I grew up in the late 90s, and every weirdo rock band that my 14-year-old-self listened to – Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Placebo – was inspired by David Bowie. When I later moved on to the more socially acceptable and conventionally gendered Britpop of Blur, Oasis, and the Manic Street Preachers, they too paid homage to the Thin White Duke, as did the doyens of the brooding, synth-driven pop that I eventually gravitated toward, like Depeche Mode and Ultravox. Everything, it seemed, led back to Bowie, the founding father of rock’n’roll freakery. Which is why now, some thirty years after I first developed an interest in rock, and a full half-a-century after Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars were conceived in the brilliant, addled brain of David Robert Jones, I finally feel compelled to review and rank the eleven studio albums that Bowie released in the 1970s, the decade that he would dominate and define much as the Beatles had the 1960s.

The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
Like most of Bowie’s early records, there is nothing particularly musically groundbreaking about The Man Who Sold the World. It’s mere hard rock, with the occasional digression into blues, folk, and glam, a sound that was very much par for the course in the early 70s. And yet, there is something uniquely unsettling about this album, which certainly derives partly from Mick Ronson’s tight, unyielding guitar, but which emerges particularly from the lyrics, which are crackling with ideas and clearly indicative of both literary genius and stark raving madness. Insanity is the album’s key theme; the protagonist of “All the Madman” would rather remain locked in an asylum than live among the “sad men roaming free”; “Running Gun Blues” depicts a deranged and murderous war veteran who can’t reintegrate into civilian life; while the title track is a chilling meditation on social isolation, schizophrenia, and perhaps a meeting with the ghost of one’s own future self. The Nietzschean affectations of “The Supermen” and the disturbing, criminally overlooked “After All” might seem twee from any other artist, but Bowie pulls it off. Most startling is the premonitory “Saviour Machine”, which essentially predicts the coming of Artificial Intelligence, sketches the plot of the Terminator movies, and even makes clairvoyant references to “President Joe” and “a plague”.
Overall rating: * * *
Standout track: “The Man Who Sold the World”

Hunky Dory (1971)
To some degree, Hunky Dory picks up where The Man Who Sold the World left off. There’s more Nietzschean grandstanding and mystical, proto-fascist references to the “golden ones” and a “coming race” on “Oh! You Pretty Things”, and this tendency is taken to its (il)logical, Aleister Crowley-invoking conclusion on “Quicksand”, with its garbled references to Camelot, the Holy Grail, and Heinrich Himmler. Multiple identities and precarious sanity are also on the menu with “Changes”, the album’s groovy opener and one of Bowie’s trademark songs. But despite some of these apparent thematic continuities, Hunky Dory is radically different from its predecessor; warm and life-affirming where The Man Who Sold the World was deathly and discomfiting; expansive and dramatic rather than taut and detached; driven by clattering pianos and strings rather than scything glam guitars. It is also laden with great singles, from its two fantastic openers to the soaring “Life on Mars”, which wryly describes a mass brawl in a provincial music hall. That said, the album’s second half foreshadows the angularity of Ziggy Stardust, with “Andy Warhol”, a sardonic tribute to the famously autistic artist; the hard-boiled rocker “Queen Bitch”; and the lush psychedelica of closer “The Bewley Brothers”.
Overall rating: * * * *
Standout track: “Life on Mars”

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Ziggy Stardust was Bowie’s commercial breakthrough, marking the beginning of his ascent to era-defining superstardom, and it’s still commonly considered one of the best albums in rock history. In terms of its sound, though, it’s a fairly typical example of sharp, sparse, early 70s glam. The songs are very good, but it doesn’t push the envelope in the manner of, say, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, which was released the following year. What sets Ziggy Stardust apart is the album’s compelling and overarching concept as a kind of rock opera about the life and times of Bowie’s first fully fleshed out alter-ego, the messianic, extraterrestrial rockstar of the title. Through Ziggy, Bowie channels the decadence and glamour of the 1970s; the cynical, self-seeking materialism of “Star”, the narcissistic gender-bending of “Lady Stardust”, and the apocalyptic fatalism of “Five Years”. Ample space is left for the familiar extraterrestrial schtick with “Starman” and “Moonage Daydream”, but these sci-fi screeds only render the album yet more unworldly and aloof. Perhaps the one point on Ziggy Stardust where the glammy roleplaying gropes toward genuine human emotion is the closer, “Rock’n’Roll Suicide”, an unexpectedly heartfelt show of solidarity to a despairing friend.
Overall rating: * * * *
Standout track: “Starman”

Aladdin Sane (1973)
Despite its reputation as a classic of obstreperous 70s glam, Ziggy Stardust is an unexpectedly sparse, reedy, even gentle sounding record. Not until its follow up, 1973’s Aladdin Sane, did Bowie finally break out the big guns and fully embrace raucous rock’n’roll. This is immediately apparent from the opener, the crashing and dilapidated “Watch That Man”, which sets the scene not only through its abrasive sound, but also with its account of a chaotic rock’n’roll piss up, where “every bottle battles with the reason why”. And yet, despite the cacophony, much of Aladdin Sane comprises strange diversions into lush vaudevillian cabaret music and jazz-inspired rock, most notably “Time”, a garbled poem which sounds like something from Weimar-era Berlin. Bowie’s writing continues to be informed by the turmoil and decadence of the 70s; “Cracked Actor” is a Sunset Boulevard-esque account of a depraved and washed-up thespian; “Jean Jeanie”, a rambunctious portrayal of a sleazy Hollywood street rat; while “Panic in Detroit” turns its attention to the decade’s twin blights of urban decay and revolutionary violence. The album’s highlights, however, are two lush, sweeping, profoundly unsettling proto-Bond themes: the deranged title track, and the closer, “Lady Grinning Soul”, a mordant cry of anguish from the victim of a femme fatale.
Overall rating: * * * *
Standout track: “Aladdin Sane”

Continued in part II.