New Monday #23
Happy Monday!
Check it out: our friend Malcom Owen-Flood, who is a wonderful engineer and location sound expert, made a video using our Echoleffe Tape Delay. Have a look, give Malcom some love, etc.
ONWARD and UPWARD into SPACE!
July 20th, 1969, some of us heard this or saw it on TV.
I saw it. I was 6?
In an effort to capitalize on the event, this was released on July 11th, 1969. Listen. Just sit there and listen.
You’ve heard this a million times but it remains a simply stunning recording, like nothing anyone had heard at the time and it still sounds startling and fresh 50+ years later.
It didn’t sell especially well, but it did on subsequent re-releases, and now... it’s one of the great songs and certainly one of the great productions in the rock canon.
Space Oddity was the lead single on Bowie’s second solo album, which was produced by the legendary Tony Visconti. However, Visconti thought Space Oddity was a novelty song, and while he produced the album, he passed this single off to engineer producer Gus Dudgeon.
Dudgeon LOVED the song and he and Bowie planned out its expensive and complex arrangement, which features a rhythm section, a mellotron, a string ensemble, and a wacky little electronic instrument called a Stylophone, which was basically an oscillator controlled by moving a little metal pen (stylus) across an engraved keyboard. The stylophone was on Bowie’s original demo of Space Oddity, and in the finished recording you can hear it behind the 12 guitar - it sounds like an oboe - and more obviously in a descending line here. Bowie played both 12-string and the stylophone, as well as performing all the vocals.
Wayne, Herbie and Terry
I’ve always loved the lead guitar parts on this, played by Mick Wayne. This sound here, and similar moments scattered about the recording, are him screwing around with the tuning of his guitar’s strings — a studio accident. Wayne was tuning and the sound of it hooked both Dudgeon and Bowie by the ear.
Of course, it wouldn’t be an interesting record from this time if Herbie Flowers wasn’t the bassist. His basslines are so fluid and melodic, and typical of his playing, somehow catchy and memorable. This line here at the start of the bridge is so killer, weaving in and out of the vocals and the flutes.
The drummer on Space Oddity is a guy named Terry Cox. He’s clearly a jazz drummer, occasionally keeping a simple beat but often providing more drama and dynamics than just time keeping. He was a member of Pentangle, which was perhaps prog rock before even King Crimson. Pentangle played a mix of traditional English folk music and jazz. Check out the opening drum riff of this live recording. Has anyone sampled this yet? This sounds like the great grandmother of Massive Attack. Or maybe it sounds more like Teardrop, especially in the vocals.
The interplay between guitar, bass and drums, and then vocal, mellotron, and string section, is probably something that could never be programmed or created with AI. Listen to the absolute looseness of this vamp out, and how all the parts weave around each other, especially Herbie and Terry.
Gus Dudgeon
Gus Dudgeon went on to a big career, working with Elton John during his heyday — from 'Madman Across the Water' to 'Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy', and yes, Dudgeon produced 'Goodbye Yellowbrick Road'. He’s also credited with using the first “sample” — a drum loop on this. He worked with XTC, Joan Armatrading, The Beach Boys...
He also produced Mott the Hoople! This is a personal fave, and it has the best 5 note guitar solo anyone ever cut.
Mott does have a Bowie-esque sound. It’s probably because they had broken up when Bowie heard about it, offered to produce an album and give them a song. They took him up on it and got their first hit.
The hit Bowie gave them, All the Young Dudes, is one of those songs everyone has heard but few know the title of. It’s easily one of Bowie’s best songs. And he just gave it away.
So... we leave the glam for a while. Please feel free to write in and toss me ideas about what might happen next on a New Monday.
