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The mercurial British singer-composer, best known for his "Space Oddity" voyage, is back and not a minute too soon. Despite the title, everything is not "hunky dory" in David Bowie's world. In his head maybe, but not necessarily in what surrounds him. So he casts a look about; and if that look is askance, who can blame David? His earlier recordings -- on Deram and Mercury -- were generally chilling and mind engaging. But Hunky Dory goes out beyond that. "Turn and face the strange," David advises on "Changes," the very first tune on the record, and that's good advice. If you go with Bowie, he'll take you down corridors and introduce you to some shadows. Bowie alternates between a rock-edged style and something of the music hall flair, but his approach to each subject is always right -- even if curiously so. "Oh You Pretty Things" was a hit in England for Peter Noone, but there is nothing hermetic about Bowie's own rendition of it. Hermetic maybe, but not hermitic. Fellow artists are not spared -- listen to "Fill Your Heart Andy Warhol" and "Song For Bob Dylan" -- and there are a few words for other hustlers too ("Queen Bitch"). "Life On Mars?" and "Quicksand" are two more visions of a hellish state. If you're easily disturbed, you may reject this LP. If you're just plain disturbed, you'll love it. And if you're somewhere in between, chances are you'll recognize that David Bowie is an uncompromising, adventurous and multi-faceted artist.
- Ed Kelleher, Circus, 1/72.
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The British composer/performer comes up with a heavy debut for RCA, loaded with the kind of Top 40 and FM appeal that should break him through big on the charts. Along with vocals, Bowie plays piano, sax and guitar. Strong material, his own, for programming include "Changes," "Oh You Pretty Things," and "Life On Mars." His "Andy Warhol" material is also a standout.
- Billboard, 1972.
Don't be deceived by the introverted way that David Bowie approaches his material -- there's a mind at work here, as there has been for the last few years, largely unrecognized. Try "Kooks" and "Queen Bitch" as a mirror to examine the mind and ideas of Mr. Bowie.
- Hit Parader, 5/72.
After two overwrought excursions on Mercury [later released on RCA] this ambitious, brainy, imaginative singer-composer has created an album that rewards the concentration it demands instead of making you wish you'd gone on with the vacuuming. Not that he combines the passion and cmpassion of Dylan (subject of one song) with the full-witted vision of Warhol (subject of a better one) just yet. But he has a nice feeling for weirdos, himself included. A-
- Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.
This was David Bowie's first big album, though nobody knew it at the time except the artist himself. "I'm going to be huge," he was quoted as saying, "and it's quite frightening in a way because I know that when I reach my peak and it's time for me to be brought down, it will be with a bump!"
Wrong on almost all counts. Huge his popularity became, but not until the release of his next album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, and when it did arrive it was enduring.
Hunky Dory first charted in April 1972 in the United States. It was only a moderate success and generated no hit singles. In Britain it did not enter until September, two months after Ziggy started his interplanetary rule. As 1972 turned to '73 Bowie's career gathered momentum, sucking three earlier albums into the US list and two into the UK rolls. Hunky Dory found itself a bigger hit than ever when "Life On Mars" soared to number three in the UK top forty. The album ascended to three itself and enjoyed a chart run of over a year.
With its half-spoken, half-sung delivery, its false ending and its changes of texture, "Life On Mars" was one of David's most exciting and unexpected successes. In 1986 BBC Radio 1 listeners chose it their favourite Bowie track of all time.
"Changes," the lead-off cut, was another standout. Three years later this anthemic tune went to number one in Britain as part of a maxi-single led by the re-issued Space Oddity. It loaned its own name to the titles of the subsequent retrospectives Changesonebowie (1976) and Changestwobowie (1981).
In 1973 David's Pin-Ups would salute favourite old songs. Side two of Hunky Dory paid tribute to people, "Fill Your Heart" was a Biff Rose song so faithfuly performed it stirred memories of Rose himself, even of that singer-songwriter's few seconds in history, "What's Gnawing At Me." "Andy Warhol" hailed the New York cult figure with such determination the track retains Bowie's correction over the talkback of someone else's mispronunciation of "Warhol."
"Song For Bob Dylan" made its subject obvious. "Queen Bitch" was clearly a Lou Reed/Velvet Underground tribute, preceding Ziggy's homage "Suffragette City." The final selection, "The Bewlay Brothers," is the longest on the album and obviously of importance to its author, who named a publishing company after it, but mortal men seem unable to divine its significance.
In 1987, Hunky Dory was chosen by a panel of rock critics and music broadcasters as the #58 rock album of all time. Vinyl collectors know that early copies of the LP with a hand-scrawled title are worth many times the value of the standard edition.
- Paul Gambaccini, The Top 100 Rock 'n' Roll Albums of All Time, Harmony Books, 1987.
Hunky Dory came from Bowie's first recorded sessions with the then un-named Spiders from Mars (Ronson, Woodmansey and Bolder). Rick Wakeman helped out with piano. While at the time the album was critically well-received it was not a big seller until after Ziggy had broken. Mysteriously oblique, primed, a portent and compellingly commercial -- Hunky Dory is all these things and survives the test of time better than many Bowie albums, especially the track "The Bewlay Brothers" exploring Bowie's ambiguous relationship with his brother.
Compact disc has breathed new life into these songs. Though the recording suffers from hiss and tape inadequacies, by today's standards in terms of sheer presence it is a winner. Bowie's voice is emphatically natural while the studio talkback intro to "Andy Warhol," in particular the quiet strumming and inadvertent knocking of the body of Bowie's acoustic guitar, has a striking realism. The heavier production numbers are less successful.
Without mentioning the fact on the sleeve, the segued tracks 2 and 6 use CD Index points -- one of the few rock CDs so to do.
- David Prakel, Rock 'n' Roll on Compact Disc, 1987.
The Thin White Duke as accessible pop star with influences obvious. The Beatles echo through "Oh! You Pretty Things," Lou Reed in "Queen Bitch," and Bob Dylan (including some precise vocal mannerisms) on "Song for Bob Dylan." Best of all is the early seventies teen anthem "Changes," which opens the album with a nod to the Who. Pop music for the seminally weird. In the words of Robert Christgau, "This ambitious, brainy, imaginative singer/composer has created an album that rewards the concentration it demands instead of making you wish you'd gone on with the vacuuming." Hunky Dory foreshadows Bowie's sci-fi world and total image reconstructions that were to frame some of the more interesting music of a generally uninteresting decade. This fine-sounding CD also includes four strong bonus tracks, the best of which is the previously unreleased "Bombers." B+
- Bill Shapiro, Rock & Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD, 1991.
This followup to The Man Who Sold the World found Bowie lightening his sound considerably. Some of his most memorable songs are found on this classic: the catchy pop classic "Changes" (a theme song of sorts), the beautifully expansive "Life on Mars," the moody dynamics of "Quicksand," "The Bewlay Brothers," and "Oh, You Pretty Things." * * * * *
- Rick Clark, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.
Like Young Americans, Hunky Dory was a moving affair, with meditative melodies and lush string arrangements for "Changes," "Oh, You Pretty Things" and "Life On Mars?" * * * *
- Aidin Vaziri, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.
Hunky Dory found Bowie lodged between his initial folk phase and the persona he would soon become. For this reason, it's probably his best album -- although surely with an artist like Bowie, whose career has spanned decades and who's dabbled with multiple musical styles, "best" is a relative term. In many ways, it was also his most personal work. Although as an artist Bowie would seldom be accused of earnestness, preferring instead to survive on mystique, performances like "Changes" and "Quicksand" were powerful and convincing. Most importantly, Hunky Dory established Bowie as a legitimate long-term talent as opposed to a mere oddity. Bowie, of course, proved eminently capable of handling the fame and adoration while still creating idiosyncratic albums throughout the remainder of the decade. In this sense, Hunky Dory can be seen as a catalyst for one of the most enduring careers in rock.
Hunky Dory was voted the 47th greatest album of all time in a VH1 poll of over 700 musicians, songwriters, disc jockeys, radio programmers, and critics in 2003.
- Joe S. Harrington, VH1's 100 Greatest Albums, 2003.
Bowie, then twenty-four, arrived at the Hunky Dory cover shoot with a Marlene Dietrich photo book: a perfect metaphor for this album's visionary blend of gay camp, flashy rock guitar and saloon-piano balladry. Bowie marked the polar ends of his artistic ambitions in tribute songs to Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol; in songs such as "Oh! You Pretty Things" and "Changes," he shows that he is already his own man, with a new pop sound that seems just as modern today as it was then. On "Life on Mars?," he sings to all the weirdos like himself who feel like aliens on Earth. Soon an army of kids would remake themeselves in his spangled image, proving his point.
Hunky Dory was chosen as the 107th greatest album of all time by the editors of Rolling Stone magazine in Dec. 2003.
- Rolling Stone, 12/11/03.
A hard-rock concept album about a shaven-headed transvestite failed to make David Bowie a star. So New Musical Express's "thinking man's Marc Bolan" followed The Man Who Sold The World with a toybox of acoustic oddities, tributes to heroes, and surrealism.
Amazingly, that did not do the trick either and 1969's "Space Oddity" was increasingly looking like a one-hit wonder. So Bowie claimed to be gay, reveled in the ensuing publicity, wrote songs about a spaceman, and became the decade's most influential musician.
At which point, finally, people turned on by Ziggy Stardust bought that toybox -- Hunky Dory. They found an album endearingly affected -- I can be Dylan, Lou Reed, and Syd Barrett all at once! -- but packed with evidence of a songwriter easing into first gear. It also marks the emergence proper of Camp David, with exquisite gems such as "Queen Bitch." Bowie arrived at the photoshoot for the cover clutching a Marlene Dietrich photobook, and the tinted portrait definitely has something of a faded movie queen about it.
The temporarily calming effect of a wife and baby led to family snapshots like "Kooks," making this Bowie's most human album. But it has harder moments, notably "Andy Warhol" (which appalled its namesake). And for three cuts the album soars. "Quicksand" was inspired by America's "bliss and calamity" but is a beautiful ballad, not a fractured rocker, while "The Bewlay Brothers" is a bewitching portrait of mental illness.
Best of all, "Life on Mars?" -- which sprang from Bowie being commissioned to write lyrics for the song that became "My Way" -- sounds like nothing on Earth.
- Joel McIver, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, 2005.
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