Space Oddity: An Unexpected All Time Favorite Album

Space Oddity: An Unexpected All Time Favorite Album

There is not an artist in the history of rock and roll that has explored so many paths and places in the musical landscape as David Bowie.  When I was growing up my father had a huge box that was completely full of all of the 45 lp’s he had bought and every once in a while my Dad would pull out this box and play his old 45’s for hours and this is where I heard “Ziggy Stardust”, “Suffragette City”, “Starman”, and “Rebel Rebel” for the very first time when I was a kid.  Although I am sure my Dad played me his 45 of “Space Oddity” when I was 3 or 4 years old, I didn’t really remember it.

Transitioning forward to the year 1989, it was really early on a Saturday morning and that particular evening I could not sleep so at about 2:00am I was flipping the channels between MTV and VH1 back when they used to show music videos just killing time before my newspapers arrived for my morning route.  During the wee small hours of this morning I was tired and spacy and VH1 played the music video for the song “Space Oddity”.  I thought it was the weirdest song I had ever heard in my life and I did not like it at all.  At 4:30am my newspapers arrived, I folded them up, and started to do my paper route.  Although I was listening to something like either Van Halen, AC/DC, Rush, or Aerosmith on my cassette Walkman “Space Oddity” kept playing in my head to a point where it was starting to annoy me pretty bad.

When I finished up my paper route my father had arrived home from the evening shift at the post office and as I was having breakfast with him I was telling him that I saw a video for “Space Oddity” and how much I thought the song sucked.  Then my father told me about the first time he heard the song “Space Oddity”.  It was 1969 and he was serving as an LDS missionary in Los Angeles back in the day when AM radio strictly played pop music and FM radio was commercial free and played very different and more experimental music.  On FM in Los Angeles late one evening he heard “Space Oddity” and thought it was one of the most far out and coolest songs he had ever heard and it reminding him of some amazing days on his mission.  He even knew how to play it on the guitar.  It was one of his favorite songs of all time.  However, I did not share the same sentiment my father did and I still felt like the song was kind of out there and weird at age 12.

About a year later I was the record shop with my Dad and I bought my cassette of Changesbowie, one of David Bowie’s greatest hits albums.  I bought it mainly for “Ziggy Stardust”, “Suffragette City”, “Jean Jeanie”, “Diamond Dogs”, and “Rebel Rebel”.  However, “Space Oddity” was the very first song and I didn’t really feel like fast forwarding past it so I gave it another listen.  This time I caught the vision and like my dad I thought it was the coolest song I had heard.  It was just so different.  The thing that captured me the most about “Space Oddity” is that the song instantly took me into the vacuum of space and I really could feel the isolation from friends and family, and yet still be amazed by a view of the world and space that very few people get to behold with their own eyes.  Changesbowie became one of favorite cassettes and the song “Space Oddity” sounded especially good at 4:30am when I would be throwing my paper route.

When I was 14 years old my LDS ward was doing a road show (a musical stage production involving all of the 12 to 18 year old youth in my ward and written and composed by the members of my LDS ward).  I was recruited along with the other members of my Teacher’s quorum to dress in black clothes with dark sunglasses and bandannas portraying a gang trying to lure the main star into our mischievous and no good ways by singing a quasi rap song in the road show.   Being the 14 year old way serious rocker with a reputation to maintain at Union Middle School participating in this road show is something that was pretty high on my blatantly uncool list of things to do.  But my parents, being good and devoted parents, made sure I was part of this road show with the youth in my ward.  For my costume I wore a torn up AC/DC shirt, a black and white hair metal styled wig, black sunglasses, and I wore my bandanna over the lower half of my face.  I at least looked like I was ready to commit armed robbery, that I had already done hard time, and I frankly I thought I looked pretty cool and I did not really resemble anyone else in my ‘gang’ of Teachers which was even cooler.  My mother found out about my costume from other members of my ward.  She was ok with all of it, but she thought the bandanna was too over the top and she was trying to convince me to take the bandanna off of the lower half of my face and I would not budge on removing it.  A few days later after the next rehearsal I came home in full costume and my mother looked at me in my costume and started to sing “Space Oddity” with the alternate lyrics of “Ground control to Major Dumb, please take off that bandanna and never wear it again!” and I started laughing really hard.  At this point I decided to remove the bandanna covering my face from my costume and my mother, and for that matter the director of the road show, were very happy.  This version of “Space Oddity” is still a running joke between me and my mother.

My junior year of high school in 1994 after being addicted to my cassette of Changesbowie for many years at that point I finally broke down and started to buy some of David Bowie’s albums on CD.  I instantly loved The Man Who Sold the World, Aladdin Sane, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Hunky Dory, and the live album Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture.  Shortly after I graduated high school I bought a CD of the Space Oddity album.  Having been a fan of the song “Space Oddity” for so long I was really excited to give the album my very first listen.  The album opened with the song “Space Oddity” this was pretty much a straight up folk album.  With the exception of Bob Dylan, at this stage of my life I was not really embracing of folky/acoustic music and I thought the album was really weak and very disappointing compared to the other David Bowie albums I really enjoyed.

In 1998, I had just come home from serving my LDS mission in Pennsylvania, which to this day is one of the hugest growing experiences of my life, and I was adjusting to civilian life again after being away from home for two years.  At this time I was working as a casual clerk (temporary worker) for the U.S. Postal Service in Salt Lake City and I was working 12 hours a day, six days a week, and had very little free time from July to December of 1998.  My job at the post office was very physically demanding and during this period of my life and I generally did not really want do anything on my days off.  On one of my rare days off I was relaxing in my bedroom just listening to music and at that time I was listening to a lot of Alice Cooper, Grand Funk Railroad, Queen, Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow, and James.  I was just in the mood for something different and I looked through my CD’s and saw my copy of Space Oddity and for whatever reason I decided to give the album of Space Oddity another listen.

The song “Space Oddity” came over my speakers which I sang along with and really enjoyed.  However, after serving my mission and not listening to my CD of Space Oddity for three years I had a completely different experience.  This time I finally got into it.  It was a straight up folk album with very unique lyrics and the album just had a very emotional, personal, and stripped down feel to it.  In a way, I cannot imagine this album being done with an electric guitar; it would take away from the beauty of Space Oddity.  The song that just entered my heart the deepest was the over 9 minute epic “Cynget Committee”.  Although many musicians wear their hearts on their sleeves with their lyrics, a number of them tend to hide the true meaning of their lyrics and prefer to have lyrics that through storytelling and poetry convey their thoughts and feelings, rather than blatantly discuss their innermost thoughts and feelings.  “Cynget Committee” is lyrically a very rare glimpse into some very personal experiences of David Bowie’s where he felt very used, alienated, and disillusioned, my favorite lyric that conveys this is “Who praised their efforts to be free?  Words of strength and care and sympathy.  I opened doors that would have blocked their way.  I braved their cause to guide, for a little pay”.  To me the boldest lyric of the song, where David’s feelings of alienation really peak is “and the road is coming to its end, now the damned have no time to make amends”.  “Cynget Committee” is one of my most favorite David Bowie songs ever and because it’s long and fairly obscure this song remains a hidden gem (in fact, I bought I David Bowie guitar book specifically to learn this song).

In all reality, as much as David Bowie has many albums and songs that I absolutely love, Space Oddity has gone down as my favorite David Bowie album.  It’s one of his most unique and he very radically changes direction with his next album The Man Who Sold the World in 1970 and many times throughout his career.  I admire how David Bowie is not afraid to explore many different styles and has one of the most fascinating volumes of music and careers in rock and roll.  I think that is another reason that Space Oddity is such a special album to me is it is the most traditional and stripped down album David Bowie has ever made, yet it is still very uniquely David Bowie.  In addition, albums like Space Oddity are the reason why even if I buy a CD and I don’t really like it, I still keep it in my collection.  There have been a few other albums besides Space Oddity that sounded a lot better to me years after I had bought them.  Because of my experience as an LDS missionary my tastes in music became broader and my tastes had expanded by the time I finished my mission and albums like Space Oddity sounded great and fit right in with everything else I am listening to.  It never ceases to amaze me how my tastes in music keep expanding and growing to include so many genres of music and how music that initially was not that appealing, becomes some of my favorite, as was the case with Space Oddity.

What is this that stands before me? The First Black Sabbath album: The birth of heavy metal.



What is this that stands before me?  The First Black Sabbath album: The birth of heavy metal.

The atmosphere of the rock and roll scene in 1969 is one of the most interesting in the history of music.  There was the San Francisco Bay Scene that hailed Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Country Joe and the Fish, Grateful Dead, and music that was all things peace, love, and the counterculture movement.  Down in Los Angeles there was what I view as the early hard scene with bands like the Doors and Love, the folk rock scene with bands like The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, the plain bizarre scene with bands like the Mothers of Invention, some of the best pop and contemporary music of the 60’s, and the one and only Beach Boys.  New York City had it's own unique scene with artists like Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel in Greenwich Village, bands ranging from Vanilla Fudge to The Velvet Underground, and some of the greatest songwriters in history including Neil Diamond, Carol King, Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stroller, Laura Nyro, and Neal Sedaka, all housed in New York City's Brill Building.  In the Midwest, the birth of the American hard rock and to a huge degree the future punk scene was happening with bands like the Amboy Dukes, Alice Cooper, MC5, Grand Funk Railroad, Bob Seger System, and The Stooges as well as the one and only Motown scene.  While over in England it was the tail end of the bands that would immerge from the British Invasion scene with The Beatles still being the top dogs.  However, at this point in the late 60’s many bands immerged that were heavily influenced by the American blues scene.  Bands like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Rolling Stones, and The Yardbirds had for many years at this point incorporated a lot of blues into their music and bands like Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, Cream, Savoy Brown, and Wishbone Ash emerge and firmly establish the British blues scene.  The original Jeff Beck Group and Led Zeppelin also immerge and set up a huge foundation and standard for heavier blues based rock and roll.  During this amazing period for music in England a blues based band called Earth would develop a sound that although based in blues, was very heavy, dark, and extremely different from the bands that influenced them, Earth would change their name to Black Sabbath, a very fitting name they took from a famous horror movie starring Boris Karloff of the same name.

When Black Sabbath got their first record deal they had very little money to record their debut record.  In November 1969 for the cost of £500.00 they entered Regent Sound Studios in London, turned on the recording equipment, performed what was their live show (most of the songs were recorded in one take with Ozzy doing the vocals while the rest band played, a practice very rarely done in the studio), and 12 hours later the album was recorded, mixed, and complete.  On Friday, February 13, 1970, the self-titled first Black Sabbath album was released and along with Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, the birth of heavy metal was now official.

Now let’s step into Mr. Peabody’s Way-Back Machine and transition back to the year 1993 in the thriving suburb of Sandy, UT.  I was 16 years old and I had saved up my money from washing dishes at the Chin-Wah Chinese Restaurant and bought my very first CD player.  Because CD’s were a lot more expensive than cassettes, for the first couple of years I owned a CD player I went out of my way to buy stuff that I did not own at cassette (I owned about 500 cassettes when I bought my CD player).  I had been a fan of Black Sabbath since I was 10 years old at this point and owned a few of their albums, but for some odd reason I had never bought their first album.  I was at a record shop going through a bin of $9.00 CD’s and there it was, the first Black Sabbath.  I had never heard any of the songs off of it, but for the price of $9.00 I could not say no and I bought it.  Since I did not have a CD player in my bright yellow 1989 Dodge Shadow at that time as I drove home with the first Black Sabbath album I honestly thought and was fully expecting this album to sound more like Paranoid or Master of Reality.  Little did I know what was lying in wait ready to strike.

I walked into my parents’ house, ripped the plastic off the CD as fast as I could, and put the first Black Sabbath into my parents’ CD player.  The sound of a very rainy day accompanying the sound of a very faint church bell came over the speakers creating a very unique atmosphere, then suddenly and without warning Tony Iommi loudly strums an F# and the album is off and running!  I was completely taken back, it had loud and intense chords mingle with very slow and eerie riffs in between bursts of musical energy in the song “Black Sabbath”.  Then where this song becomes even cooler is the last segment when Tony Iommi starts to play the closing riff and the tempo really speeds up.  And that was just the beginning of the CD, then came “The Wizard” with Ozzy Osbourne on the harmonica, a classic blues style song taken up a few notches.  Then the song segments of “Wasp”, “Behind the Wall of Sleep”, “Bassically”, and “NIB” came on and I was again completely blown away.   The foundation of all of the legendary guitar riffs and loud bass lines which would make Black Sabbath famous, and the rest of the album was flawless.  It immediately got a second listen after it wrapped up for the first time.  What made this album so unique to me is the album for being so amazing, it still had a very loose and live feel to it.  It has a feel to it that no other Black Sabbath album has ever been able to recreate, making the album really stand out.

I immediately pulled out my bass guitar and figured out how to play the songs on the first Black Sabbath album and very indirectly Geezer Butler was my bass teacher.  I consider him to be one of the greatest bassists in the history of rock and roll and has one of the most unique playing styles.  When I was 21 I was started to learn how to play guitar and after two years of being completely self-taught I could do a few things, but I still wasn’t great.  Then one day I was in a guitar shop and the guitar books for the first Black Sabbath and Paranoid were on the shelf and I bought them immediately.  These books were challenging for me to learn, but I learned something about my playing style that would help me greatly improve through Black Sabbath.  I don’t know why this is the case with me, but if I can play on song on bass (even if the bass line is incredibly simple) I am over half way there on figuring out the song on guitar.  As I strummed these songs on guitar for the first time the bass lines were immediately in my mind, I positioned my fingers accordingly, and then from these books I was finally able to learn the chords and a lot of the leads.  Just how Geezer Butler had indirectly been my bass teacher, now Tony Iommi had indirectly became my guitar teacher, and I would make my first major quantum leap as a guitarist. 

Tony Iommi is one of my favorite guitarists in history, besides learning the songs of Black Sabbath and his playing style, he has been inspirational to me for his perseverance and drive to become a great guitarist.   In 1965 when Tony Iommi was 16 years old he worked in a metal shop and on the last day of his job he accidentally cut off the fingertips of his middle and ring fingers on his right hand.  Tony, being a left handed guitarist, was very devastated and uncertain if he would ever be able to play guitar again.  However, Tony’s manager came to his house and brought him over a record by legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and was amazed by what he was hearing.  His manager then mentioned that Django could only play with two of his fingers because of a horrible injury to his hand caused by a fire.  This encouraged Tony to continue playing guitar despite the injuries to his right hand.  At first Tony tried to play the guitar right handed and just couldn’t do it.  One day he found an empty plastic detergent bottle and melted it down into two fingertip sized plastic globs.  He then took a finger nail file and started to file down the globs into a shape where he could use them to play the guitar.  The next problem was the plastic did not have enough friction to hold the strings down when playing.  Tony then cut a small piece of leather into two pieces, re-melted the plastic to insert the leather into the artificial fingertips, and once again used his trusty finger nail file to get the friction in the leather just right.

Once Tony had made his own artificial fingertips, the battle was only half over.  In order for the artificial fingertips to stay on his fingers when he was playing he could not push down on the guitar strings as hard as he was used to, he then started to use lighter tension strings on his guitar and had to retain his fingers not to push as hard.  Most guitarists when they play are feeling for the frets and strings so they know where their hand is as they play.  However, because of Tony’s artificial fingertips, in two of his fingers he could not feel the frets or the strings.  He had to completely retrain himself to where he instead had to really listen for the notes rather than feeling for the notes.  After a very massive trial, Tony was able to overcome what happened to his right hand at the sawmill that unfortunate day in 1965.  I am a firm believer that God will never give us a trial that we cannot overcome and during some of the hardest trials I have gone through I have reflected on Tony’s experience.  It has been my experience through my life that the times of my most intense trials I have experienced the most substantial growth and that God will provide a way for all of us to overcome our trials and it may not always be the easiest way, but it is always the best way.

During the fall and winter of 1998 I was working as a temporary at the U.S. Postal Services main office in Salt Lake City, UT, primarily running an OCR letter sorting machine.  The original four members of Black Sabbath had reunited, performed some shows together in the U.K., and were releasing a new live album with a couple of brand new songs.  I was listening to a radio show where Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward were being interviewed about the new record and just loving every second of it.  Then the reporter asked where Black Sabbath would begin their U.S. reunion tour and straight out of the mouth of Ozzy Osbourne he said “New Year’s Eve in Phoenix, Arizona”.  My jaw about hit the floor, I have family in the Phoenix area and I knew I could pull off going to see this once in a lifetime concert.  I immediately emailed one of my cousins in Phoenix, he bought the tickets, and my brother Alan and I planned our travel to Phoenix for the concert.

The concert itself was one of the biggest events I have ever attended.  It was Black Sabbath with Pantera, Megadeth, Slayer, and Soulfly at Bank One Ballpark.  We were able to get a nice spot on the field of the ballpark and just enjoyed the show.  All of the supporting bands were excellent!  Then it came time for Black Sabbath.  I will never forget how when they entered the stage by being raised by platforms below the stage.  I was completely taken by surprise.  Then the sounds of the faint rain and the church bell started to play over the P.A. and they went right into the song “Black Sabbath”.  I was completely amazed.  I never thought I would ever see the fully reunited Black Sabbath and they did not disappoint.  My cousins, older brother, and I had an amazing time!  One thing that makes this show very special to me is shortly after my cousin bought us the tickets for the New Year’s Eve show in Phoenix, tickets went on sale for the Salt Lake City show.  I was pretty excited that I would be able to see Black Sabbath twice.  But as the tour progressed due to health and other problems only a hand full of the shows of Black Sabbath reunion tour actually happened and the Salt Lake City show actually got cancelled twice.  If Alan and I did not have gone to Phoenix we would not have been able to see Black Sabbath at all.

We spent a few fun days with our family in Phoenix before we headed back to Sandy, UT.  One of my favorite memories of this trip was Alan and I on the way home were north of Flagstaff, Arizona, I was speeding and ended up getting pulled over by Arizona Highway Patrol.  I got out the registration and my driver’s license and was chatting with the officer hoping I would not get a ticket while at the same my older was snacking on some Wheat Thins and spraying some cheese on them.  While I am talking with the officer the spray cheese bottle ran out and a popping sound came out of the bottle.  In a blink of an eye the officer pulled out her gun and was in a defensive position which scared the tar out of me to be bold.  Then she apologized and said “I’m sorry boys, but when I hear popping like that I react”.  I accepted her apology and I think because she realized he scared me pretty bad she gave me a warning rather than an expensive ticket.  This still ranks very high as one of the most enjoyable and memorable vacations Alan and I have ever been on.

The first Black Sabbath album is considered by many to be the flagship heavy metal album and is still influencing many talented musicians.  It is an album that simply cannot be duplicated and 42 years after its worldwide release has earned Black Sabbath a place in the rock and roll hall of fame and the album is today ranked by several critics to be one of the best albums ever made.  It’s amazing what can happen in the studio when a band has very little money and time, but has an amazing amount of creative energy.