The spoken section in the middle features a child’s voice saying “he followed me home mum, can I keep him?” Obviously referring to a dog. Then at the outro to the song he sings “ouvrez le chien” French for “open the dog” - really creepy image there.
One of my favorite Bowie tracks for so many reasons. There’s the lyrics and the whole backstory of Bowie’s half brother, who was on and off institutionalized, and then there’s the great bass, drums and guitar, and then just the way it tells a story from the perspective of someone who is really seeing the world a lot differently. The middle bit where Bowie is just kind of talking spaced out is brilliant.
One of my favorite tracks as well - more for the lyrics than anything else. Bowie's early-career voice can now seem a bit grating, but here it only comes through sporadically. One of those songs that allowed me a glimpse into Bowie's head that instantly lodged in my mind and has stayed there for more than a half century.
By a genuinely odd coincidence, the cartoon record image on the sleeve is recognisable as Cane Hill Hospital, the institute Bowie's half-brother was in.
I see you discovering that 'The Man Who Sold The World' is an essential Bowie album, and I'm here for it! What fun to see you listen to this record for the first time, music I've had in my life for 50 years just being discovered by someone. Thanks for this video, JP!
It's the artistical turning point album for Bowie and It's so ahead of its time. "She Shook Me Cold" could've been a song from a Nirvana album like "Bleach' or "In Utero", 20 years later.
I so love this album but I need to be in a certain mindset to play it. The album cover is Cane Hill Asylum in London where Bowie's half brother Terry resided before his suicide. Fun fact, Charlie Chaplin's mother was also a patient there.
This is the cover for the US release. The original cover features Bowie in a dress, but I suppose the record company found that image too shocking for the US market.
Had this FB chat with Tony Visconti a few years back and he said of all the albums he's produced this one is his fave. This is one of the best sings on the album. I remember my gf getting this for me at Xmas one year and we kept it on repeat on the car stereo for a long while.
Visconti played the recorder on this track along with Ronson. I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall of the studio when Bowie’s 70s albums were being recorded. So much creativity.
My favourite Bowie album for many, many years, and All The Madmen was instantly my favourite track on it. (I go back and forth between this and Width of a Circle these days.) Many thanks for reacting to this.
Hey Justin, glad to see you returning to Bowie. Great reaction to another great track. Looking forward to your eventual encounter with Aladdin Sane and Heroes, among others.
Wonderful to hear your take and reactions on Bowie. You have an educated, sensitive ear and make it fun. I’ve listened to this album off and on for 50 years now, but you make it new again. Fun. Thank you!
This song was self-referenced by David many years later on the title track for "The Buddah of Suburbia" BBC TV drama from 1993 ("Zane, Zane, Zane, Ouvrez le Chein") That whole album is incredible and gets slightly lost among his other catalogue. Please do it here!
You must be a Dad man. To be true "Madmen". Committing your progeny to lunacy, Society to insanity, and the World to its hypocrisy! An overlooked gem of a song and album! 🤪✌& ❤
It's been at least 20 years since I've listened to this track. It's so much better than my memory held. I think I need to go back and listen to this whole album again for the first time since I was a young man. Thanks!
Another treat. Others will surely make reference to Bowie's half-brother Terry (see also The Bewlay Brothers and Jump They Say). I stated a few minutes ago on your reaction to The Width of a Circle that TMWSTW is one of my very favourite Bowie albums. Tracks like this prove the point. I was the right age and the right artistic temperament to appreciate Bowie when he emerged in all his Ziggy splendour in 1972. The latter half of 1972 had me listening endlessly to his first five albums. Nothing will ever better that musical experience. You've made reference to Gabriel and Genesis here, but I'd also urge you to listen to Van der Graff Generator's album H to He Who Am the Only One, particularly the track House With No Door. This album came out at about the same time and there are definite similarities. You may have done this already? Please keep going with TMWSTW.
I listened to Bowie in order, and my favorite Bowie's albums are "Hunky Dory" and the first one from 1967. Haven't listened to him yet after "Aladdin Sane" - which, along with "Ziggy Stardust", were a quite disappointment. Let's say, I can see why especially those albums had became truly popular, but my expectations after "All the Madmen", "She Shook Me Cold" (think you gonna like it), theatrical vignettes of the 1967 album, "Space Oddity", "Quicksand" and that cactus song were as far from "Ziggy Stardust" as Pink Floyd is far from Elvis Presley ;)
Bowie's half brother suffered from schizophrenia and was in and out of asylums before ending himself in the early 80s. Because the illness tends to run in families, Bowie lived in fear that the disease might manifest in him too. This song, in a way, was him processing this fear.
Finally decided to become a Bowie fan, eh? NOT of that runny stool produced the LAST 40 years of his career but of the first FIVE. That's how genius works, btw. THEY CATCH IT YOUNG. That's why you ALWAYS begin with first massive breakthroughs (in this case, Ziggy/Spiders/Mars) and work out from there--you don't BEGIN in geriatric late career, or even "second wind" middle age such as Low and Heroes (and why I can't believe you still cannot be convinced to go review Soft Machine I & II already). Terrific seeing you discover this album at last, anyway--I've held it to be genius for nearly 50 years since first hearing it. It's probably where Jeff Beck decided Mick had copped his style and a lot of technique because you can certainly hear it here (though they would make it up and he'd take the stage with Bowie and the Spiders). SIDE NOTE: Do not keep forgetting Soft Machine I & II.
I love this album.....you see the creativity. If there was ever a candidate for remixing, this is one. Bowie's voice is buried. I love bass and it so great, but that mix is horrific. I knew since you loved Bewley Brothers, you would appreciate this. I think David would have fit right in with Genesis for 1 or 2 albums, but he would need to change genres with other players....
It's a wonderful album, as all of Bowie's are. Each album presents a place and time with Bowie, both a place and time when I heard it, and for him, when he produced it. It's always great to see another person appreciate someone I so profoundly admire. Thanks!
Hey well, that was great! I've heard this album, but it never caught me - I always thought of it as formative and groping overall. I love classic Bowie as much as anyone, and I love much of his later work more than many. I just never warmed to this disk. I'm willing to give it another chance here though. No one would be more pleased to discover a masterpiece late in the game, as I have on occasion with other artists. (Oldfield's Amarok comes to mind, took me decades to wrap my head around the greatness there.) We'll have to see...
I'm sure that you can hear the Anthony Newley Bowie being assimilated by the Ziggy Stardust Bowie at some point during this track (which does make me wonder how Hunky Dory fits in.) Things haven't quite come together yet, but all the signs are there.
I'm looking forward to eventually hearing your take on Space Oddity. While it's the only 'real' Bowie album that can sound a bit dated and it doesn't have Ronson's guitar and arrangements, or any obvious thematic links between the songs, the creativity is still outstanding. For me there's little to choose between any of his albums from Space Oddity to Aladdin Sane.
Love when you clap along haha! The most solid Bowie albums (in my opinion): -The Man Who Sold The World -Diamond Dogs -Station to Station -Lodger -Never Let Me Down (Yeah, I’m gonna get so much hate on this one)
You won't get hate from me for NLMD. I can never understand why this album is so maligned - even by Bowie himself! - there are some great tracks on it; and I suppose I have a soft spot for it because it was the very first CD I ever bought.
This was totally off my radar - I had no idea this existed before Bowie went to NYC, met Andy Warhol and recorded Hunky Dory. But this has lots of hints of future songs on albums like Ziggy Stardust.
Never liked that song. Somehow, musically, it reminds me of a mix of the wobbly tracks on his 1967 debut studio album and the 'theatrical rock' stuff on Ziggy Stardust. Lyrically it doesn't speak to me. Not my stuff at all!
Story of explaination is in order, buckle up buttercup. I had a dear friend, an older classman from highschool. He & I became closer aquainted in our early 20s because he too was an audiophile. He had his collection & I had mine which we often shared. I was the full blown Bowie fan, he had one single Bowie album. He always maintained there was little reason to expand from the perfect album when it came to buying further Bowie selections. It was 'Man Who Sold The World'. He did the exact same thing with Steely Dan's first. He wore me down by repeated plays when I began to understand his point of view. He was far wiser than he ever let on. This gradually became one of my favorites. The story has it Bowie once heard his material played at a party from an RCA CD. He got angry enough to sue RCA for total control of his material. He shopped around & decided to go with Frank Zappa's label Rycodisc. Those versions are the ones I own & the ones I highly recommend to this very day. thanx
I always wondered about the lyric “and my EST makes three”? Could Bowie have been referring to est training from Werner Erhard? This was a rigorous two week long workshop where participants were challenged and encouraged to be themselves and observe their own personalities. This entire album is in my top 5 Bowie albums.
Erhard came out with his stuff later. At this point, EST was electroshock therapy/torture used to supposedly blank out and reset bad thoughts, uncontrollable behavior or memories. It's still used, in much modified ECT (electroconvulsive) form for some conditions.
Not the original cover the thumbnail used, rather the American version due to censorship. The original has Bowie on a couch in a dress imitating a famous painting.
Although in a way it IS the original as it was released months before the UK version with the dress cover. I like both of them and really love the German fold out round cover too (have a bootleg version of that one). Not a fan of the Ziggy era re-issue cover though.
@@mellertid If I remember correctly the comic style cover was actually the first idea and then Bowie changed his mind and came up with the dress cover. But the American label didn't like it (for whatever reason) and refused to change it and so it was only used on the later UK edition. What was censored though in the American version was the text that was supposed to be in the speech bubble because it could have been interpreted as something drug related. That's why the bubble is blank.
The spoken section in the middle features a child’s voice saying “he followed me home mum, can I keep him?” Obviously referring to a dog. Then at the outro to the song he sings “ouvrez le chien” French for “open the dog” - really creepy image there.
One of my favorite Bowie tracks for so many reasons. There’s the lyrics and the whole backstory of Bowie’s half brother, who was on and off institutionalized, and then there’s the great bass, drums and guitar, and then just the way it tells a story from the perspective of someone who is really seeing the world a lot differently. The middle bit where Bowie is just kind of talking spaced out is brilliant.
BTW librium is I think some sort of antipsychotic drug used in the 60s and EST is electroshock therapy.
One of my favorite tracks as well - more for the lyrics than anything else. Bowie's early-career voice can now seem a bit grating, but here it only comes through sporadically. One of those songs that allowed me a glimpse into Bowie's head that instantly lodged in my mind and has stayed there for more than a half century.
Lou Reed was given EST in his youth. It inspired his great song Kill Your Sons @@WendyDarling1974
That's why, even if musically are very different, i've always considered this and "The Bewley Brothers" like twin songs
By a genuinely odd coincidence, the cartoon record image on the sleeve is recognisable as Cane Hill Hospital, the institute Bowie's half-brother was in.
I see you discovering that 'The Man Who Sold The World' is an essential Bowie album, and I'm here for it! What fun to see you listen to this record for the first time, music I've had in my life for 50 years just being discovered by someone. Thanks for this video, JP!
It's the artistical turning point album for Bowie and It's so ahead of its time. "She Shook Me Cold" could've been a song from a Nirvana album like "Bleach' or "In Utero", 20 years later.
Great comment.
This song sneaks up on you. Absolutely amazing. Can't wait to see your mind blown by the next track.
I so love this album but I need to be in a certain mindset to play it. The album cover is Cane Hill Asylum in London where Bowie's half brother Terry resided before his suicide.
Fun fact, Charlie Chaplin's mother was also a patient there.
I always wondered about that cover. VERY interesting and makes sense.
@@wpollock1And Bowie was friends with Charlie’s widow Oona Chaplin , oh and Eugene Chaplin was one of the engineers on Heroes too!
This is the cover for the US release. The original cover features Bowie in a dress, but I suppose the record company found that image too shocking for the US market.
Had this FB chat with Tony Visconti a few years back and he said of all the albums he's produced this one is his fave. This is one of the best sings on the album. I remember my gf getting this for me at Xmas one year and we kept it on repeat on the car stereo for a long while.
Visconti played the recorder on this track along with Ronson. I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall of the studio when Bowie’s 70s albums were being recorded. So much creativity.
What an absolute corker! Bowie was one of the giants of modern music! Such a key album in my own formative years! Thanks so much for this!
My favourite Bowie album for many, many years, and All The Madmen was instantly my favourite track on it. (I go back and forth between this and Width of a Circle these days.) Many thanks for reacting to this.
Hey Justin, glad to see you returning to Bowie. Great reaction to another great track. Looking forward to your eventual encounter with Aladdin Sane and Heroes, among others.
Wonderful to hear your take and reactions on Bowie. You have an educated, sensitive ear and make it fun. I’ve listened to this album off and on for 50 years now, but you make it new again. Fun. Thank you!
This song was self-referenced by David many years later on the title track for "The Buddah of Suburbia" BBC TV drama from 1993 ("Zane, Zane, Zane, Ouvrez le Chein") That whole album is incredible and gets slightly lost among his other catalogue. Please do it here!
Agree, this is one of his best albums - and I love Buddha Of Suburbia (I watched it recently on dvd).
You must be a Dad man. To be true "Madmen". Committing your progeny to lunacy, Society to insanity, and the World to its hypocrisy! An overlooked gem of a song and album! 🤪✌& ❤
Pure genius. Picked this album up, second hand, without its sleeve. I was 14. Played it endlessly.
It's been at least 20 years since I've listened to this track. It's so much better than my memory held. I think I need to go back and listen to this whole album again for the first time since I was a young man. Thanks!
Is there, was there, will there be....anyone like Bowie? Seriously doubt it. ♥
My favourite Bowie album absolutely love it
You have good taste.
From 'Love you till Tuesday' to this? What the hell went on?!
Rapid evolution! There aren't many days of the week that don't appear in Bowie song titles.
Another treat. Others will surely make reference to Bowie's half-brother Terry (see also The Bewlay Brothers and Jump They Say). I stated a few minutes ago on your reaction to The Width of a Circle that TMWSTW is one of my very favourite Bowie albums. Tracks like this prove the point. I was the right age and the right artistic temperament to appreciate Bowie when he emerged in all his Ziggy splendour in 1972. The latter half of 1972 had me listening endlessly to his first five albums. Nothing will ever better that musical experience. You've made reference to Gabriel and Genesis here, but I'd also urge you to listen to Van der Graff Generator's album H to He Who Am the Only One, particularly the track House With No Door. This album came out at about the same time and there are definite similarities. You may have done this already? Please keep going with TMWSTW.
I listened to Bowie in order, and my favorite Bowie's albums are "Hunky Dory" and the first one from 1967. Haven't listened to him yet after "Aladdin Sane" - which, along with "Ziggy Stardust", were a quite disappointment. Let's say, I can see why especially those albums had became truly popular, but my expectations after "All the Madmen", "She Shook Me Cold" (think you gonna like it), theatrical vignettes of the 1967 album, "Space Oddity", "Quicksand" and that cactus song were as far from "Ziggy Stardust" as Pink Floyd is far from Elvis Presley ;)
Great album! (side 2 is flawless. a remarkable progression even from side 1!) Tony Visconti on bass and production. He's worth exploring too.
Bowie's half brother suffered from schizophrenia and was in and out of asylums before ending himself in the early 80s. Because the illness tends to run in families, Bowie lived in fear that the disease might manifest in him too. This song, in a way, was him processing this fear.
Finally decided to become a Bowie fan, eh? NOT of that runny stool produced the LAST 40 years of his career but of the first FIVE.
That's how genius works, btw. THEY CATCH IT YOUNG. That's why you ALWAYS begin with first massive breakthroughs (in this case, Ziggy/Spiders/Mars) and work out from there--you don't BEGIN in geriatric late career, or even "second wind" middle age such as Low and Heroes (and why I can't believe you still cannot be convinced to go review Soft Machine I & II already).
Terrific seeing you discover this album at last, anyway--I've held it to be genius for nearly 50 years since first hearing it. It's probably where Jeff Beck decided Mick had copped his style and a lot of technique because you can certainly hear it here (though they would make it up and he'd take the stage with Bowie and the Spiders).
SIDE NOTE: Do not keep forgetting Soft Machine I & II.
one of my two favorite songs on the album, along with Saviour Machine. the wholw thing is amazing, though
One of my favorite Bowie tracks is on this album - After All - will be interested to hear your reaction. Imho understated and underrated.
I love this album.....you see the creativity. If there was ever a candidate for remixing, this is one. Bowie's voice is buried. I love bass and it so great, but that mix is horrific.
I knew since you loved Bewley Brothers, you would appreciate this.
I think David would have fit right in with Genesis for 1 or 2 albums, but he would need to change genres with other players....
It's a wonderful album, as all of Bowie's are. Each album presents a place and time with Bowie, both a place and time when I heard it, and for him, when he produced it. It's always great to see another person appreciate someone I so profoundly admire. Thanks!
Hey well, that was great! I've heard this album, but it never caught me - I always thought of it as formative and groping overall. I love classic Bowie as much as anyone, and I love much of his later work more than many. I just never warmed to this disk. I'm willing to give it another chance here though. No one would be more pleased to discover a masterpiece late in the game, as I have on occasion with other artists. (Oldfield's Amarok comes to mind, took me decades to wrap my head around the greatness there.) We'll have to see...
I'm sure that you can hear the Anthony Newley Bowie being assimilated by the Ziggy Stardust Bowie at some point during this track (which does make me wonder how Hunky Dory fits in.) Things haven't quite come together yet, but all the signs are there.
I used to put that on C90 mixtapes for girls cause I was that kind of kid.
This is a great album - nice to hear it being reacted to. Thanks for that!
I'm looking forward to eventually hearing your take on Space Oddity. While it's the only 'real' Bowie album that can sound a bit dated and it doesn't have Ronson's guitar and arrangements, or any obvious thematic links between the songs, the creativity is still outstanding. For me there's little to choose between any of his albums from Space Oddity to Aladdin Sane.
Not one of his albums I listen to a lot but I don’t know why. It’s really good.
listen to the "man" for 40 plus years, at some point in time it was like comming home
Thanks for this one, JP!
Love when you clap along haha!
The most solid Bowie albums (in my opinion):
-The Man Who Sold The World
-Diamond Dogs
-Station to Station
-Lodger
-Never Let Me Down (Yeah, I’m gonna get so much hate on this one)
You won't get hate from me for NLMD. I can never understand why this album is so maligned - even by Bowie himself! - there are some great tracks on it; and I suppose I have a soft spot for it because it was the very first CD I ever bought.
Such a good album!
How can you do david bowie without doing peter murphy, Sanity assasins, cuts you up, in the flat fields and so many more
I've listened to all of Flat Field 😬ruclips.net/video/882zYIVljgQ/видео.html
Definitely one of the greatest
And the darkest
This was totally off my radar - I had no idea this existed before Bowie went to NYC, met Andy Warhol and recorded Hunky Dory. But this has lots of hints of future songs on albums like Ziggy Stardust.
There's even more of Diamond Dogs in here,imo.
cool
possibly the best track on the album
Even in these earlier tracks, the theatricality is already there.
First time I see the American album cover! Strange vibe.
As explained elsewhere, the Cartoon one may actually be considered the original :-)
I guess it's hard to look pass one's first imprint of a thing.
Never liked that song. Somehow, musically, it reminds me of a mix of the wobbly tracks on his 1967 debut studio album and the 'theatrical rock' stuff on Ziggy Stardust. Lyrically it doesn't speak to me. Not my stuff at all!
Davadmits to emulating Anthony newly
But mainly on his debut album.
Awesome song.
Story of explaination is in order, buckle up buttercup. I had a dear friend, an older classman from highschool. He & I became closer aquainted in our early 20s because he too was an audiophile. He had his collection & I had mine which we often shared. I was the full blown Bowie fan, he had one single Bowie album. He always maintained there was little reason to expand from the perfect album when it came to buying further Bowie selections. It was 'Man Who Sold The World'. He did the exact same thing with Steely Dan's first. He wore me down by repeated plays when I began to understand his point of view. He was far wiser than he ever let on. This gradually became one of my favorites. The story has it Bowie once heard his material played at a party from an RCA CD. He got angry enough to sue RCA for total control of his material. He shopped around & decided to go with Frank Zappa's label Rycodisc. Those versions are the ones I own & the ones I highly recommend to this very day. thanx
I always wondered about the lyric “and my EST makes three”? Could Bowie have been referring to est training from Werner Erhard? This was a rigorous two week long workshop where participants were challenged and encouraged to be themselves and observe their own personalities.
This entire album is in my top 5 Bowie albums.
Erhard came out with his stuff later. At this point, EST was electroshock therapy/torture used to supposedly blank out and reset bad thoughts, uncontrollable behavior or memories. It's still used, in much modified ECT (electroconvulsive) form for some conditions.
Uncle Arthur is great.
He leaned a thing or two when he followed Sally, but he was always happier when he followed mother.
Not the original cover the thumbnail used, rather the American version due to censorship. The original has Bowie on a couch in a dress imitating a famous painting.
Although in a way it IS the original as it was released months before the UK version with the dress cover. I like both of them and really love the German fold out round cover too (have a bootleg version of that one). Not a fan of the Ziggy era re-issue cover though.
Was it litterally censored or was it, like, decided it wouldn't work?
@@mellertid If I remember correctly the comic style cover was actually the first idea and then Bowie changed his mind and came up with the dress cover. But the American label didn't like it (for whatever reason) and refused to change it and so it was only used on the later UK edition. What was censored though in the American version was the text that was supposed to be in the speech bubble because it could have been interpreted as something drug related. That's why the bubble is blank.
@@frankj10000 cool, thanks!
Yay 👩🏽🎤
..though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death ......