A pre-fame, pre-glam Bowie chills out playing guitar and having a sneaky fag
Released just before Christmas 1971, Hunky Dory is an album that was out of its time. Recorded after the proto-metal The Man Who Sold The World and immediately before the groundbreaking glam of The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust…, Hunky Dory sounds, on first listen, like an easy listening singer-songwriter album. Now regarded as Bowie’s first truly magnificent work, a closer inspection reveals the album to be one of Bowie’s darkest and most ambiguous statements, referencing, as it does, the occult and Greek mythology while name-checking Dylan, Lennon, Warhol and even Mickey Mouse.
For many fans who’d come aboard after seeing that performance of Starman on Top Of The Pops, Hunky Dory was their second Bowie LP, eagerly devoured in the aftermath of the Ziggy Stardust phenomenon. Largely ignored by the record- buying public of 1971, Hunky Dory charted at No. 3 in the second half of 1972, while spin-off single Life On Mars? performed similarly the following summer as Bowie-mania reached fever pitch. But it was a different story two years previously, before Bowie unleashed the Leper Messiah…