Written by: David Bowie
Recorded: 2 February; 20 June 1969
Producer: Gus Dudgeon
Arrangers: David Bowie, Paul Buckmaster
Released: 11 July 1969
Available on:
David Bowie (1969)
Bowie At The Beeb
Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture
David Live (2005 mix)
Live Santa Monica ’72
Cracked Actor (Live Los Angeles ’74)
Serious Moonlight (Live ’83)
Nothing Has Changed
Legacy
Conversation Piece
Moonage Daydream
Divine Symmetry
Laughing With Liza
Personnel
1969 version
- David Bowie: vocals, 12-string acoustic guitar, Stylophone, handclaps
- Mick Wayne: guitar
- Herbie Flowers: bass guitar
- Rick Wakeman: Mellotron
- Terry Cox: drums
- Unknown session musicians
1979 version
- David Bowie: vocals, acoustic guitar
- Zaine Griff: bass guitar
- Hans Zimmer: piano
- Andy Duncan: drums
David Bowie’s breakout hit, ‘Space Oddity’, was released in 1969 to coincide with the first lunar landing. It remains Bowie’s biggest-selling single in the UK.
The song was Bowie’s only chart hit prior to 1972’s ‘Starman’. ‘Space Oddity’ introduced to listeners the character Major Tom, who recurred in ‘Ashes To Ashes’, ‘Hallo Spaceboy’, and the video for ‘Blackstar’.
The title was a double pun, on both Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and the notion of an ‘odd ditty’. Kubrick’s 1968 film made a deep impression on Bowie, and clear parallels can be seen with the sense of isolation and helplessness at the climax of the song.
In England, it was always presumed that it was written about the space landing, because it kind of came to prominence around the same time. But it actually wasn’t. It was written because of going to see the film 2001, which I found amazing. I was out of my gourd anyway, I was very stoned when I went to see it, several times, and it was really a revelation to me. It got the song flowing. It was picked up by the British television and used as the background music for the landing itself. I’m sure they really weren’t listening to the lyric at all (laughs). It wasn’t a pleasant thing to juxtapose against a moon landing. Of course, I was overjoyed that they did. Obviously some BBC official said, “Oh, right then, that space song, Major Tom, blah blah blah, that’ll be great.” “Um, but he gets stranded in space, sir.” Nobody had the heart to tell the producer that (laughs).
Performing Songwriter
Tony Visconti had been contracted to produce Bowie’s second album. However, the American disliked ‘Space Oddity’, seeing it as a novelty piece unworthy of Bowie’s talents.
Maybe it was a fortnight before we were to start the album when David played a demo to me of a new song he demoed at his manager’s house, ‘Space Oddity’! I thought, what’s this, this isn’t Folk Rock? Not only that, but to me, this very original songwriter was ‘channeling’ Simon and Garfunkel and John Lennon very strongly, it was not like him to be like anyone else, totally out of his character. I also thought with all the activity from NASA with astronauts orbiting the Earth and maybe going to the Moon, this was an attempt to cash in. Yes, I thought these things and I thought it was just a novelty song. I was an idealistic American hippy, I used to take a lot of acid and this song just rubbed me the wrong way. David was not all that defensive about it. He was willing to drop the song except his manager played it to the label bosses and they loved it. He told me it was mandated that we should record that song, or the album was not going to be financed. It was still a singles world and I admitted that it would probably be a hit, but I argued that it wasn’t his style and he’d never write a follow up.
Five Years (1969-1973) book
The song and its b-side, ‘Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud’, were instead produced by Gus Dudgeon, a Decca engineer who had worked on Bowie’s three Deram singles.
Gus heard the ‘Space Oddity’ demo and said I was mad to turn it down (Did I already say that I was an idealistic American hippy?). But the song had to be recorded and I happily let David and Gus get on with it. I offered the talents of Mick Wayne on guitar and a brilliant young keyboard player I was working with, Rick Wakeman. The rest is history, of course. When I heard Gus’s brilliant production I took it all back. It was stunning. I got it. I was still certain it would be a one-off hit, but what the hell, if it puts David on the map it is worth it. I also thought I was to be fired. Gus knew David longer than I did, they had a working relationship before (the Deram album) and I would just ‘get me coat’ and saunter out the side door. That’s what I told David, but the next thing he said floored me. ‘Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s get on with making the album.’ And so we did, at Trident Studios in St Anne’s Court, Soho, London.
Five Years (1969-1973) book
A live performance of ‘Space Oddity’, from the first Spiders From Mars show at Aylesbury on 25 September 1971, was released on the 2022 box set Divine Symmetry.
Hi Joe, did you left Peter Schilling’s song out on purpose?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Tom_(Coming_Home)
Not exactly on purpose, but tribute songs, covers and other non-directly-related recordings aren’t within my scope.
“Not exactly on purpose, but tribute songs, covers and other non-directly-related recordings aren’t within my scope.”
Fair enough, good job and good day sir.
Signed: Mayor Tom, deceased.
Interesting enough I had a similar conversation with David en route from Chicago to L.A. he came back to where I was, obviously not first class, sat down, nails painted, makeup on, it was the Ziggy days, he asked the first question, I was petrified, I was en route to Camp Pendleton, then Okinawa then Nam. He said” Did you ever hear of Space Oddity?” My response” Sure, the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001 Space Odyssey” he laughed kind of that Bowie chuckle, and he began to ask about where I was heading. In the end he gave me his card, scrawled a number on the back, which ended up being his mother’s home number. Later that trip I ended up actually the next day, he was playing at the Santa Monica Auditorium, as I recall on the beachfront. Later that trip I spent the day with Ned Lagin, David Crosby, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh. I did the album cover for Lagin’s very experimental album Seastones. Truth is, I got to do the cover because I had a flat top Marine Corps cut and Lagin didn’t know what to think, so they sent me out with a camera with one order “Take pictures of seastones on the beach, no babes, butts, breasts and or anything that isn’t a stone” That trip was worth the ride and it was the best welcome I ever have seen in My California History. David Bowie, a genus of culture.
I appreciate how you wrote that Major Tom reappeared in at least two other Bowie songs! I feel like Tom is sideway reincarnated in the Tin Machine song “Baby Universal” for a couple of cryptic but significant reasons embedded in the lyrics to this song:
– In the Kubrick film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” the hero is named David Bowman (and as David had only recently changed his name to Bowie, and within another year or so, he would start a group called “The Hype” and go be “Rainbowman” in it, you can be sure he tripped out to that implication), and the sequence of the movie where Bowman goes is like being transported through a prismatic warp speed space rush (lyrics in “Baby Universal” include: “no sense of destination” “running for the love of speed” “a speck of dust just settled in my eye” and it not mattering as he has “seen everything anyway”….)
– Bowman (who is clearly the template for Major Tom) met his fate at the end of the movie by being subsumed on his death bed by a baby growing as large as the universe, presumably asking the human if he could feel him thinking, and assuming that a human could see everything the baby is thinking.