Happy Anniversary: David Bowie, Aladdin Sane
43 years ago today, record store shelves were first graced with the sixth full-length effort from David Bowie, a 10-track affair described on Wikipedia as “the first album he wrote and released as a bona fide rock star.” While that’s probably a fair assessment, given that it arrived on the heels of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it’s probably become better known over the years as the single most parodied album cover in Bowie’s discography, with everyone from Homer Simpson to Harry Potter and even from Rainbow Dash to Walter White getting the red and blue lightning bolt treatment.
Bowie described Aladdin Sane as “Ziggy goes to America,” at least in part because the majority of the material was inspired during his 1972 US tour, with the album itself – or, again, the majority of it, anyway – recorded in January 1973 at London’s Trident Studios between the legs of that very US tour. The album was decidedly tougher in sound, a switch which was attributed predominantly to Bowie’s producer, Ken Scott, but it also explored a variety of musical styles, most notably on the title track, “Time,” and “Lady Grinning Soul.”
Beyond its cover, Aladdin Sane has become most famous for its two biggest singles, “The Jean Genie” and “Drive-In Saturday,” both of which proved to be top-5 singles in the UK, hitting #2 and #3, respectively. Album rock fans, however, will know the LP just as well for “Panic in Detroit,” which still gets significant airplay. If there’s a surprising song in the midst, it’s probably Bowie’s cover of “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” for which he was praised in NME for having achieved “the unprecedented feat of beating the Stones on one of their own songs.” While some might argue with that declaration – Stones fans, mostly – there’s no question that Bowie certainly at least managed to make the song his own for the duration of its run time, which is a significant accomplishment in and of itself.
Aladdin Sane was a #1 hit for Bowie on the UK Albums chart, and it found its way into the top 20 of Billboard’s Top 200 Albums Chart as well, further cementing his success in the United States. More importantly, though, it holds up: it’s on Pitchfork.com’s top 100 albums of the 1970s, and it’s on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
