Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

There was no room for a piano in his Plaistow Grove
bedroom. There certainly wasn’t room for it while
playing clubs or local bus tours with his previous
groups. Haddon Hall gave him more of a sense of
permanence, a home of his own where he could sit
and compose with more comfort and deliberation.
This affected the sound of the record (an inviting,
plunked percussiveness) as well as the feel (warm,
whereas Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold the
World were albums you wanted to throw a blanket
around). Hunky Dory is, like the best records, a
triumph of sequence, a masterful rising and falling of
moods that somehow unites as a complete and
singular piece.
It opens with “Changes,” a sort of state of the
union demarking the end of the sixties (“Every time I
thought I got it made / It seemed the taste was not so
sweet”) and the call toward achievement, now and
not later, that the coming decade demands (“Look
out you rock ’n’ rollers / Pretty soon now you’re
gonna get older”). “Oh! You Pretty Things,” another
piano-driven composition, follows seamlessly. It’s
the rare bit of science fiction that manages to be
soulful (truly this is Bowie’s gift to the genre). “All the
nightmares came today / And it looks as though
they’re here to stay,” he sings, drawing from George
Orwell, H. G. Wells, Kubrick and even Nietzsche and
Ayn Rand (“You gotta make way for the homo
superior”). The chorus presages the coming glitter
movement (“Don’t you know you’re driving your
mamas and papas insane”) while tweaking his own