Aladdin Sane 50th Anniversary (Half Speed Master)

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The Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer will host two nights of club music in celebration of Bowie on April 21 and 22, with DJ collective Queer House Party and Afro-Caribbean-inspired Queer Bruk. Chris Duffy who took the photo used on the front cover of David Bowie's Aladdin Sane album Credit: Duffy (c) Duffy Archive & The David Bowie Archive

Additionally, Anna Calvi, Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears, Roxanne Tataei, Tawiah, and Lynks will join join the Nu Civilisation Orchestra to perform Aladdin Sane live in full on 21 April at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.

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The whole infrastructure was there. We were using the ‘Hey Jude’ piano The Beatles used at Trident, and you also have Ken Scott’s [producer] experience and the way he mixed that record.” It’s been suggested Lear, amongst others, was the inspiration for ‘Lady Grinning Soul’. “It almost has a French influence. David was also reading a lot of French philosophy at the time,” adds Underwood. “It also sounds to me like it could be Berlin at a burlesque club after the war.”

Bowie, one of the most influential and revered musicians of the 20th century, died with liver cancer on January 10 2016, two days after his 69th birthday. The album was preceded by two singles‘The Jean Genie’and‘Drive-In Saturday’,peaking in the U.K. singles chart at numbers 2 and 3 respectively,and was the first time he topped the U.K. album charts. It also markedBowie’sdebut on the U.S. charts reaching the top 20 album chart there, where an edited version of‘Time’was released as a single. They will discuss exhibitions ranging from The Rolling Stones’ Exhibitionism (2016) to Amy: Beyond the Stage (2021). Broakes will chair a conversation with Chris Duffy discussing the Aladdin Sane: 50 Years exhibition and the enduring relevance of the album. The day’s talks will close with writers Paul Burston and Golnoosh Nour on the cultural impact of Bowie’s androgyny and his playful subversion of gender identity. On 14th April, 2023, one week before its Golden Jubilee, ALADDIN SANE will be issued as a limited edition 50th anniversary half-speed mastered LP and a picture disc LP pressed from the same master.

Aladdin Sane perhaps more than any other Bowie album achieved that aim. One of Garson’s abiding memories is perpetually-exploding speakers. “Our recordings were being blasted out and every night. The speakers would blow out and they would have to replace it. God knows what it was costing.” Aladdin Sane 50 Years is being marked by a series of events The Southbank Centre, London for more info southbankcentre.co.uk David always had the flash concept in his head,” says Chris. “Being a big Elvis fan who he shared his birthday with, he lifted it from his taking care of business in a flash acronym. When they were deciding on the colour scheme they agreed on the flash from the Panasonic rice cooker my grandma bought. So you could say she was elemental in bringing that to fruition.” As part of the 50th anniversary celebrations, a number of artists will pay tribute to Bowie and Aladdin Sane in the Royal Festival Hall on April 21.

It's a spine-tingling moment when Garson begins to play some of the tune’s higher notes over Zoom to illustrate the influence of French composer Claude Debussy. “There’s a lot of classical influences,” he explains. “Chopin, Franz Liszt, there’s some Rachmaninov mixed with my voice adding some jazz chords.”The two-month long exhibition runs from 6 April-28 May and explores the creation of the album’s artwork. A line-up of live music and talks inspired by the Bowie’s sixth record is also booked. He later had the opportunity to photograph Bowie alongside his father in 1980 for his 14th studio album Scary Monsters. Another significant player he brought on board was David Sanborn who added tenor sax to a new version of ‘The Prettiest Star’, released as a single three years earlier with Marc Bolan on guitar. Bowie was already looking ahead. “David would sit listening to Aretha Franklin,” says Garson of their time travelling across America in 1972. “He was thinking of Young Americans; he jumped a couple of albums.”

Bowie, morphing from Ziggy Stardust, his previous persona, to Aladdin Sane, insisted on a lightning flash. “The image asks more questions than it answers: many dissertations have been written about its meaning,” Duffy said. “Bowie was very clever at putting something out there, and letting everyone else come up with some kind of theory on it.”Chris refers to the cover as "the Mona Lisa of Pop", and it remains Bowie’s most recognisable album sleeve. It also provided him with a brand logo in the form of the flash but it’s the small teardrop on Bowie's shoulder that adds a further uncanny quality. This new pressing of ALADDIN SANE was cut on a customised late Neumann VMS80 lathe with fully recapped electronics from 192kHz restored masters of the original master tapes, with no additional processing on transfer. The half-speed was cut by John Webber at AIR Studios. Speaking to the Guardian on the eve of the exhibition’s opening, Chris Duffy said that for his father it was “just another job”. He added: “I don’t think any artist gets up in the morning and thinks I’m going to create a piece of brilliant art or a cultural icon. It’s all about timing. A lot of things came together at the right time to produce this.”