Customer Reviews
Overrated - By: M. Evans, 25 Nov 2008 
This is my least favourite 70's Bowie album. I'm not saying it's bad exactly, I just find it a lot weaker than his other offerings from the 70's. Coming straight after his masterpiece, Ziggy Stardust, it does seem inferior & the subsequent Diamond Dogs is one of my favourites. Opening song Watch That Man is very unremarkable, & the title track contains a very self-indulgent piano solo that I just find irritating. The final song, Lady Grinning Soul just doesn't do it for me, & the other tracks are merely 'ok'. It's not a bad Bowie album by any means, but I just find it very overrated, a much poorer version of Ziggy Stardust.
Watch that man - By: John Pownall, 14 Nov 2008 
The big album of 1973, Bowie (or at least his Mainman production team) was coining it in. No surprise; he embraced the guitar driven rock of the glam era & lead from the front, possibly for the only time in his career.
In pure visual terms, the Bowie "look" was becoming more bizarre. This was glam at the dirty edge, & the album reeks of decadence & too many one night stands. The sounds too, Stones influenced rock, jazz influenced pop, were quite new to those attuned to the Englishness of Kooks & After All. But musicallly this album showed a new side to Bowie, not perhaps understood at the time.
It shows him taking on board newer sounds, & breaking away from the constraints of the Spiders format. In many ways it was quite a departure from Ziggy. Bowie himself has said that he feels the album is more informed musicallly than its predecessor.The beautiful piano work of Mike Garson on the title track; the textures of Drive in Saturday (surely Bowie's best glam era single?), the guitar on Cracked Actor, these are as great as anything he'd done before. Indeed, it is hard to find a weak number on the album, save, perhaps, the cover of Let's Spend the Night Together. The sad thing about the album, in a way, is that it was so badly produced. One just wishes that Tony Visconti had been able to produce these songs, as the vocals are just a little too much in the background for my taste. Bowie was clearly trying to make a real rock album, putting the instruments up front, & whilst this works brilliantly on, say, Aladdin Sane itself (a sonic masterpiece), songs like "Time" & Panic in Detroit do get swamped a little. For this, the album should get 4 & a half rather than 5 stars; yet the sum of its parts makes it worthy of the 5th.
Bowie at the peak of his creativity - By: Keith Joseph, 13 Sep 2008 This is the raunchy glam-rock era of Bowie's music I much prefer, & although as a youth I wanted to have Brian Eno's babies artisticallly speaking, I thought Bowie lost it a little after Heroes & Low hit the scene. They were reallly great & innovative LPs though, & as I have alll Eno's albums [now as CDs] I can forgive his collaboration on Low changing Bowie's musical path. Besides Bowie's creativity over the years has been little short of startling. Perhaps I prefer album's Ziggy Stardust, Hunky Dory & Diamond Dogs a tad more that Aladdin sane though. But anyway, this CD 'Aladdin sane' has the rock classic 'Jean Genie' on it, worth £5 of anyone's money in my book - consider alll the other tracks a great bonus. I much prefer the cohesion of tracks originallly recorded together, rather than a 'best of' compilation. Besides as shown by the other reviews here, your fave track from this album might not even make it on to a 'best of' CD. So I'm now re-amassing a `remastered' CD collection of alll my aging Bowie LPs [that's 11 in alll].
Apparently Aladdin Sane is a pun on 'A lad insane'. This album was the follow on from 1972's Ziggy Stardust album & tour. Aladdin Sane's lyrics were inspired by Evelyn Waugh's book 'Vile Bodies' (later filmed as 'Bright young things', a phrase that appears in the song). The superb glam-rock LP album cover of Bowie, photographed by Brian Duffy, is somewhat lost on the smalll CD insert though. The original LP cover image was printed in seven colours, a process not possible in the UK at the time, so the task was carried out in Switzerland instead.
Haven't noticed the 'remastered' difference over my original LP much though, but the sound quality on CD is excellent. Having watched BBC's 'Life on Mars' DVDs with its thumping 70s soundtrack, even my daughter [14] has built up a David Bowie MP3 collection. Oh, enough of this, just buy 'Aladdin sane' as a CD now! (and avoid download compression effects, get no LP pops & crackles, & keep this superb music for life).
A novelistic montage of kaleidoscopic imagery and Bowie's masterpeice. - By: Mr. Philip Baird, 07 Jul 2008 Although 'Hunky Dory' has always just shaded this as my favourite Bowie album, listening to 'Aladdin Sane' again thirty-five years later, I'm convinced beyond reasonable doubt that this is his masterpiece. It almost doesn't quite hang together as an album but by its sheer brilliance & breadth it just does. Your other reviewers are very perceptive & there have been some very informed comments, recognising the qualities that seem to grow with every listen, however many times you hear it. It is as rewarding as a great novel with it's multitude of references, & echoes of other times & places from thirties Berlin to the golden age of Hollywood, as well as to the contemporary street hassle of seventies America. Each song triggers your imagination & seems to resonate beyond itself into a greater mindscape. Bowie's singing is incredible, & the band, arrangements & production are as good as it's ever going to get. Special mention of course must go to the inspired guitar playing of Ronson (it's a guitar masterclass) & the brilliant addition of Mike Garson that takes the album into the stratosphere - where did Bowie get him from ? Nobody else could pull an ace out of the pack the way Bowie did with Garson.
Opening with the pounding 'Watch That Man' (what a title & what an introduction!), the album never lets go, & not even the Stones at their very best could match the power of this opening track. From that to the decadent lounge jazz of the title track, alll swirling piano chords & lost romanticism suddenly intercut with Garson's superb free-jazz solo that takes the song to another level altogether. 'Drive in Saturday' is a paean to the old movies that Bowie so loves & is packed with fabulous imagery. 'Panic in Detroit' is pure Stones again but Mick & Keith never "jumped the silent cars that slept at traffic lights". 'Time' melds the 'Threepenny Opera' with one of Bowie's most affecting show stoppers that kicks anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber into the front row of the balcony. 'The Prettiest Star' is the album's 'Kooks' & could so easily have come from 'Hunky Dory'. Over a simple blues riff, 'The Jean Genie' is Bowie's 'Walk on the Wild Side' & must have given Lou a broad smile (no mean achievement in itself). As other reviewers have already said, 'Lady Grinning Soul' is perhaps Dave's finest moment - ice cold beauty with Ronno & Garson sharing equal honours - a stunning finale. You can probably tell I like it.
a crashcourse for the ravers - By: MadMan Man, 17 Feb 2008 Has Richard "Rich" Nobody actuallly ever listened to this? Please excuse me, i'm feeling reallly quite indignant at his review. "Let's spend the night together. No thanks" I regard that track almost as musical perfection borne out of the (deliberate!) chaos of its opening, & reckon the Stones must have been staggered as well.
Watch that Man has always been a favourite, & check out Aladin Sane's exquisite piano(!!) join with the next bit.......
For some balance, i was never too keen on Panic in Detroit or Cracked Actor, & have always been embarrassed by THAT line in 'Time' (made-up for by Bowie's breath-taking vocal), but this was the first DB album i bought way back as a teenager (after being stunned by the single, Drive-in Saturday), went on to buy Hunky Dory and, of course, many more.
Did this album change my life? Yes....... & one day in the long & distant future a lot of Bowie's lyrics & music will still be ahead of their time.
