A post-Ziggy Bowie and 60s model Twiggy adorn the cover of Pin Ups
Often underrated by Bowie aficionados for its lack of original material, Pin Ups is actually a very revealing record in the artist’s canon, and is a key document in understanding the influences, both musically and culturally that helped shape Bowie’s evolution. Recorded in the opulent Chateau d’Herouville in France a scant few days after Bowie’s on-stage ‘killing’ of the Ziggy character, many fans and critics were concerned that Bowie was in actuality ending his career. The disassociation of Bowie and Ziggy was still difficult for many, not least Bowie himself. Yet Pin Ups finds Bowie and the Spiders, minus Woody Woodmansey, firing on all cylinders as a creative unit.
With the ever-reliable Ken Scott once again taking the producer’s chair, the sessions were intended to be expansive, the fruits of which were to be released over the course of two records, envisioned as ‘nostalgia-packed nods to the 60s’ and exclusively featuring glammed-up, futuristically tinged cover versions of tracks that influenced Bowie during those formative years of development. The sequel record, which was provisionally labeled ‘Bowieing out’, was to be more focused on US artists, while Pin Ups was, on the whole, Anglo-centric.