David Bowie: The Man Who Sold the World [PARLOPHONE]

Why you'll love it

This Parlophone LP carries the 2015 remaster on 180g vinyl, in a textured jacket with a replica of the original paper inner sleeve. The Man Who Sold the World is the first Bowie record with Mick Ronson and Mick Woodmansey, two of the future Spiders from Mars.

This edition

• Remastered
• 180g vinyl
• Textured jacket
• Replica paper inner sleeve
• Pressed in the EU
• Stereo mix

About the album

Bowie had formed a band called Hype with Visconti, drummer John Cambridge and guitarist Mick Ronson, and he followed the gentle, folky Space Oddity album with a record that plugged straight into the wall. Tony Visconti produced it and played bass, the band recorded in London in April and May 1970, and their heavy blues-rock crunch pushed Bowie's songs somewhere darker and stranger, toward insanity, religion, technology and war.

"The Width Of A Circle" opens with an eight-minute epic, "All The Madmen" and "Saviour Machine" wrestle with madness and machines, "Black Country Rock" struts, "She Shook Me Cold" is pure Ronson heavy blues, "Running Gun Blues" gets real muscle from his guitar, "After All" sways like a dark carnival waltz, and "The Supermen" closes on a grand stomp. The working title was Metrobolist, a nod to Fritz Lang's film Metropolis.

Critics now hear it as the start of Bowie's classic period, and Nirvana introduced the title song to a whole new generation on MTV Unplugged. The UK sleeve shows Bowie reclining in a Michael Fish dress, a bolder fashion choice than anything ever worn behind our counter.

Also at Kops: more David Bowie on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Parlophone (cat# DB69732), a reissue of the 1970 album.