Pin Ups
Pin Ups is the seventh studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 19October 1973 through RCA Records. Devised as a "stop-gap" album to appease his record label, it is a covers album, featuring glam rock and proto-punk versions of songs by 1960s bands who were influential to Bowie as a teenager, including the Pretty Things, the Who, the Yardbirds and Pink Floyd.
The album was recorded from July to August 1973 at the Château d'Hérouville in Hérouville, France following the completion of the Ziggy Stardust Tour. It was Bowie's final album co-produced with Ken Scott. Two members of the Spiders from Mars backing band contributed, Mick Ronson on guitar and Trevor Bolder on bass, while Mick Woodmansey was replaced by Aynsley Dunbar on drums. Following a surprise announcement at the end of the tour that the Spiders were breaking up, tensions were high during the sessions, which was reflected in the tracks. The album cover, featuring Bowie and the 1960s supermodel Twiggy, was taken in Paris and originally intended for the cover of British Vogue magazine.
Released only six months after Aladdin Sane and preceded by a cover of the Merseys' song "Sorrow" as the lead single, Pin Ups was a commercial success, topping the UK Albums Chart, but received negative reviews from critics, who criticised the songs as generally inferior to the originals. Retrospective reviewers have described it as uneven, while others believe it had a good premise, but suffered from poor execution. Bowie's biographers have noted it as an experiment in nostalgia. Some publications have regarded it as one of the best covers albums. It has been reissued numerous times and was remastered in 2015 as part of the box set Five Years .
Background
By 1973, David Bowie was at his commercial peak. At the end of July, five of his six albums were in the top 40 and three were in the top 15. Bowie's most recent LP, Aladdin Sane, came out in April, but his label, RCA Records, wanted a new album by Christmas. Having just completed the Ziggy Stardust Tour, Bowie was exhausted from the extensive touring schedule. His manager at the time, Tony Defries, was negotiating for larger royalties with Bowie's music publisher and recommended he not record any new compositions until negotiations were finished. Although he had intended his next project to be an adaptation of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, he devised a record of cover versions as a "stopgap" album.On the final date of the tour, 3 July, Bowie unexpectedly announced that "this is the last show we'll ever do". The announcement drove a wedge between Bowie and his backing band, the Spiders from Mars – Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Woody Woodmansey – specifically Bolder and Woodmansey, who were unaware of the announcement in advance.
The two were also unhappy upon discovering the pianist Mike Garson, who joined the tour after Aladdin Sane, was being paid more than them. Shortly after the tour's end, Woodmansey was fired by Garson over a phone call. To record the covers album, Bowie brought back Garson, Ronson and the Aladdin Sane players Ken Fordham and Geoffrey MacCormack. The session drummer Aynsley Dunbar replaced Woodmansey and Bolder returned after Jack Bruce of the band Cream declined.
Production
Composition
Pin Ups was Bowie's tribute to bands that had inspired him as a teenager. Bowie later explained: "These are all bands which I used to go and hear play down the Marquee between 1964 and 1967. I've got all these records back at home." According to the biographer Chris O'Leary, he chose the tracks by "going through a stack of 45s in his rooms at the Hyde Park Hotel before leaving for France". The musician Scott Richardson, a Pretty Things fan, convinced Bowie to cover two of their songs. Other artists selected included the Yardbirds, the Kinks, Pink Floyd and the Who. The final tracklist includes the Pretty Things' "Rosalyn" and "Don't Bring Me Down", Them's "Here Comes the Night", Pink Floyd's "See Emily Play", the Mojos' "Everything's Alright", the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" and their rendition of Billy Boy Arnold's "I Wish You Would", the Easybeats' "Friday on My Mind", the Merseys' "Sorrow", the Who's "I Can't Explain" and "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", and the Kinks' "Where Have All the Good Times Gone". Bowie had also considered re-recording his 1966 single "The London Boys" but the idea was discarded.The songs on Pin Ups feature the same arrangements as the originals, albeit performed in glam rock and proto-punk styles. Regarding this, Bowie explained: "We just took down the basic chord structures and worked from there... Some of them don't even need any working on – like 'Rosalyn' for example. But most of the arranging I have done by myself and Mick, and Aynsley too." The author Peter Doggett writes that only two tracks, "I Wish You Would" and "See Emily Play", contained varied arrangements from the originals.
Recording
Pin Ups was recorded at the Château d'Hérouville in Hérouville, France, in sessions lasting for three weeks from July to August 1973. The venue was chosen after being recommended by Marc Bolan, whose band T. Rex who had just recorded Tanx there. It was co-produced by Bowie and Ken Scott and marked the final collaboration between the two. According to O'Leary, rehearsing consisted of playing the band the original track a few times before recording began. Tensions were high during the sessions. Bolder, believing he was unwanted, recorded his bass parts quickly and left. Richardson recalled Ronson overworking himself: "He did everything in the studio, he tuned everybody's instruments, he worked on all the arrangements... a tremendous burden on him;" he also grew wary of his future after the collapse of the Spiders. Scott was facing personal issues on top of pressure from his management company to leave over MainMan not paying him royalties, while Bowie had, in O'Leary's words, an "increasingly remote and truculent attitude in the studio".A version of the Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" was recorded during the sessions but went unreleased; Bowie donated the backing track to Ronson for his 1975 solo album Play Don't Worry. The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" was also attempted during the sessions, but was left abandoned. The sessions were put on hold in mid-July for the recording of the Scottish singer Lulu's covers of Bowie's tracks "Watch That Man" and "The Man Who Sold the World". The Pin Ups personnel contributed to the recording.
Pin Ups was the first of two "1960s nostalgia" albums that Bowie had planned to release. The second would have contained Bowie covering his favourite American artists, but was never recorded. Rumoured tracks to have appeared for the project include the Stooges' "No Fun", the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" and Roxy Music's "Ladytron". Bowie also considered making a Pin Ups sequel: he had compiled a list of songs he wanted to cover, some of which showed up on his later releases of Heathen and Reality.
Artwork and packaging
The cover photo for Pin Ups reflected the theme of swinging London by featuring the 1960s supermodel Twiggy, who had previously been name-checked on Aladdin Sanes "Drive-In Saturday" as "Twig the Wonder Kid". The photo was taken midway through the recording sessions at a Paris studio by Twiggy's then-manager and partner Justin de Villeneuve; he recalled in 2010: "Twiggy and I had first heard David mention her on Aladdin Sane... We loved the album so much I called David and asked him if he would like to do a shoot with Twiggy. He jumped at the idea." Twiggy recalled in her autobiography In Black and White that she was "really quite nervous" meeting Bowie, but "he immediately put me at ease. He was everything I could have hoped for and more". During the shoot, Bowie and Twiggy had different skin tones, which Aladdin Sane make-up designer Pierre Laroche balanced out using make-up masks. Twiggy found the final result "enigmatic and strange", later calling it one of her favourite images and "possibly the most widely distributed photograph ever taken of me". The photo was originally slated to appear in Vogue magazine, although they did not want a man appearing on their front cover, so Bowie opted to use it as the album cover instead; de Villeneuve later recalled Vogue being infuriated by the decision.The original LP's rear sleeve featured two photos by the photographer Mick Rock, one of a concert shot from the Ziggy tour and another of Bowie wearing a double-breasted suit cradling a saxophone. Bowie wrote in the book Moonage Daydream: "I chose the performance photos for the back cover as they were favourite Rock shots of mine. I also did the back cover layout with the colour combination of red writing on blue as it again hinted at Sixties psychedelia." A discarded idea for the sleeve came from photographer Alan Motz, who "wanted to shoot Bowie metamorphosing into an animal". This idea would be used for Bowie's next album, Diamond Dogs.
Release
RCA issued the lead single "Sorrow", featuring a cover of Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam" as the B-side, on 12 October 1973; it had been delayed from its original release date of 28 September. The single was a commercial success, peaking at number three on the UK Singles Chart and stayed on the chart for 15 weeks, becoming one of his biggest hits. Pin Ups followed suit a week later on 19 October, issued with the catalogue number RS 1003, only six months after his previous album Aladdin Sane. On the album sleeve, Bowie was simply referred to as "Bowie". In America, the advertising campaign read: "Pin Ups means favourites, and these are Bowie's favourite songs. It's the kind of music your parents will never let you play loud enough!"The album's release coincided with Roxy Music's former singer Bryan Ferry's covers album These Foolish Things. As Ferry had recorded his album weeks before Bowie began work on Pin Ups, Ferry was annoyed at the perceived copying of his project, calling it a "rip-off". According to Sandford, he allegedly went to his label Island Records to request they file an injunction to prevent Pin Ups from being released before These Foolish Things. Instead, O'Leary writes that Bowie phoned Ferry to inform him of Pin Ups and requested permission to record a Roxy Music song. Ferry later told biographer David Buckley, "At first I was a bit apprehensive, but Bowie's record turned out to be very different. I myself was always very anxious to be different from other people... and to forge my own furrow." In the event, both albums were released as planned and charted on the same day, 3November 1973.