THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD

"The Man Who Sold The World" is the third studio album of David Bowie and was released in 1970. It was Bowie's first album with the nucleus of what would become the "Spiders From Mars", the band who would be famous due to his future fifth studio album "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars", released in 1972. "The Man Who Sold The World" has been claimed that this was the album that marked the beginning of the glam rock.

The line up on the album is David Bowie (vocals, guitars, stylophone, organ and saxophone), Mick Ronson (backing vocals and guitars), Tony Visconti (backing vocals, bass guitar, piano, guitar and recorder), Mick Woodmansey (drums and percussion) and Ralph Mace (Moog modular synthesizer).

"The Man Who Sold The World" has nine tracks. All songs were written by David Bowie. The first track "The Width Of A Circle" is a hard rock song with heavy metal overtones. The song is divided into two different parts and it has a very explicit sexual lyrics. It starts with a very nice riff and all over the song it turns in many musical directions. It became in one of the most favourite songs of his fans. The second track "All The Madmen" is a song that opens with acoustic guitar and recorder before transforming into a heavy rock song featuring a great electric guitar work by Ronson. This is another excellent track that provides a kind of an atmosphere of some insanity and dementia throughout the album. The third track "Black Country Rock" is a blues rock number that compared with the two previous songs on the album we can say that it's a kind of respite from the musical thematically heaviness of the beginning of it. This is another excellent song with great vocal work and an unusual and strange hard rock blues sound. The fourth track "After All" is another great song but that sounds very strange when we listen to it for the first time. It's a very unusual song because it was written in a context of a rock song in a waltz time that reminds us a surreal circus due to the instrumental break. This is a very melancholic song, very sinister and dark that transports us to a surrealistic nightmare of a child. The fifth track "Running Gun Blues" is a kind of a return of Bowie to his folk rock roots of the beginning of his musical career. It's a song with some violent lyrics that criticize the Vietnam War. This is another great song, where the extremely beautiful tune contrasts perfectly and magnificently with the violent criticism of its lyrics. The sixth track "Saviour Machine" is a return to the general hard rock tune of the album. It's clearly an epic song with great psychedelic musical influence and with a slightly touch of the symphonic music. This is another song with more provocative lyrics and a great musical ambience. It's a very powerful song, probably the most powerful song on the album. The seventh track "She Shook Me Cold" is the heaviest song on the album and is also probably the heaviest song on all Bowie's musical career. Ronson's guitar work is clearly influenced by the hard rock and heavy metal sound of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. It features, without any doubt, one of the best guitar performances by Ronson. The eighth track is the title track "The Man Who Sold The World". This is a classic Bowie's track, one of the best and one of the most known songs of him. This is probably the highlight of the album mostly because of its simple and extremely beautiful music and lyrics, instantly catching and attaching. It's a truly brilliant track and absolutely perfect with the effect, on me. I'm not able to stop listening to it constantly. Sincerely, I always loved this track. The ninth track "The Superman" is another great track. This is one more song on the album inspired by the literary works of Friedrich Nietzsche and H. P. Lovecraft. It's another dark song with great lyrics that curiously and instantly reminds me strongly Van Der Graaf Generator and Peter Hammill. This song represents the perfect way to close this incredible and admirable album.

Conclusion: "The Man Who Sold The World" wasn't one of my first contacts with the musical world of Bowie. My first contacts were "Space Oddity" and "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars" in the middle of the 70's. So, and despite my first contact with the album be only much later, it was soon love at the first sight. "The Man Who Sold The World" is a fantastic and an incredible album, and represents a great step forward from their previou studio album "Space Oddity" and a giant step from their eponymous debut studio album. In my humble opinion, it's one of the best Bowie's studio albums and t's also, for me, one of my favourite albums of Bowie, together with "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars" and "Low". "The Man Who Sold The World" is, without any doubt, the hardest and heaviest rock album made by Bowie and that became, in a certain way, the precursor of what would be his fifth studio album "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars". "The Man Who Sold The World" is one of the most interesting and cohesive hard rock albums I've ever heard and it represents his first great musical work. However and unfortunately, it's also probably the most underrated and overlooked album of Bowie.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

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