David Bowie | Space Oddity | The Man Who Sold the World | Hunky Dory
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars | Aladdin Sane | Pin Ups | Diamond Dogs | Young Americans
Station to Station | Low | "Heroes" | Lodger | Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) | Let's Dance | Tonight | Never Let Me Down
Tin Machine | Black Tie White Noise | The Buddha of Suburbia | Outside | Earthling | 'hours...' | Heathen | Reality | 'hours...'
The Next Day | ★ | Changesonebowie
- Corpsing: Bowie breaks up near the end of "The Laughing Gnome".
- Creator Backlash:
- Bowie preferred to pretend that this album never existed, rarely discussing it publicly, never performing any of its songs in concert, and ignoring it when selecting tracks for career-retrospective albums he had a hand in assembling. Even Toy, which consists of re-recorded early, pre-breakthrough songs, contains nothing from David Bowie except for "Silly Boy Blue." Nothing Has Changed, his first official hits compilation to contain material released prior to "Space Oddity", also features "Silly Boy Blue" as the sole representation of his debut album.
- "The Laughing Gnome," a 1967 novelty single from the Deram sessions, featuring campy pun-filled dialogue between the singer and the title character (Bowie's sped-up voice), became a belated #6 hit in the UK when reissued in 1973, on the heels of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust breakthrough, reportedly causing the singer embarassment. In 1990, when Bowie had fans choose the set list for his "Sound + Vision Tour" by telephone vote, the magazine New Music Express encouraged readers to rig the vote so Bowie would have to play "The Laughing Gnome." In response, he scrapped the voting system. Bowie eventually came to take the song's legacy in good humour, once joking to Melody Maker that he might re-record it in the style of The Velvet Underground. He even seriously considered performing it live in 2003.
