Entertainment For Lively Minds
Let's Celebrate 40 Years of Hunky Dory
David Bowie released this absolute gem of an album exactly 40 years ago today (17th December 1971). Like most people I only heard it, let alone bought it, deep into the following year, well after Ziggy Stardust had made his mark.
A friend, an older boy, had both albums. He played me Hunky Dory first. We never did move on to Ziggy. I was a very young teenager and I was entranced. An aunt had brought me up on The Beatles and Tamla Motown. Our household only acquired a record player Christmas 1971. My initial interest in pop music was gleaned from the radio and was focussed on Marc Bolan. As such, I was used to spectacular words and phrases, chosen for their sound and their impact in song lyrics.
But, Hunky Dory is something else. Its lyrics are intelligent, wide ranging and in need of close attention to unravel their meaning. I’ve spent forty years trying my best but I still haven’t worked them all out, even with the assistance of many erudite articles written by much wiser folk than me.
The music is full of hooks and catchy melodies, set in lush piano dominant backing. The orchestrations are dramatic and the guitars add verve and multi-coloured flourishes. There is a myriad of styles; music hall, avant-garde rock, folk, power pop, lullabies, ballads and pop-art. There is such a breadth and depth of meaning and mood in the words and the music, I have never been bored during the many thousands of listens I’ve dedicated to it.
Each song is a thing of beauty. At one time or another, I have been obsessed by each track. I well remember an afternoon I spent suffering with flu, playing Eight Line Poem (arguably, the weakest song here) over and over again, trying to fathom what it was ‘about’.
There have been times over the years when it wasn’t my favourite Bowie album but it’s the one I come back to time and again, each time as enthralled as I was as a callow teenager long ago. I have spent more time listening to Hunky Dory than any other album and it has rewarded me hugely. It has become part of my very essence of being.
Let’s celebrate Hunky Dory – the album that keeps giving.
Here's the incomparable Life On Mars? (in a video delivered by a post-Ziggy Bowie)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=v--IqqusnNQ
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Excellent, Tigger!
My favorite Bowie album. Like you, I only bought it after Ziggy (actually it was after the show at the Hammersmith Odeon, July '73).
As for Eight Line Poem, I love that track. I love Ronson's playing. I've always perceived it as Bowie, with his perm and his Biba loon pants and an exotic cigarette, simply looking around the room and telling us what he sees. Obviously he expands a bit. I doubt the cactus was really that tactful and I doubt the room was big enough to really be a prairie. I don't doubt for a minute that Clara put her head between her paws (that is his cat, right?). It's just a snapshot of his surroundings.
It's a very fine album
Not much more to be said. You covered it all...
One of its deepest mysteries is
the circumstance of its release.
Here it is, being put out the week before Christmas with no fanfare, no promotion, no tour. Bowie had already composed Oh! You Pretty Things and given it to Peter Noone. Otherwise, he only began working on Hunky Dory after he had already written and recorded the bulk of the Ziggy Stardust album. It was almost as though he knew Ziggy was going to be a success but needed to get one more album out of his system before fame took over his career.
If The Man Who Sold The World is the sound of Bowie searching for an audience, maybe Hunky Dory was never intended for an audience at all. Perhaps, he was driven to write such a personal album, he thought no-one would buy it. And it does capture exactly where Bowie’s head was at, at that time, full of tunes, philosophy, beliefs, desire, jealousy, admiration, the occult, Buddhism and so on, with some glimpses into his personal life. As Billybob said, even what he was doing at the exact moment he wrote the song.
From Hunky Dory onwards, he was especially famous for his many different personas and musical styles. Behind those characters, the real David Jones was hidden. But here, if you listen carefully, you can hear him quite clearly.
is that really the case
that he had recorded the bulk of Ziggy before he started working on Hunky Dory? I've not heard that before.
It's a great album, whatever the circumstances. What amazes me is that a classic work of art like 'Life On Mars' could have been overlooked at the time of its original release; it defies belief. Hunky Dory should have been the breakthrough album and yet it seems Bowie and his management dismissed it. They must have been very sure of what was to follow.
According to Peter Doggett's book
The Man Who Sold The World; Hang Onto Yourself, Moonage Daydream, Lady Stardust, Ziggy Stardust and Star had all been written and a version recorded prior to any of Hunky Dory (except Oh! You Pretty Things). Plus, It Ain't Easy was complete early on.
Of course, they went back and made adjustments. Nevertheless, he had a big chunk of one album, which he then left until he created an entirely new one, before going back and completing the first.
Great post; it's by far my favourite Bowie album.
Quirky, personal writing that pays no heed to anything else else around it at the time, and a charming sleeve. It reeks of an artist having a good time at the top of his game. Rick Wakeman on the ivories too, what more could you ask?
Funnily enough
it was Rick Wakeman's presence that led me to purchase Fragile by Yes without listening to it first. I'd say it was a bigger shock to me than Aladin Sane's lyrics were to my mum. It certainly took me about twenty years to get over it. Mind you, I don't think my mum has ever recovered.
Well done tigger
Forty years and it doesn't seem dated at all.
I saw Bowie at Hammersmith a few years ago and he played 'The Bewley brothers' apparently he hadn't played it live before that night. It was great to be there for a little piece of Bowie history.
Thanks for the reminder.
It's a truly superb album
and I've loved it since I first heard it at thirteen. And what's even more amazing is that it isn't even Bowie's best.
Top post!
My favourite Bowie album changes by the day. Today it is Aladdin Sane. Or Ziggy. Or Hunky Dory. Lodger is also a bit good. I find picking my favourite pie a lot easier.
Am I alone in not being able
Am I alone in not being able to bear Kooks? I've always hated that song with a passion.
I think Kooks is charming and sweet
but you're certainly not alone in your view. It seems to divide the faithful 50:50.
Kooks is a pretty freaky lullaby
Zowie was born in the May, so was only a few months old, yet the infant seems to have the choice of staying with his parents or not ('if you stay...')
There's insight into Bowie's childhhood. He never liked school and probably would have enjoyed throwing homework on the fire. Most likely, he could, himself, have made good use of a rulebook on how to treat bullies and cads.
The trumpet is nicely judged and I love the line '...because if you stay with us, you'll be pretty kooky too'. The question is how much of that kookiness would be genetic or environmental?
Zowie has since grown up, changed his name to something more sensible and become a respected director of Sci-Fi movies.
Love Kooks
It's a lovely, breezy, non-sentimental and very loving tribute to his newborn. What's not to like? We used to play a lot of songs over and over again before my daughter was born, one of which was Kooks. One day, when she was two or three months old, I put it on and her ears pricked up straight away. She recognised it!
'Kooks'....
....best track on the LP.
But, hey, the 'Dory' is no 'Wings Wild Life'.
Either way, it's kinda 'the end, the end, my only friend the end' etc. etc.
You are not alone.
I despise it.
I find it amazing
An album that includes a song about facing an uncertain future (Changes), a nightmare hallucination (Oh! You Pretty Things), rampant commercialism (Life On Mars?), a complex sibling relationship (Bewley Brothers) and another that refers to Himmler's Golden Dawn (Quicksand), yet it's the children's song that provokes most reaction!
love Kooks
but I find Quicksand embarrassingly pretentious tosh. I can sing along to the most idiotic of lyrics (lay me place and bake me pie...) but not that.
I think you have a point
Quicksand is hard to love. I also don't buy the argument that it is about writer's block as Bowie was very prolific at the time. My theory is that his head was so full of all this stuff that he read avidly, he'd become frustrated his career, his life wasn't progressing as well as it hoped. Especially, with the responsibilities a first child brings. I guess many new fathers want nothing more to escape reality and set their unconscious selves free.
'Knowledge comes with death's release', indeed. There's nothing like this on his last three albums, in which he faces his own mortality and human fragility with a greater sense of realism.
Nevertheless, it's beautifully sung, the orchestration is good and Ronson's mass of guitars is a marvel. And there aren't many songs like it by anyone else.
Lay me place
And bake me pie I'm starving for me gravy.
Leave my shoes and door unlocked, I might just slip away hay just for the day.....
Stunning.
Brilliant post!!!...
....and I couldn't give a shit about David Bowie. I just love the enthusiasm of the post. Bargepole wonders where all the old timers have gone....if there were more posts like this, instead of the trolling(stop feeding the trolls folks...if you ignore them, they'll go away), they'd still be here.
For the record; as a teenager, I bought Ziggy and Pin Ups and loved them. I'm familiar with Hunky Dory and Alladin Sane, as my pal was a great fan but I'd moved elsewhere musically. He made me listen to the record from the 'Serious Moonlight' tour(can't remember the name)and it was my introduction to Stevie Ray Vaughan...China Girl/Let's Dance etc.
So, more power to your elbow OP. I wish I could go on(well, I could go on but not so eloquently)about Loudon Wainwright III or Lyle Lovett or Steve Earle but no-one would give a shit. Heck, Dave's post about Bros got more replies than anything I ever posted about(good on ya Dave...I don't like your taste but you're not trolling).
Stevie - I for one would love to read about...
... London Wainwright, Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett.
Get writin'!
Another vote for a Steve Earle post....
I love reading passionate prose about the Massive's favourite artist's whether I have an interest in that artist or not. Sometimes a passionate defence or eulogy will lead me to discover something a little bit new (as Bob did with The Hold Steady).
I could bang on about Paul Weller for hours and about just how vital, influential and creative he's been for 35 years now but it would just bore the tits off everyone.
I listened to Hunky Dory again earlier....
... for the first time - or at least the first time in a very long time - on headphones and I'd never noticed before that at the very beginning of 'The Bewley Brothers' Bowie's sitting on a very squeaky chair and he lights up a ciggie and takes a drag just before he starts singing. It somehow made it more intimate.
Actually, I have to confess I was only wearing headphones because I had my iPod plugged into my electronic drum kit and I was trying to do my best Woody Woodmansey impression but as there's no drums on 'The Bewley Brothers' I actually listened intently instead. Amazing to think I've been playing this album regularly for close to 40 years and I've never heard that before.
ha! see what you mean
the headphones bring out Ronno's guitar too.
Away!
I'm currently reading
Peter Doggett's excellent Bowie book, which goes track by track from Space Oddity to Scary Monsters. I've always adored Ziggy, loved Hunky Dory, but then only had a casual acquaintance with his other 70s work (owned all the albums but never really listened to them properly, like you do when you're 14). It's really remarkable how much ground he covered in that 12-year period.
Confession time
I just don't get Bowie.
I mean: every album has at least one or two songs that I think are absolutely brilliant. Usually the singles. I actually do like most of Space Oddity, Ziggy, Station To Station, Young Americans and Let's Dance. But in the others, some of his most revered albums, there's always a majority of tracks that do nothing for me at all. Hunky Dory, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Low, "Heroes", Lodger and Scary Monsters are full of songs I just don't get. On "Heroes", for example, I only like the title track. Nothing else. At all. And, believe me, I've tried. The singles compilations are all I need, really.
Fair enough, each to his own, you might say. But with other acts that 'Word readers/music lovers' like myself often love but I don't (eg. Dylan, the HJH, Young, Hendrix, AC/DC etc) I can clearly see why they appeal to some but not to me; whereas for some reason with Bowie (perhaps because I love the idea/the image) I always find myself asking: why don't I get it?
Great post about a great album
Not sure if I'm pleased on disappointed that no special edition album has been put out to mark the occasion.
Thank-you
I think all of the material has already been released in one form or another. Let's face it Bombers isn't very good. I'm grateful they have left it alone
If anyone doesn't own it, Hunky Dory is available for £4.97 on Amazon (other outlets are available). A bargain.