I became a Bowie fan in 1990. After ChangesBowie, the next album I bought was Hunky Dory. As a 15 year old in 1990 discovering this music, Hunky Dory seemed a lifetime away, released in 1971, before I was even born, a totally different era. The artwork was monochrome showing Bowie as a 24 year old with flowing locks, portrayed as a kind of hippy philosopher.




The songs were impeccable. There was pure confidence, perfection and authority in the recordings. I'd never heard anything like Life On Mars? before. The lyrics were definitely not written by Stock Aitken and Waterman. Philosophical conundrums, surrealism and and spiritual ponderings were pouring out of my headphones filling my impressionable brain with many ideas. Listening to Hunky Dory seemed to take me to another planet.



It was a planet a million miles away from the music I knew of from the radio. Nothing like the MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Adamski, New Kids On The Block music that I knew from Capital Radio. None of my friends were into Bowie. I was in my own little, but brilliant, world. Hunky Dory was a total masterpiece and that it was 19 years old when I heard it helped me to comprehend how it could be so different to the rubbish that I knew which filled the airwaves in 1990. 'Perhaps genius was the norm back then' I reasoned. 'Maybe music has declined over the last 19 years' I wondered.



So now it seems incredible to think that it's another 19 years since I discovered Hunky Dory in 1990. My cassette copy of Hunky Dory is now 19 years old, the same age Hunky Dory was when I first heard it. I almost can't get my head around that fact.




Bowie was right, pretty soon now I did get older, but It seems I wasn't the only one who got transported to the 70's whilst listening to Life On Mars?

Very cool thread, Alan! I love this album. Any album with 'Quicksand' and 'Life On Mars?' is a CLASSIC!!

'You start out wrinkled and you cry...you end up wrinkled and you die.'

my favourite bowie lp. i come back to it again & again. i first started listening to it in 73 or 74 (?) & loved it from first hearing. to me it sounds positive, questioning, adventurous, traditional, energetic, sedate, spaced out, earthbound, triumphant, tragic, happy, sad...ah, so many contradictory and interesting aspects to it. i also love it for the sheer musicality and melodic qualities of the songs. it is a masterpiece, no question. i own several copies in various media, but the vinyl rules, imo.

i was listening to the so remaster & bonus disc today (actually, i just bought it today - sentimental nostalgic that i am, lol) & can't see myself playing any more than 3 or 4 tracks from it more than a couple of times. i think it sounds (mostly) horribly dated and clunky (i don't mean the re-mastering job itself, still got to think about the sound quality of it after i play it again on my re-re-vamped main hi-fi) whereas hunky dory always sounds mmm...'current' to me. such excellent songwriting - i often think that the songs were almost pouring out of him in a seemingly effortless manner at this time & most were bloody marvellous. ho-hum.

oddly enough, mr t, i remember re-visiting this lp in 1990 & thinking, 'crikey, it's 19 years old!'. it was amazing then & still is now.

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I can recall someone buying this for me. I was never a huge Bowie fan, however the brother-in-law really did dig Bowie. I rarely played music as I was out on the road a lot around that time. He was everywhere, I think back and remember a time when there was three tv channels and radio, yet Bowie was still everywhere. You would have to have lived in the Amazon stuck in a tribe not to have heard of him.

Re-visiting Bowie I am always amazed at how young he was when he wrote all these great albums. Some artists have a renaissance but Bowie was always relevant and had a decade all to himself. I think he was culturally very suited to the morphing times that we witnessed in the 1970's. He was a colourful flipside of drab and all the while he inspired us all to take colour and use it. I always saw him as Pre-Raphaelite in his approach, the placing of ideas outside of the more familiar box and causing a reaction.The rejection of set patterns and the introduction of tension was evident in Bowie's early work.

I love your post and I am so jealous that you are nineteen and feeling thrusty.

Bruce

Fantastic album Alan. Bowie was of genius proportions by this point.



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Classic Bowie album. I like to think of Heathen as the modern day equivalent. Though I don't expect many will agree.

Thanks you for that...it was.....it was.... I cant think of the words to use. It made me remember my own expirences with discovering Bowie...Thanks!

Amazing recollections. I nearly wept at the the line about the cassette being 19 years old - EXACTLY the sort of thing I'd think.

I treasure my ryko tapes. All hail adadinsane.

Thanks for the great replies, everyone

Bending Sound, I would actually agree that there are similarities between Hunky Dory & Heathen.




Repeating myself from another thread, but they were both partly inspired by the birth of db's child and see Bowie balancing his hopes for the coming generation against his fears for mankind with a large dose of Bowie questioning his spirituality / morbidly contemplating his mortality.

But I guess, like 123 Paul says, Hunk Dory is full of wonderful contradictions and emotions, which I think is the biggest difference between the 2 albums. Maybe the mood on Heathen shows what 31 years of reality can do to your outlook on life.

A truly beautiful piece of Bowie musical enchantment. It really sparkles. A true gem from The Gentleman. And it NEVER SOUNDS DATED. As I type this, LIFE ON MARS is stuck in my brain!

Funnily enough, I became a fan at 14, and the first album I bought was Hunky Dory (when I was 15), in 1973. Bowie's second best album (after its twin, Ziggy).

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I heard it around 1992 when I was 19 years old.

I had already for some time predicted that it would be the best Bowie album - based on having heard 'Changes' and 'Life on Mars' (Changesbowie) and the mesmerising non-single 'The Bewlay Brothers' (Sound And Vision).

My initial instinct was correct. Today if I nominated my favourite all time album, this would probably be it.