… and The Mercury Demos
An excellent feature in the Scottish newspaper ‘The Herald’…
On July 3, 1973, an exhausted David Bowie informed auxiliary Spider From Mars John ‘Hutch’ Hutchison to wait for his signal before strumming the opening chords of the much-loved torch song and set-closer Rock n Roll Suicide. At that moment Ziggy Stardust would announce his retirement from the stage, breaking up the band and ending the juggernaut Aladdin Sane Tour which had been expected to continue throughout the rest of 1973.
This also brought Hutch’s significant association with Bowie to an end. With a special 50th-anniversary edition of Space Oddity being released in July and The Mercury Demos at the end of this month, there is a renewed focus on his first notable guitarist and sideman. Earlier this year two seven-inch single box sets, Spying Through A Keyhole and Clareville Grove Demos, featured formative, home-recordings of the song with Hutch on vocals and guitar alongside Bowie.
“I had bits of input and some suggestions but it was David’s song. David had that quite strange arrangement because he had written it for the two of us, he wanted us to sing it together; David was Major Tom and I was Ground Control.
Read the full article HERE
