Release and Aftermath
With a purported 100,000 copies ordered in advance, Aladdin Sane debuted at the top of the UK charts and reached #17 in America, making it Bowie's most successful album commercially in both countries to that date. Critical reaction was generally laudatory, if more enthusiastic in the U.S. than in the UK. Rolling Stone remarked on "Bowie's provocative melodies, audacious lyrics, masterful arrangements (with Mick Ronson) and production (with Ken Scott)", while Billboard called it a combination of "raw energy with explosive rock". In the British music press, however, letters columns accused Bowie of 'selling out' and Let it Rock magazine found the album to be more style than substance, considering that he had "nothing to say and everything to say it with".
Bowie performed all the tracks, except "Lady Grinning Soul", on his 1972–73 tours and many of them on the 1974 Diamond Dogs tour. Live versions of all but "The Prettiest Star" and "Lady Grinning Soul" have been released on various discs including Ziggy Stardust - The Motion Picture, David Live and Aladdin Sane – 30th Anniversary. "The Jean Genie" is the only song on the album that Bowie has played in concert throughout his career. However "Panic in Detroit" has also appeared regularly in recent years, a remake of which was cut in 1979 but not released until added as a bonus track to the Rykodisc CD of Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).
Canadian rock group The Guess Who launched an ad campaign in the summer of 1973 to promote their album #10 and the single released from it, "Glamour Boy", a broadside against glam rockers like David Bowie. As part of promotion for the song, Guess Who manager Don Hunter posed for an ad done up à la Bowie circa Aladdin Sane, with the caption "Not just another pretty body." After initially circulating it in the musical trades, RCA, at that time the label for both Bowie and The Guess Who and fearing a lawsuit from the former, had the ad pulled.
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Famous quotes containing the words release and, release and/or aftermath:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
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