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With his self-titled debut, David Bowie was going for a singer-songwriter vibe, albeit one with a slightly strange, fairy dust quality. He was smart enough to dismiss that idea and embrace his inner weirdo with The Man Who Sold the World, a heavy album that really made the Velvet Underground and Stooges influences prevalent.
The loud guitars, smart wordplay and gender-fuck cover set the stage for Hunky Dory to really explode the Bowie mythology across the musical landscape. As such, this is the first Bowie album to be of interest, and it is a great one. Not quite as perfect as Ziggy Stardust or Low, but roughly as good as Aladdin Sane or The Best of. On "After All" Bowie had the genius idea of taking the Stooges’ “We Will Fall” and crafting a real song onto it. The heaviness of “The Width of a Circle” expands the heaviness of Funhouse or White Light/White Heat to the glam-rock lexicon. Brilliant. And try as they might, Nirvana’s beautiful, bruised acoustic cover of the title song isn’t quite as great as the Latin-flavored loud acoustic rock (oxymoronic, I know) of Bowie’s original.
The Man Who Sold the World is where the real Bowie story begins, and it could make for a unique place to start the exploration of his catalogue. This wouldn’t be the last time he’d turn the guitars up so loudly, but this was the first. And while the Bowie-in-a-dress cover might seem obviously shocking, it was but a small hint of the weird and androgynous places he would go. This is but a tip of Bowie’s greatness and musical genius. DOWNLOAD: “The Man Who Sold the World”
