th in the US. The bonus track CD, which was released by Rykodisc in 1990, was placed at number 66 on the British album charts for a week.
The style that David Bowie has adopted on The Man Who Sold the World is considered to be formative for bands of the Gothic-Rock and Dark-Wave movement, such as Bauhaus or Siouxsie and the Banshees . Several of the tracks have been covered over time , for example All the Madmen by Alien Sex Fiend , Black Country Rock by Big Drill Car , After All by Tori Amos , She Shook Me Cold by Skin Yard or The Supermen by The Mission .
The title track itself was covered by Lulu at Bowie's request and released as a single on Polydor in January 1974 with Watch That Man , another David Bowie cover from the album Aladdin Sane . Bowie took over the production, the backing vocals and played the saxophone . The single was very successful commercially and reached number 3 on the UK charts.
Another successful cover of was of Nirvana in 1993 as part of the MTV telecast MTV Unplugged played and a year later on their album MTV Unplugged in New York published.
Singles
In the course of the release of the album, no singles were released. Black Country Rock was released in January 1971 as the b-side of the single Holy Holy in the UK. The single was not very successful commercially and did not reach a chart position.
The title track The Man Who Sold the World was released in January 1973 as the B-side of the single Space Oddity from the 1969 album of the same name in the USA. In 1973, England was released as the B-side of the single Life on Mars? from the album Hunky Dory . The single reached number 3 on the UK charts.
Track list
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Chart positions Explanation of the data |
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A side
- The Width of a Circle - 8:05
- All the Madmen - 5:38
- Black Country Rock - 3:32
- After All - 3:51
B side
- Running Gun Blues - 3:11
- Savior Machine - 4:25
- She Shook Me Cold - 4:13
- The Man Who Sold the World - 3:55
- The Supermen - 3:38
Bonus track from the 1990 Rykodisc CD
- Lightning Frightening - 3:38
- Holy Holy - 2:20
- Moonage Daydream - 3:52
- Hang Onto Yourself - 2:51
Album cover
The cover of the US publication was designed by David Bowie's friend, comic book artist Michael J. Weller . It shows a man with a cowboy hat and a rifle wrapped in a blanket in front of a house with a blown clock tower. The house is said to represent the Cane Hill mental hospital where Bowie's half-brother Terry lived.
In Europe, the cover showed Bowie himself with long curly hair lying on a chaise longue covered with blue satin in a floral dress and rough leather boots. He strokes his hair with one hand and holds a French playing card with the other. More cards are scattered on the floor in front of him. It is Bowie's first flirtation with the androgynous image that became typical of him in the 1970s.
The German release of the album features a winged creature with Bowie's head and a body made up of a hand that is about to flick the earth away. There is a zodiac map in the red background. The fold-out cover is round and is now a sought-after collector's item.
The 1972 re-release features a photo of Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. The digitally post-processed publications from 1990 and 1999 again show the cover with the photo of Bowie in a dress.
swell
- ↑ a b c Homepage of Tony Visconti ( Memento of the original from January 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (engl.)
- ↑ a b c Ron Ross: David Bowie: Phallus in Pigtails, or the Music of the Spheres Considered as Cosmic Boogie (Engl.)
- ↑ a b c Stephen Thomas Erlewine: Review of The Man Who Sold the World on allmusic.com (engl.)
- ↑ a b c d e François Bellion: Review of The Man Who Sold the World ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on music-story.com (French)
- ↑ Dave Thompson: Review of The Width of a Circle on allmusic.com (engl.)
- ↑ Interview by JD Beauvallet with David Bowie from 1993 ( Memento of the original from December 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (ital.)
- ^ A b John Mendelsohn: Review of The Man Who Sold the World at rollingstone.com (engl.)
- ↑ Ned Raggett: Review of Black Country Rock at allmusic.com (Eng.)
- ↑ Richie Unterberger: Review of After All at allmusic.com (engl.)
- ↑ Review at sputnikmusic.com (engl.)
- ↑ Richie Unterberger: Review of Savior Machine at allmusic.com (engl.)
- ↑ Dave Thompson: Review of The Man Who Sold the World at allmusic.com (engl.)
- ↑ Interview by Marianne Hobbs with David Bowie on BBC Radio 1 from 1997 ( memento of the original from September 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Transcription by Grant Wallace
- ↑ Richie Unterberger: Review of The Supermen on allmusic.com (engl.)
- ↑ a b c Album Song Out-takes The ZIGGY STARDUST Companion on 5years.com (engl.)
- ↑ Record Mirror Special: The David Bowie Story quoted in The ZIGGY STARDUST Companion at 5years.com
- ↑ a b chart positions at teenagewildlife.com
- ↑ a b The Man Who Sold the World at songfacts.com (Engl.)
- ↑ Description of the single at xoomer.virgilio.it (ital.)
- ↑ Biography of Lulu (engl.)
- ↑ The Ziggy Stardust Time-Line: Ziggy Returns Home The ZIGGY STARDUST Companion on 5years.com (Engl.)
- ↑ The Aladdin Sane Retirement Tour of Great Britain ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The ZIGGY STARDUST Companion on 5years.com
- ↑ Charts UK Charts US
- ↑ Laurence Buxton: CRACKED ACTOR: David Bowie and the use of the theatrical in popular music (Engl.)
- ↑ Description of the album cover ( Memento of the original from November 1st, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at bowiedownunder.com (engl.)
Web links
- Teenagewildlife.com: The different album covers