The classic song 'Life On Mars?' by David Bowie was first released on the classic album 'Hunky Dory' in 1971.
It features piano by Rick Wakeman.
What are the geographical aspects of the song?
How might Life On Mars? have been inspired by BBC controversy?
Spoiler alert: Life On Mars? isn’t really about Mars! It was actually about escaping from the perceived banality of suburban life to search for other, hopefully more interesting places.
'Life On Mars?' presents a cynical perspective about such aspiration, with acerbic views on the American Dream ‘It's on America's tortured brow; That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow’ and the impact of mass tourism on destinations: ‘See the mice in their million hordes; From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads.’
Why did David Bowie pick on tourism and why these particular places?
It seems that he was influenced by a high profile BBC television programme of the time called 'Holiday', which was launched in 1969.
David Bowie’s real name was David Jones.
Born in south London in 1947, he was in the vanguard of the 'baby-boomers', the generation born between 1945 and 1965. This demographic tsunami became a key driver for change in music, fashion and demand for consumer goods and services including tourism.
The young David Jones was a bit of a trend setter, making his first TV appearance in 1964 at the age of 17 in an interview with Cliff Michelmore who at that time was one of the best-known personalities in the UK. Michelmore anchored the popular BBC current affairs programme 'Tonight' which ran a report about the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men, recently founded by David Jones and a few of his friends.
Less than four years later in 1969, at the height of the Space Race, David Bowie wrote 'Space Oddity'.
The title of the song was a pun inspired by the 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Apollo 8 mission which took the first human beings around the Moon at Christmas 1968.
In July 1969 'Space Oddity' was rush-released as a single to coincide with the Apollo 11 mission which took human beings to walk on the Moon for the first time.
The song gained further profile when it was used by the BBC as background music during their coverage of the key moon landings which were coincidentally anchored by the omnipresent BBC stalwart Cliff Michelmore.
Also in 1969, the BBC launched a lifestyle consumer series called 'Holiday 69' (later shortened to just 'Holiday') on the 2nd of January, providing viewers with an audio-visual respite from the depths of the British winter.
Yet again, it was anchored by his 1964 interviewer Cliff Michelmore.
The programme was extremely successful, running for 38 years until 2007, becoming the longest running travel series on UK television, with Michelmore leading the presentation until 1986. Such programmes would regularly attract millions of viewers, at a time when there were only three TV channels to watch in the UK until 1982 and no satellite TV or Internet.
'Holiday' offered viewers vicarious experiences of tourist destinations which at the time were just becoming attainable as places of escape. As Michelmore reflected later ‘it was a bit of sunshine in the middle of the winter, even though it was in black and white!’.
More recently, the BBC has courted controversy when presenters express opinions about current affairs, attracting accusations of bias, but such incidents are nothing new.
The very first Holiday programme attracted international criticism when Cliff Michelmore reported about sewage on beaches in Ibiza and referred to it as 'this septic isle'.
A diplomatic row with General Franco’s Spain ensued (Cliff Michelmore reflects on the 'Holiday programme').
In another programme a few weeks later on 6th February 1969, viewers were invited to find out ‘what it is like to hire a boat on the Norfolk Broads’. (from the BBC's Genome project).
David Bowie would probably have been aware of the Holiday programme and the controversy over the Ibiza coverage. So it’s no coincidence that he chose Ibiza and the Norfolk Broads to reference as places of escape.
The programme would also have attracted David Bowie's attention because the theme music used was 'The Castle' by the US American psychedelic rock band Love, taken from their 1966 album Da Capo. Love was led by Arthur Lee, who was an influence on Bowie's early work.
Further details about the geographical places linked to Life On Mars? are available in a story map created using ArcGIS Online:
Life On Mars? The geography of Life On Mars?
Gordon Giltrap's "Heartsong" was used as a theme tune from 1978 until the end of the 1985 series.
In 1992 Paul Hardcastle composed a new theme, titled "Voyager". This theme was used throughout the 1990s and 2000s until the programme came to an end after 37 years in 2007.
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