Fame, Eternity, and David Bowie's Space Oddity

Major Tom didn't take a one way trip

Astronauts are “the best and the brightest” in their field. Great demands are placed on mind, body and soul. Theirs is also a life of danger.

 “Ground Control to Major Tom…Take your protein pills and put your helmet on,

Ground Control to Major Tom, Commencing countdown, engines on

Check ignition and may God's love be with you…Lift off”

In David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” the astronaut-protagonist Major Tom took a fateful trip into the cosmos. Tom has become part of pop mythology, joining Jokerman (Bob Dylan), Phillip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler) and J. Alfred Prufrock (T.S. Eliot) to prove that great characters collapse time and thought in great stories.

Bowie never really explained what Major Tom is about, leaving the character and the story open to interpretation. Some critics concluded that Tom died through some faithless act of despair, resignation, or sabotage. Nicholas Pegg, an actor/author/critic, and respected Bowie-anthologist, called “Space Oddity” a “Hamlet-like meditation on the consequences of inaction.”

The song fades in with a pensive march of reverb-drenched 12-string guitar, Mellotron cello, and vibraphone, but while the F/Em chord progression feels ominous to some, I felt more of a building promise and sense of oncoming comfort. If there is melancholy in “Oddity,” it is transitional and warm-blooded, like the words of the psalmist describing God in the cosmos, “If I ascend up into heaven, you are there:  if I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there…” (Psalm 138:9).

The song title is a riff on the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 conveys Clarke’s theory on the future symbiosis of man and machine; that man is evolving from ape to man, man to machine, and man to 'Star Child.’ However, I find scant evidence that Tom is a martyr/poster boy promoting science as salvation. Bowie finished “Oddity” not long after viewing 2001 several times (saying the movie “got the song flowing”). He confirmed the song is “about alienation” and that he had “a lot of empathy” with Major Tom, but why have the lyrics and the story become so endearing and personal to people?

The vastness of space avails astronauts to a profound sense of context. Meanwhile, back on earth, astronauts become heroes to science and public, sometimes becoming role models, fantasy-objects, and pop stars. Bowie has penned many lyrics about the various meanings of the word “star.”

“This is Ground Control to Major Tom, You've really made the grade

And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear”

“Fame is finally only the sum total of all the misunderstandings that can gather around a new name.”—Rainer Maria Rilke

“Fame makes a man think things over.”—David Bowie, “Fame” (1975)

“And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above…”— Daniel the prophet

Clarke’s theory in 2001 is striking, but his story is but a dilation on THE ILIAD, Homer’s earthbound classic. The word “odyssey” means “a quest.” Questing has never been reliant on machines. “Space Oddity” is a very human quest; a “sci-fi operetta” about estrangement from fame, society, and technocracy.

Bowie’s “Oddity” was released in the UK in July 1969 to coincide with Apollo 11 moon landing. The song was the music bed for BBC broadcasts of the event.

At the time, however, “Oddity” was shrugged off as a pop music novelty. Later that year (on a bill with Humble Pie and Love Sculpture), Bowie was booed as he performed it solo-acoustic. This stung him, particularly as he was grieving over the recent death of his father. Some Bowie-philes believe this era started Bowie on the trek of using stage-personas (Ziggy Stardust, Thin White Duke, etc.) to protect himself from the public.

It would be a while before “Oddity” would gain respect for the magnificent bit of progressive pop/rock that it is. It didn’t get American airplay until 1973 (as a reissue after ZIGGY STARDUST became a huge hit LP).

In that time, I was living in rural central Pennsylvania. It was hard to find a copy of “Space Oddity” (single or LP), so I incessantly nagged local radio disc jockeys to play it over and over.

“Oddity” has been done in an array of versions, from Mike Garson’s majestic arrangement for children’s choir and orchestra

to compelling acoustic guitar reductions. I perform it on a slide 12-string guitar tuned down to C/G/C/E/G/C. In 2019 I recorded it and mostly stayed faithful to the original with Mellotron, Stylophone, etc., but I added more vocal harmonies, one extra half measure, and wrapped it up in a choral mode similar to Ligeti’s choral sections in the 2001 film soundtrack.

Bowie’s definitive 1969 track is a gorgeous arrangement. It features top session players (from the Donovan/Pentangle camp), swirling 12-string guitars (doubled by Keith Christmas), and sweeping Mellotron work by keyboard giant Rick Wakeman (in his second-ever studio job). Wakeman cites “Oddity” as a personal favorite and does it in his solo piano set.

“Oddity” emerged when the optimistic, flower-powered side of the 60s was being overcome by prophetic, visionary, and often dystopian works by progressive rock acts like The Moody Blues, Pink Floyd and King Crimson (soon to release their Mellotron-pillared masterpiece, IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING). Bowie was only distinguishing himself from a tizzy of British Invasion folk-rockers, and “Oddity” gave him a fresh career persona.

“Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare

This is Major Tom to Ground Control , I'm stepping through the door

And I'm floating in a most peculiar way, And the stars look very different today”

Major Tom entered the cosmos as an agent provocateur against alienation (on technocracy’s dime). He celebrates popping out of the “tin can” for a nice stroll in anti-grav.

“For here am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world”

In another setting, Tom could also be singing “Over the Rainbow.”

“Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do”

Some Bowie-philes assume that Tom felt like an existential speck, asking “What’s the point?” I don’t agree with this view. Ground Control and Tom have stated belief in God, a Higher Power. Tom, in an obviously good mood as one can get when both fear and excitement are running the brain, feels a kind of privilege in this spectacle of beautiful blue earth. He is simply expressing awe over a universe he couldn’t have created himself.

“Don't have to question everything in heaven or hell/Lord, I kneel and offer you my word on a wing/And I'm trying hard to fit among your scheme of things”—David Bowie, “Word on a Wing” (1976)

“Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles I'm feeling very still

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go”

In Tom’s last transmission, his radix is not Ground Control, but devotion, trust, and love: “Tell my wife I love her very much... she knows”

Bowie said “Oddity” was also influenced by the orchestral rock sounds of The Bee Gees, whose “1941 Mining Disaster” (1967) was a husband/wife message.

Sadly, the Bee Gees’s Mr. Jones’s wife was lost in the ground. Tom is in open space.

“Ground Control to Major Tom Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong

Can you hear me, Major Tom? Can you....”

Death is said to be the ultimate career move. Is Tom only making a move? Did the celebrity-worn Tom cut a deal with Ground Control, saying “I’ll keep your secrets if you keep mine?”

Bowie never pronounced Tom’s death, and Tom went on to inform many Bowie characters. Tom came out of moon-dusted spiritual exile to appear (by name) in “Ashes to Ashes” (1980)

and “Hallo! Spaceboy” (1995)

Tom is still beguiled by space, outer and inner, much like Job was:

“Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering. He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing. He binds up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not split open under them. He covers the face of the full moon and spreads it over his cloud. He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble and are astounded…By his wind the heavens were made fair... Behold these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?” Book of Job, Chapter 26.

Leave it to Bowie to leave us a song that ministered to me as a troubled youth and still creates new space inside and out.

Other Bowie-related projects I’ve recorded or performed:

“Starman”

Radio show with Mike Garson

“Fame” (live)

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