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David Bowie was 22 when Space Oddity was released as a single on 11 July, 1969. He was hardly a pensioner but, having started his first band Th e Konrads at school seven years earlier, there were already many unsuccessful singles, and the failed 1967 self-titled album on Deram behind him. While Bowie would go on to be praised rightly for the chameleonic unpredictability of his albums, at the time his shift ing styles made it seem as if he didn’t know how he should sound.
Lesser artists would have packed it in by then. What kept Bowie going wasn’t the desire to be famous so much as the need to keep being a singer. His girlfriend at the time, Hermione Farthingale knew what drove him. “Th e idea that David wanted to be famous is something that came a bit later,” says Farthingale. “When you’re being an artist, you’re just in that moment. Yes, David wanted to be known. He wanted to get work and be asked to come back and do more, but that’s so he could do the things he wanted.”