Pin Ups

Did You Know?

• Bowie unexpectedly announced on the final date of the Ziggy Stardust Tour that 'this is the last show we'll ever do', driving a wedge between him and the Spiders from Mars.
• The cover photo was taken in Paris by Twiggy's then-manager and partner Justin de Villeneuve; Twiggy later called it 'possibly the most widely distributed photograph ever taken of me'.
• Bowie's manager Tony Defries recommended he not record new compositions until negotiations for larger royalties were finished.

Production

Pin Ups was Bowie's tribute to bands that had inspired him as a teenager. He later explained that the songs were by groups he used to hear at the Marquee between 1964 and 1967. According to biographer Chris O'Leary, Bowie chose the tracks by going through a stack of 45s in his rooms at the Hyde Park Hotel before leaving for France. Scott Richardson, a Pretty Things fan, convinced Bowie to cover two of their songs. The final tracklist includes songs by the Pretty Things, Them, Pink Floyd, the Mojos, the Yardbirds, the Easybeats, the Merseys, the Who, and the Kinks. Bowie had considered re-recording his 1966 single "The London Boys" but discarded the idea. The songs feature the same arrangements as the originals, performed in glam rock and proto-punk styles. Bowie said they took down the basic chord structures and worked from there, with arranging done by himself, Mick Ronson, and Aynsley Dunbar. Author Peter Doggett writes that only "I Wish You Would" and "See Emily Play" contained varied arrangements.

Release

RCA put out the first single, "Sorrow", with a cover of Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam" on the B-side, on 12 October 1973, later than the planned 28 September. It reached number three on the UK Singles Chart and stayed there for 15 weeks, making it one of his biggest hits. The album Pin Ups came out a week later on 19 October, catalog number RS 1003, just six months after Aladdin Sane. The cover only listed him as "Bowie". In the US, ads said: "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 release overlapped with Bryan Ferry's covers album These Foolish Things. Ferry, who had recorded his album weeks before Bowie started Pin Ups, was upset and called it a "rip-off". He reportedly asked his label Island Records to block Pin Ups from coming out first. Bowie called Ferry to tell him about the album and ask if he could cover a Roxy Music song. Ferry later said he was nervous at first but saw the records ended up very different. Both albums came out as planned and hit the charts on the same day, 3 November 1973. In the UK, Pin Ups had 150,000 advance orders, 50,000 more than Aladdin Sane. It spent 39 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, hitting number one for five weeks, matching Aladdin Sane. This brought the total number of Bowie albums on the UK chart at once to six. In the US, it peaked at number 23 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart and stayed for 21 weeks.

Critical reception

Pin Ups received mostly negative reviews from music critics on release, with many criticising the songs as generally inferior to the originals. In Rolling Stone, Greg Shaw believed the tracks were underproduced and Bowie's vocal performance was the album's "true failure", calling his voice "a ridiculously weak mismatch for the material". He concluded that Bowie did the best he could and the result wasn't all that bad. In the NME, Ian MacDonald felt the renditions lacked value by not differentiating from the originals, predicting artistic frustration for Bowie. Loraine Alterman of The New York Times said the album "suffers from too much style and technique and not enough musical substance". Record Mirror found it "unsatisfying, too cluttered musically and over-produced". A writer for Sounds declared that Bowie "used R&B as a prop, not a springboard". Robert Christgau found the idea good but execution subpar. Billboard responded positively, stating there's humor in the music. Robert Hilburn in the Los Angeles Times described it as a "light, unpretentious, high-spirited album" and hailed it as one of the year's most inviting albums.

Legacy

Pin Ups continues to receive mixed reactions in later decades. Pitchfork's Douglas Wolk cited sloppy execution and the idea being "more interesting in theory", believing all originals were vastly superior. Bruce Eder of AllMusic found the album out of place with Bowie's output, calling it confusing for American fans, but praised "Sorrow" as a "distinct improvement". Dave Thompson called Pin Ups "the underrated classic in David Bowie's glam-era crown". Biographers have given mixed reactions: Buckley describes it as "uneven but beloved by many"; O'Leary attributes its "scattershot feel" to the dysfunctional recording; Sandford acknowledges the lack of originality in arrangements. Doggett calls Pin Ups "an exercise in Pop Art". James E. Perone argues it predated covers albums by John Lennon and Elvis Costello, and recognises its musical influence: Bowie's "Here Comes the Night" was a forerunner in post-punk and new wave, presaging songs like Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon", and foreshadowed the soul-oriented directions of Young Americans and Station to Station, while "See Emily Play" evokes the avant-garde experimentations of Bowie's Berlin Trilogy.