Space Oddity

Space Oddity

David Bowie

‘Major Tom’ is a fictional character created by David Bowie for this song in 1969. That same year marked the first moon landing, so space was “in”; this was a year after Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, co-written with Arthur C. Clarke.

The song is a “lost in space” story, which generated later more songs and sequels about the character by David Bowie (“Ashes to Ashes” and “Hallo Spaceboy”) and even other artists (Peter Schilling’s 1983 “Major Tom (coming home)”, (K.I.A.’s “Mrs Major Tom” and possibly Elton John’s “Rocket Man”. The last one is also produced by Gus Dudgeon, who filled in for Bowie’s usual collaborator Tony Visconti once he refused to work in “Space Oddity” feeling it was a novelty song, a publicity stunt to cash in to the Apollo missions (“this is not ‘Space Oddity’, it’s Ernie The Milkman”).

Many believe that the song describes a drug (heroin) trip, from “lift-off” to “floating” to being “still” with “circuit’s dead” ending in “nothing I can do”.