“Oh, look out you rock ‘n’ rollers”
It’s National Album Day in the UK today (Saturday, 13th October) and the celebrations started early. You may have seen that Mary Anne Hobbs on BBC 6 Music kicked off proceedings by playing David Bowie’s ★ in full, plus she had a chat with Donny McCaslin, ★ bandleader.
Always ahead of the curve, David Bowie himself possibly foresaw the result of a 12-hour poll of 381 Bowie fans over on BOWIE KOOKS for their favourite Bowie studio album. He predicted it in his son's bedroom in 1972 by holding the Hunky Dory artwork in a moment captured by the magician of rock photography, Mick Rock. But it’s far more likely he didn’t.
In an interview with Chris Roberts in UNCUT in 1999, Bowie himself considered the album to be one of the most important in his career, he said: "Hunky Dory gave me a fabulous groundswell. I guess it provided me, for the first time in my life, with an actual audience – I mean, people actually coming up to me and saying, 'Good album, good songs.' That hadn't happened to me before. It was like, 'Ah, I'm getting it, I'm finding my feet. I'm starting to communicate what I want to do. Now: what is it I want to do?' There was always a double whammy there.".
The other three albums in our montage are there because, a) Mary Anne Hobbs played ★ in full, b) the BBC 6 Music Breakfast Team, chose Station To Station as one of their four all-time favourite albums, and, c) a member of the 15-strong Official Charts team chose Low as their all-time favourite album.
We’ll leave you with the Top 10.
01 - Hunky Dory (68 votes)
02 - Station To Station (56 votes)
03 - The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (47 votes)
04 - Low (44 votes)
05 - Diamond Dogs (30 votes)
06 - Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) (25 votes)
07 - 1. Outside (24 votes)
08 - Aladdin Sane (16 votes)
= 09 - ★ (Blackstar) (10 votes)
= 09 - Heathen (10 votes)
10 - Young Americans (8 votes)
It’s probably no surprise that a group called BOWIE KOOKS would vote for Hunky Dory. See the full poll result over on BOWIE KOOKS
#NationalAlbumDay