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On Friday, April 20, 1973, David Bowie wakes up in a hotel in Tokyo. The musician is 26 years old and is on his first Japan tour. He celebrated a bit: The previous day, April 19, his sixth studio album Aladdin Sane was published in Great Britain. Now his manager Tony Defries informs him that so many pre -orders had been received for no British album since Abbey Road.
With the publication of the Aladdin Sane sold one hundred times, Bowie looks back on the most cheeky year of his previous life: as an artificial figure Ziggy Stardust, in 1972 he had succeeded in the big breakthrough after a tough career. The band’s concerts had been accompanied by a real ciggy mania for a year, which finds an unexpected climax in Japan.
So also in Tokyo: In the evening, Bowie plays a concert with the Spiders from Mars, in which the statics of the Shibuya Kōkaidō can be performed by hopping fans. The musician is evading the subsequent police investigations by traveling to Wladiwostok in the morning after appearing with the ship via Yokohama. His well -known fear of flying comes towards Bowie, the officers had searched for him at the airport.
Aladdin Sane appears almost exactly 42 years ago in the middle of this madness, which Bowie apparently began to grow over his head back then. The album does not have its title for nothing, A lady insanea crazy boy, of course the artist himself. The Spiders guitarist Mick Ronson once remembered that Bowie has already taught him and manager Defries in Tokyo about bury the overpowering art figure Ziggy with the end of the current tour.
On the cover of Aladdin Sane photographed by Brian Duffy, the extraterrestrial pop star can once again be seen in all its dazzling extravagance and, by the way, with the famous flash design on the face-the most iconic ciggy picture. It is the first album that Bowie wrote as a successful pop star. Most of the songs were created on the endless tour to the predecessor Ziggy Stardust, and Aladdin Sane was recorded during short tours in London and New York.
In particular, his first big USA tour described Bowie as a formative inspiration-the intoxicating appearances in the evening found their precipitation in songs such as “Watch that Man”, “Cracked Actor” or “The Jean Genie”, the endlessly torn bus trips to the next place of appearance through the huge country in the elegant “Drive-in Saturday”, “The Prettiest Star” or “Time”. The American influence is also musically noticeable: Also 42 years later you can hear Aladdin Sane with his brass and choral songs as a fantastic hinge album between Bowie’s glam rock phase and the years after that influenced by soul and radio. Aladdin Sane is also in a special way by the American jazz pianist Mike Garson, who has worked with Bowie again and again in the coming decades, but was never allowed to let off steam like here: the dramatic chords in the title song, the freely oscillating jazz runs in “Lady GRINING SOOL”, the Vaudeville-like game in “Time”-Mike-Mike- Garson dominates this album in a gentle way.
After Aladdin Sane then let’s dance
The signs were completely different ten years later: David Bowie had artistically shaped the 1970s like no other British pop star, expanded its stylistic possibilities with every album and inspired countless imitators with every work phase. He enjoyed artistic recognition and, above all, freedom, had played with countless fantastic musicians and had a number of hits. But so far, David Bowie had not become a global megastar that became typical for the 1980s.
He now thought about changing: On April 14, 1983, almost for the day exactly ten years after Aladdin Sane, Let’s Dance, Bowies appeared by far the most successful, but also the most controversial album. Let’s dance was considered a mainstream attack and commercial scrap for decades, but even if he recycled his own songs like the “China Girl” or “Cat People (putting out fire)” written in 1976 and covered “Criminal World”, Let’s Dance is much better than his reputation.
What Bowie did on this album was conceptually typical for him: He looked at a musical scene with disco, which he loved, got together with a formative protagonist of this scene-the brilliant Nile Rodgers from Chic-by adding the initially completely unknown, sometimes worshiped guitar wonder Kind Stevie Ray Vaughn a link on blues and Rhythm and blues set and all of this under his golden hand turned into radiant pop – Ray Vaughn has shaped this album in a similar way to Mike Garson Aladdin Sane ten years earlier. And “Let’s Dance”, the World Hit itself, overrides one of the big songs of the 1980s.
From today’s perspective, both albums, Aladdin Sane and Let’s Dance, belong to David Bowie’s strongest work.