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David Bowie · S1 E6
The Laughing Gnome
Novelty singles, a debut album that goes nowhere, and a record label that drops him. Three years of failure that would break most people
June 1, 1967. David Bowie's self-titled debut album arrives in record shops across Britain on the exact same day as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles.
David Bowie, Sound and Vision. Official music video, 1977. Bowie wrote this during another period of creative searching, trying to find a new direction after the Thin White Duke years. It is the question he was asking himself through three years of failure: what does my sound look like, and what does my vision sound like?
The Laughing Gnome
Two months earlier, Bowie releases "The Laughing Gnome," a novelty single featuring sped-up chipmunk vocals and puns so painful they should be criminal: "gnome-man's land," "gnome sweet gnome," "rolling gnome." It is, by any measure, the worst thing he will ever record. The single sells almost nothing.
In 1973, during Ziggy Stardust mania, "The Laughing Gnome" was re-released without Bowie's permission. Where did it chart in the UK?
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Bowie almost become instead of a rock star?
“Nobody wanted to know. I was playing to empty rooms, sending demos to labels that wouldn't return my calls. There were whole months where I genuinely thought I might have to give up and get a proper job.”
— David Bowie, in Jones, Dylan. "David Bowie: A Life." Preface Publishing, 2017
Sound and Vision, David Bowie (1977)
Recorded during the Low sessions in late 1976, split between the Chateau d'Herouville in France and Hansa Studios in Berlin. The vocal doesn't enter until nearly two minutes in. Before that, it's just a hypnotic guitar riff, synthesizers, and Mary Hopkin's wordless backing vocals floating over the top. Producer Tony Visconti called the extended intro "the most nerve-wracking thing we ever put on a Bowie record," because nobody at RCA believed radio would play a pop single where the singer doesn't show up for the first half. It went to number 3 in the UK.
The Failure Years: By the Numbers
Silly Boy Blue, David Bowie
From the 1967 debut album that nobody bought. "Silly Boy Blue" is Bowie's most direct expression of his Buddhist studies with Chime Rinpoche: Tibetan references, spiritual longing, and a genuine sense of searching for meaning beyond the music industry. The orchestral arrangement is far more ambitious than anything else on the album.
It is 1969 and Neil Armstrong is about to walk on the moon. A BBC producer needs a song about space, and someone hands him a demo tape by an artist nobody has heard of.
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