THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD

'The Man Who Sold The World' was where I came in with David Bowie although I only remember the version with the black and white cover and its picture of Ziggy Stardust, guitar in hand, impersonating a can-can dancer, rather than the one with the effete man-dress sleeve. You really have to marvel at Bowie for his serial reinvention and for always being at the cutting edge; thanks to his perpetually modulating personae his image has probably taken more of a pounding than a well-torpedoed hull.

On this album he cast himself against type by turning to Americanised guitar-oriented heavy rock, albeit with a hoofing great dose of prog. And the lyrics had a decidedly dark and intellectual posture. Here Bowie's words talk: about supernatural sex, about insanity, about Nietzchian philosophy, about war. The end result of this marriage of roots rock and arty-farty texts is an almost perfect storm of futuristic hard rock.