DAVID BOWIE: 50 years ago: “Aladdin Sane” (Part 1)
“America became a land of myths for me.”
No joke: the fly in the soup
For his sixth studio album “Aladdin Sane”, David Bowie really soaked up American culture. In an interview for the BBC documentary “Cracked Actor” (1974), he sipped a large carton of milk in the back seat of a limousine and said: “There’s a fly swimming in my milk. It’s a foreign body in there and it’s getting a lot of milk, and that’s how I felt – like a foreign body and I couldn’t help but suck it all up.” Most of the ten songs released fifty years ago were written during his American tour in 1972. Although he had little sympathy for the country on his first visit, he was eventually drawn to it. In the same interview, he explained: “It filled a vast field of my imagination … The imagination can run dry in England. It simply satisfied a need in me. America became a land of myths for me.”
The recordings
The album was recorded in London’s Trident Studios in December 1972 and January 1973. As with the two previous albums, Ken Scott (u. a. Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Duran Duran) as producer. In addition to the band members of The Spiders from Mars, pianist Mike Garson also took part. With his jazz and blues background, he added elements to the songs that became revolutionary for David Bowie, especially with the use of more keyboards and synthesizers.
Maria Vain
In the next part, we take a closer look at the iconic album cover of “Aladdin Sane”.
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