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Colorist

In comics, a colorist is responsible for adding color to black-and-white line art. For most of the 20th century this was done using brushes and dyes which were then used as guides to produce the printing plates. Since the late 20th century it is most often done using digital media, with printing separations produced electronically.

Although most American colorists work directly for comics publishers (either as employees or freelancers), there are a few coloring studios which offer their services to publishers. American Color, Olyoptics, Digital Chameleon were the companies notable in this field.

History
Originally, comics were colored by cutting out films of various densities in the appropriate shapes to be used in producing color-separated printing plates. The typical colorist worked from photocopies of the inked pages, which they colored with special dyes. Dr. Martin's Dyes was a brand notable in this field within the comic strip industry. CMYK codes were written on the page to indicate the final printed colors, and these hand-colored pages were used as guides by the engraver. Tatjana Wood was the main colorist for DC Comics' covers from 1973 through the mid-1980s.

More recently, colorists have worked in transparent media such as watercolors or airbrush, which is then photographed, allowing more subtle and painterly effects.

Digital color
Colorist Steve Oliff and his company Olyoptics were one of the first to use computers to do color separations. Although other companies at the time were experimenting with computers, Oliff and his crew were the first to blend the color guide artist with the separator. In 1987, the Japanese manga Akira was in preparation to be translated and published by Marvel Comics's Epic Comics line. Oliff was chosen as the colorist, and he convinced Marvel that it was time to try computer color. After the publication of Akira in 1988, computer coloring became increasingly prevalent in the comics industry.

By the early 1990s, even though the larger comics publishers were using computers, there were variations within the field. DC Comics allowed only a 64-color palette, while Marvel had expanded it to 125 colors. Dark Horse Comics allowed even more variations. The dominant programs in use during that time were Color Prep and Tint Prep, both originally implemented by Olyoptics. This software was invented and written by "Pixel Craft", the first company to create software that used a personal computer that could output files for a digital image setter to make negatives for color printing. Pixel craft was a small company in Long Island, New York, created by Kenneth Giordano and Khouri Giordano. The father and son team went on to accomplish many first in the computerization of color print. In 1993, Image Comics' use of computer color and more advanced color separation technology propelled DC and Marvel to further upgrade their coloring techniques. Finally, in the mid-1990s, Digital Chameleon's facility with Adobe Photoshop helped make that program the industry standard.

The improvements in the technology used for coloring have had a great impact on the way comics are drawn. Before the use of computers, artists would often use the pen or brush to put in detailed shading effects; now the artist is more likely to leave the drawing open and leave it to the colorist to insert shading through variation in color tones or through adding a layer of translucent black. Most contemporary colorists work in digital media using tools.

Notable colorists

 * Jack Adler
 * David Baron
 * Josette Baujot
 * Jordie Bellaire
 * Jeromy Cox
 * Nine Culliford
 * George Freeman, formerly with Digital Chameleon
 * John Higgins
 * Matt Hollingsworth
 * Richard Isanove
 * Vittorio Leonardo
 * Lee Loughridge
 * WadeeKT
 * Laura Martin
 * Dave McCaig
 * Paul Mounts
 * Steve Oliff, founder of Olyoptics
 * Cris Peter
 * Joe Rivera
 * Alex Sinclair
 * Marie Severin
 * Dave Stewart
 * Christina Strain
 * Lynn Varley
 * Jose Villarrubia
 * Glynis Wein
 * Tatjana Wood

title: Colorist


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Let's Dance (David Bowie album)

Let's Dance is the fifteenth studio album by the English singer-songwriter David Bowie, released on 14 April 1983 through EMI America Records. Co-produced by Bowie and Nile Rodgers, the album was recorded in December 1982 at the Power Station in New York City. The sessions featured players from Rodgers' band Chic and the then-unknown Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan on lead guitar. For the first time ever, Bowie only sang and played no instruments.

Musically, Let's Dance has been described as a post-disco record, with elements of dance-rock, dance-pop and new wave. The album contains two cover songs: Iggy Pop's "China Girl", which Bowie and Pop had recorded together for the latter's The Idiot (1977); Metro's "Criminal World"; and a reworking of "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", originally recorded by Bowie and Giorgio Moroder in 1982 for the film of the same name.

Let's Dance was released to massive commercial success, reaching number one in numerous countries, and turned Bowie into a major superstar; it remains Bowie's best-selling album. The record's four singles, including the title track, were all commercially successful. The album received mixed reviews from critics whose opinions on the artistic content varied. "Let's Dance" and "China Girl" were supported by music videos that received heavy airplay on MTV. It was supported by the successful Serious Moonlight Tour throughout 1983.

Despite the album's success, Let's Dance began a period of low creativity for Bowie. He felt that he had to pander his music to his newly acquired audience, which led to his follow-up albums, Tonight (1984) and Never Let Me Down (1987), being critically dismissed. He later reflected poorly on the period, referring to it as his "Phil Collins years". The album was remastered in 2018 and included in the box set Loving the Alien (1983–1988).

Background
David Bowie released his 14th studio album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980. With the record, Bowie achieved what biographer David Buckley calls "the perfect balance" of creativity and mainstream success. Following the sessions, Bowie portrayed the lead role of Joseph "John" Merrick in the Broadway play The Elephant Man between late July 1980 and early January 1981. During this time, he also filmed an appearance in the Uli Edel film Christiane F. (1981).

The murder of John Lennon in December 1980 affected Bowie deeply; he cancelled an upcoming Scary Monsters tour and withdrew to his home in Switzerland, becoming a recluse but continuing to work. In July 1981, he collaborated with Giorgio Moroder for "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", the title song of the Paul Schrader film Cat People (1982), and in the same session, recorded "Under Pressure" with the rock band Queen. Shortly after, he played the title role in a BBC adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play Baal, directed by Alan Clarke. Recorded in August 1981 and transmitted in March 1982, Bowie also recorded an accompanying soundtrack EP, released through RCA in February to coincide with the transmission. During the year, Bowie filmed appearances in The Hunger and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, both released in 1983. During filming for the latter, he grew fond of artists from the 1950s and 1960s, including James Brown, Buddy Guy, Elmore James and Albert King. The musical ideals from these artists would greatly influence the new album.

Scary Monsters was Bowie's final studio album for RCA Records, his label since Hunky Dory (1971). Having grown increasingly dissatisfied with the label, who he felt was "milking" his back catalogue, he was also eager for the September 1982 expiration of his 1975 severance settlement with his old manager Tony Defries. Although RCA was willing to re-sign, alongside Columbia and Geffen Records, Bowie signed a new contract with EMI America Records for an estimated $17 million.

Development
With a new label and an idea for a commercial sound, Bowie wanted to begin fresh with a new producer. He chose Nile Rodgers of the R&B band Chic, one of the most commercially successful bands of the late 1970s, with hits such as "Le Freak" (1978) and "Good Times" (1979). According to biographer Nicholas Pegg, contemporary listeners considered Rodgers' writing and production work, including Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" (1979) and Diana Ross's "Upside Down" (1980), to be "dance classics". Bowie and Rodgers met each other at the Continental in New York City in autumn 1982, where they found they had similar influences in old blues and R&B music. Speaking to Musician in 1983, Rodgers said: "David could have had any producer – white or black – he wanted. He could have gone with Quincy Jones and a more sure-fire chance at a hit. But he called me up, and for that I feel honoured."

Tony Visconti, the producer of Bowie's last four studio albums, was originally scheduled to produce the new album and set time aside to record. However, Bowie neglected to inform Visconti that he chose Rodgers for the project, the producer eventually learning through Bowie's assistant Coco Schwab closer to December 1982. Deeply hurt, the move damaged the two men's relationship and Visconti did not work with Bowie on a studio album again until 2002's Heathen, nearly 20 years later. In a 2023 interview with SuperDeluxeEdition, Visconti stated that in hindsight, he believed Bowie was right to seek out a new producer given his desire for commercial success, drawing comparisons with his own work with other artists in-between Bowie projects.

Bowie and Rodgers regrouped at the latter's home in Montreux, Switzerland, to begin demo work. The producer, who was expecting to make Scary Monsters 2, was surprised to learn Bowie had a different idea, saying "'Nile, I really want you to make hits.' And I was sort of taken aback, because I'd always assumed that David Bowie did art first, and then if it happened to become a hit, so be it!" The producer was initially disappointed he would not be able to use the record as a way to earn respect from white audiences, but knew he would do what he did best in order to guarantee a hit. Bowie played his new songs on a twelve-string acoustic guitar, starting with "Let's Dance" in a soft vocal arrangement. Rodgers knew it was not a dance song, but took old '50s and '60s records to arrange the track into the finished product. Over three days, the two demoed the new tracks, with assistance from the Turkish multi-instrumentalist Erdal Kızılçay, who would later become a frequent collaborator of Bowie's.

Recording
Let's Dance was recorded at the Power Station in New York City (where Bowie had also recorded Scary Monsters) during the first three weeks of December 1982, and was completed in 17 days. The engineer for the sessions was Bob Clearmountain. Rodgers felt that the record's sound was aided by the ambience of the studio: "The Power Station is famous for its great drum sound. And we had great players too." Along with a new producer, an entirely new set of musicians were hired for the record, with Bowie stating: "I wanted to have a little relief from the guys that I usually work with. I wanted to try people that I'd never worked with before, so that I couldn't predict how they were going to play." Long-time collaborator Carlos Alomar, who had worked with Bowie since the mid-1970s and would continue to work with Bowie into the mid-1990s, was originally scheduled to contribute, but claimed he was offered an "embarrassing" fee and declined. In 1984, Alomar clarified he did not play on Let's Dance because he was only given two weeks' notice and was already booked with other work.

With Alomar gone, Rodgers took his place on rhythm guitar. The producer also recruited his regular Chic collaborators: keyboardist Robert Sabino, percussionist Sammy Figueroa and backing vocalists Frank and George Simms. The remaining musicians included drummer Omar Hakim (whom Bowie called "a fascinating drummer with impeccable timing"); bassist Carmine Rojas; trumpeter Mac Gollehon; and saxophonists Stan Harrison, Robert Aaron and Steve Elson. Near the end of the sessions, Rodgers hired Chic drummer Tony Thompson and bassist Bernard Edwards for additional work; he was reluctant to hire them earlier due to their past drug use. Due to their arrival time, Thompson and Edwards' contributions were limited, appearing on only three tracks and one track, respectively. Edwards recorded his part for "Without You" in 13 minutes, with Rodgers later writing in his memoir, "I was never more proud of him in my life and it happened on the last day of basic recording." For the first time ever, Bowie himself played no instruments on the album, stating at the time: "I don't play a damned thing. This was a singer's album." He recorded all of his vocals in two days.

At the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, Bowie saw Stevie Ray Vaughan play guitar. At the time, Vaughan was an unknown 28-year-old blues guitarist from Texas; his debut album with his band Double Trouble was still unreleased. After Vaughan's performance, Bowie was so impressed that he tracked him down months later to get him to play lead guitar on the album. Rodgers was initially unimpressed with Vaughan, believing he sounded like American blues guitarist Albert King. Bowie however felt Vaughan was different, saying "he's got a whole other thing going on." Vaughan recorded his guitar overdubs towards the end of the sessions. According to author Paul Trynka, he used an old Fender Stratocaster plugged into an old Fender amplifier, "all the tone coming from the player". In a contemporary interview, Vaughan described the recording sessions: "Bowie is real easy to work with. He knows what he's doing in the studio and he doesn't mess around... He'd give his opinion on the stuff he liked and the stuff that needed work. Almost everything was cut in one or two takes. I think there was only one thing that needed three takes." According to Vaughan's biographers Joe Patoski and Bill Crawford, Vaughan played on six of the album's eight songs. In the biography Strange Fascination, Buckley found Vaughan to be a "bizarre" choice for lead guitarist, as at the time, he was "about as far away from Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew as you could get". Bowie and Rodgers praised Vaughan's work on the album, with the latter becoming one of Vaughan's closest friends after the sessions.

After the sessions concluded, Bowie went on holiday in Mexico, before returning to New York to finish post-production work and close his deal with EMI America at the end of January 1983. Upon closure, Bowie delivered Let's Dance to the label and departed for Australia to film music videos for the first two singles.

Songs
Commentators characterise the songs on Let's Dance as post-disco, dance, dance-rock, new wave and dance-pop. Consequence of Sound calls the record "the sound in favour of pure disco, dance, and funk with Bowie coming down to earth" and that Bowie built upon the post-punk and new wave sound of its predecessor. The author James E. Perone notes the blues-edge inflicted by Vaughan, praising his contributions on "Modern Love", "China Girl" and "Without You". In an interview with Details magazine in 1991, Bowie described the album as "a rediscovery of white-English-ex-art-school-student-meets-black-American-funk, a refocusing of Young Americans (1975)". The artist Tanja Stark sees the commercial tempo of the album masking the lyrical continuity of Bowie's ongoing narratives of spiritual struggle and death anxieties.

Side one
The opening track, "Modern Love", is an uptempo pop song that features a call-and-response structure inspired by Little Richard. AllMusic's Dave Thompson calls it "[a] high-energy, effervescent rocker" that "epitomises all that was good about Bowie's 1983 reinvention as a willing superstar". Pegg praises the music but calls the lyrics "superficial" compared to Bowie's previous work, as does Perone, who comments "some of the lyrics are clearer than others". O'Leary compares the lyrics to a flowchart, moving from "modern love" to "church on time" to "God and man".

"China Girl" was written by Bowie and Iggy Pop in 1976, first appearing on Pop's 1977 debut solo album The Idiot, which Bowie himself co-wrote and produced. Buckley calls Bowie's version an "ultra-cool reading" of Pop's original. For his version, Bowie added backing vocals while Rodgers composed the guitar riff. O'Leary writes that Bowie's vocal is more "playful" than Pop's, with the music itself exhibiting "Asian" qualities. BBC Online reviewer David Quantick acknowledged the effect of Rodgers' production on the song, arguing that "nobody but Rodgers could have taken a song like 'China Girl', with its paranoid references to 'visions of swastikas', and turned it into a sweet, romantic hit single". Pegg calls Bowie's rendition "a tremendously effective slice of hardcore pop", commenting that the lyrics reflect the album's overarching themes of "cultural identity" and "desperate love".

Pegg considers the title track to be one of Bowie's finest 1980s recordings and one of the "all-time great pop songs." It was described by Ed Power in the Irish Examiner as "a decent chunk of funk-rock"; Perone finds that it represents the contemporary dance craze of the 1980s. It opens with a group of singers getting louder and louder before it explodes into a massive climax. O'Leary and Pegg compare the intro to the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout" (1963). The seven-minute album version features different instrumental solos than the shorter single version. The lyrics instruct the listener to "put on your red shoes" and dance under the "serious moonlight".

"Without You" harkens back to Bowie's 1960s recordings, reflecting 1960s-style pop. Pegg considers it a "throwaway love song" and the album's low point, disregarding both the music and lyrics. O'Leary similarly criticises Bowie's vocal performance, done in a "fragile falsetto". On the other hand, Ken Tucker of Rolling Stone wrote that "Without You" featured some of the most daring songwriting of Bowie's career and complimented his vocal performance.

Side two
Biographers found "Ricochet" the only track reminiscent of the experimental nature of Bowie's late-1970s recordings. Perone finds it out of place with the rest of the album and suggests the artist was entering an artistic low point. Pegg writes that it has an R&B and swing-style repetitive backing vocal. Describing the track in 1987, Bowie stated: "I thought it was a great song, and the beat wasn't quite right. It didn't roll the way it should have, the syncopation was wrong. It had an ungainly gait; it should have flowed. ... Nile did his own thing to it, but it wasn't quite what I'd had in mind when I wrote the thing." "Criminal World" was originally written and recorded by Metro in 1977, but their version was banned by the BBC for its bisexual undertones. O'Leary states that Bowie included it on Let's Dance as a way to "sneak a transgressive song onto a platinum record". Pegg writes that Bowie updated its sound to match Let's Dance, featuring a new wave and pop reggae groove, and calls Vaughan's guitar solo his finest on the record. Both Buckley and O'Leary praise Bowie's rendition as a strong cover.

"Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" was recorded in 1981 by Bowie and Giorgio Moroder as the theme song for the 1982 film Cat People. Bowie was unhappy with the original version and asked Rodgers to remake it for Let's Dance. O'Leary describes the remake as "more aggressive". He praises Vaughan's guitar solo as superior to the original, but criticises Bowie's vocals as inferior. Pegg also considers the Let's Dance version to be inferior and laments that the remake became the better known version. The album ends with "Shake It", which Pegg calls "a likable enough piece of fluff". O'Leary describes the track as a summary of Bowie's "bad habits" of the 1980s: "an indifference to quality". Biographer Marc Spitz writes that its sound is a precursor to U2's 1993 song "Lemon".

Music videos
After delivering the album to the label, Bowie travelled to Australia in February 1983 to film the music videos for the first two singles, "Let's Dance" and "China Girl". He directed the video for "Let's Dance" with David Mallet, the director of Bowie's Lodger and "Ashes to Ashes" videos. The video has nothing to do with the song itself, except for a brief glimpse of red shoes. It follows a young Australian Aboriginal couple doing various activities that seduce them to the commercialism of white urban Australia. Bowie appears and sings the lyrics into the camera. The video is an allegory meant to represent the treatment of Aboriginals by white Australian capitalists. The video for "China Girl", again directed by Mallet, is similar in its theme of clashing perspectives, juxtaposing Sydney executives against the city's Chinese population. It features New Zealand actress Geeling Ng who recreates the famous beach scene from From Here to Eternity (1953) with Bowie. Buckley says that the provocative allegories and scenes of the videos guaranteed heavy rotation on MTV.

Singles
"Let's Dance" was released through EMI America in edited form as the lead single on 14 March 1983, with the remake of "Cat People" as the B-side. Three days later, Bowie held a press conference in London where he announced the new album, also titled Let's Dance, the new label and the upcoming tour. He donned a new look, featuring bleached blonde hair and a white suit. A few days later, the "Let's Dance" video premiered on the UK rock show The Tube, along with interviews by Jools Holland. By the following week, "Let's Dance" entered the UK Singles Chart at number five, before peaking at number one for three weeks, and remaining on the chart for 14 weeks. It further peaked at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 in April, becoming Bowie's biggest charting single to date. According to Buckley, the single was played "endlessly" on UK radio stations.

EMI America issued Let's Dance on 14 April 1983, with the catalogue number AML 3029. Its cover artwork, depicting Bowie shadow-boxing against a city skyline, was taken by photographer Greg Gorman. "China Girl" was released, again in edited form, as the album's second single on 31 May, with "Shake It" as the B-side. Although it failed to replicate the success of the title track, it still peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart in June, held off the top spot by the Police's "Every Breath You Take". In the US, it peaked at number ten on the Billboard Hot 100.

"Modern Love" was released, again in edited form, as the album's third single on 12 September 1983. The B-side was a live version, recorded in Montreal on 13 July. Like "China Girl", "Modern Love" peaked at number two in the UK, held off the top spot by Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon". In the US, it charted at number 14. It was supported by a music video, directed by Jim Yukich, depicting a performance of the song in Philadelphia on 20 July. "Without You" appeared as the fourth and final single in November, backed by "Criminal World", released only in Holland, Japan, Spain and the US, where it reached number 73.

Commercial performance
Upon release, Let's Dance entered the UK Albums Chart at number one and stayed there for three weeks. Although Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups (both 1973) and Diamond Dogs (1974) were at the top position longer, Let's Dance remained on the chart for over a year. The album peaked at number four on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart on 24 June 1983, and remained on the chart for 69 weeks. EMI declared Let's Dance to be their fastest-selling record since the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Bowie's old label RCA issued a collection of Bowie's back catalogue as a way to cash in on its success. All of Bowie's albums he released between 1969 and 1974: Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups and Diamond Dogs, as well as Low and "Heroes" (both 1977), all began to chart again. By July, Bowie had ten albums in the UK top 100. This feat made Bowie the artist with the second highest number of individual album-weeks of all time – with 198, behind the rock band Dire Straits, who achieved 217 individual album-weeks in 1986.

Let's Dance has sold 10.7 million copies worldwide, making it Bowie's best-selling album.

Critical reception
Despite the album's major commercial success, it received mixed reviews from music critics, with opinions varying on the artistic content. In Musician magazine, David Fricke called it "Bowie at his best". In a piece on Bowie for Time in July 1983, Jay Cocks described the album as "unabashedly commercial, melodically alliterative and lyrically smart at the same time". Robert Christgau felt that it had a "perfunctory professional surface", and that other than the "interesting" "Modern Love", Let's Dance was "pleasantly pointless". While Steve Bush of Smash Hits found it overall dull, Debra Rae Cohen of The New York Times deemed it Bowie's "most artless" record yet, but one whose familiar dance music is "almost timeless in its appeal". Tucker felt Let's Dance sounded great, with an intelligent simplicity and a "surface beauty", but that as a whole it was "thin and niggling", other than "Modern Love," "Without You" and "Shake It", which offered "some of the most daring songwriting of Bowie's career".

Writing for Record magazine, Carol Cooper called the album "the Young Americans of the '80s" and enjoyed Rodgers' involvement, writing that his presence allows Bowie to shine through. However, she felt all the tracks were "rather modest". More positively, NME's Charles Shaar Murray gave unanimous praise to the album, calling it "some of the strongest, simplest and least complicated music that Bowie has ever made." Further describing it as "warm, strong, inspiring and useful," he approved of Vaughan's contributions, saying he gives the songs a more "traditional" feel. John Walker of Trouser Press hailed it as a record that "simply bleaches the competition", one that represents "the closest Bowie has come to capturing pure energy". Offering further praise, Billboard deemed it "Bowie's most accessible music in years", Cash Box hailed it as his "most danceable album to date", and Commonweal called it "some of the most exciting R&B-based dance music in years." NME later placed Let's Dance at number 13 in its end-of-the-year list.

Tour
To support Let's Dance, Bowie embarked on his first concert tour in five years, the Serious Moonlight Tour, which ran from 18 May to 8 December 1983. Taking its title from a lyric in the title track, rehearsals began in the spring of 1983, with Alomar back as bandleader. The majority of the Let's Dance musicians returned, with the exception of Vaughan, who was present for rehearsals but let go by Bowie just days before the European leg was scheduled to begin. His dismissal was attributed to his alcohol and drug use, his request that his band Double Trouble be the supporting act, which Bowie denied, and his alleged displeasure to Bowie miming his guitar solo in the "Let's Dance" video. Vaughan's replacement was Diamond Dogs Tour (1974) and Station to Station (1976) guitarist Earl Slick.

The tour's set pieces were created by the Diamond Dogs Tour artist Mark Ravitz. The set, Bowie's most elaborate yet, featured structures such as large columns, overhanging lintels and a giant right hand pointed upwards. Compared to prior tours, Serious Moonlight emphasised lights rather than props. Alomar later told Buckley that it was his favourite Bowie tour, mainly because "it was the first tour where we did all the hits". Discussing the setlist, Pegg states it was "unashamedly a greatest hits package aimed at acquainting the new mass audience with Bowie's back catalogue". Buckley describes the setlist as "relatively mainstream pop-rock", with none of the "quirks" of the late '70s tours. Many of the arrangements were redone with horns to make every song sound fresh.

Serious Moonlight was a massive success: it became the biggest tour of 1983, appeased Bowie's newfound audience and, along with Let's Dance, turned Bowie into a massive superstar. The tour was mostly well-received, although British reviewers tended to be more aggressive than American ones. An accompanying film documenting two shows performed on 11 and 12 September 1983 in Vancouver was released in 1984 as Serious Moonlight. Although immensely successful, Bowie later called the tour a mixed blessing: "I was something I never wanted to be. I was a well-accepted artist. I had started appealing to people who bought Phil Collins albums.[...] I suddenly didn't know my audience and worse, I didn't care about them." Following the tour's conclusion, Bowie found himself in a creative stalemate. Pressure from the label to release a follow-up led him into the studio in the spring of 1984 unprepared. The resulting album, Tonight, is considered one of his creative low-points.

Subsequent events
Let's Dance was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards in 1984 but lost to Michael Jackson's Thriller (1982). Although Bowie had charged Rodgers with making hits for him, Bowie later said in 1997: "At the time, Let's Dance was not mainstream. It was virtually a new kind of hybrid, using blues-rock guitar against a dance format. There wasn't anything else that really quite sounded like that at the time. So, it only seems commercial in hindsight because it sold so many [copies]. It was great in its way, but it put me in a real corner in that it fucked with my integrity." Two years earlier, he stated he intended for it to be a one-off project only: "I had every intention of continuing to do some unusual material after that. But the success of that record really forced me, in a way, to continue the beast. It was my own doing, of course, but I felt, after a few years, that I had gotten stuck." Visconti stated in 1985 that "it was an album he had to make".

The album's success caused Bowie to hit a creative low point in his career lasting the next few years. By 1987, Bowie began to distance himself from the record, telling one interviewer that it was "more Nile's album than mine", to which Rodgers disagreed in 1998. After his follow-up albums Tonight and Never Let Me Down (1987) were critically dismissed, —Bowie would later dismiss this period as his "Phil Collins years" —he formed the rock band Tin Machine in an effort to regain his artistic vision.

Legacy
In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine felt that the album's three hit singles were catchy yet distinctive pop songs, while the rest of the album was "unremarkable plastic soul" indicative of Bowie "entering a songwriting slump". Power wrote that Bowie "pleaded shamelessly for the love of the mass market" with the album. He continued "... the title track was a decent chunk of funk-rock and Bowie did not embarrass himself on the single 'China Girl'. Otherwise, the record had a great deal in common with Wham! and Phil Collins." Quantick praised the combination of Bowie and Rodgers as "perfect" on the title track, the "sweet, romantic" rendition of "China Girl" and highlighted "Criminal World". He stated "Let's Dance may have had a ground-breaking sound and a popularity that Bowie clearly ached for, but it's often a mundane album, as songs like 'Ricochet' and 'Shake It' mark time". He said the album was "literally the template for 80s Bowie – blond, suited and smiling". Writing in 1995 for the Spin Alternative Record Guide, Rob Sheffield sees the album as exemplifying the influence of the New Romantic movement on Bowie. While lauding "Modern Love", he describes the album's other songs as "dodgier" but "good fun".

In 2014, Andy Greene of Rolling Stone described Let's Dance as "the conclusion of arguably the greatest 14-year run in rock history". Writing for The Guardian the same year, Jeremy Allen stated that the album had "spent time in the wilderness, rejected by many because of its 80s production values", but he added that "a reappraisal was all but inevitable and has coincided with a renaissance in Rodgers' career and an outpouring of love for the unprecedentedly successful producer/guitarist." The chief rock and pop critic of The Guardian, Alexis Petridis, said in his retrospective review of Bowie's career in 2016 that Let's Dance "had its moments", unlike Tonight.

Reflecting on Let's Dance, Pegg agrees with Bowie in that the record was the artist's "least challenging" album up to that point. He felt that unlike Bowie's Glass Spider Tour and Tin Machine periods, where Bowie was willing to take risks and face criticism head-on, Let's Dance plays it safe in every aspect, creating tunes that originally contained "rough edges" that were then "sanded down" and given a "high-gloss finish". Pegg also notes that the appearance of three covers on the record was evident to Bowie hitting a creative slump. Spitz on the other hand, considers Let's Dance to be "as revolutionary" as Ziggy Stardust, Station to Station or Low. He finds it unfair to call it Bowie's "sellout record", saying it is "every bit as high concept as his canonised seventies efforts". Although he finds the record's first four tracks among the strongest of Bowie's entire career, Perone describes Let's Dance as a "double-edged sword", in that it was commercially successful but artistically, it found Bowie exploring more conventional lyrical themes and accessible music that would hinder his next recordings.

On the album's influence, Billboard Joe Lynch argued that Let's Dance provided "the template" for alternative dance music "for the next 30 years". In 1989, the album was ranked number 83 on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Best Albums of the Eighties". In 2013, NME ranked Let's Dance at number 296 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2018, Pitchfork ranked the album at number 127 in their list of "The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s"; Jeremy D. Larson wrote that Let's Dance "sounds anything but dated" and felt it "became a Trojan horse for the world to discover all the many Bowies hiding underneath the blond bouffant and designer suits."

Reissues
In 1995, Virgin Records rereleased the album on CD with "Under Pressure" as a bonus track. EMI did the second rerelease in 1999 (featuring 24-bit digitally remastered sound and no bonus tracks), followed by another in 2003 as a hybrid stereo SACD/PCM CD.

In 2018, Let's Dance was remastered for the Loving the Alien (1983–1988) box set released by Parlophone. It was released in CD, vinyl and digital formats, as part of this compilation and then separately the following year.

Personnel
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.

 * David Bowie – lead vocals; producer; engineer; assistant mixing; horn arrangements
 * Nile Rodgers – guitar; producer; engineer; assistant mixing; horn arrangements

Musicians
 * Stevie Ray Vaughan – lead guitar
 * Carmine Rojas – bass guitar
 * Bernard Edwards – bass guitar on "Without You"
 * Omar Hakim, Tony Thompson – drums
 * Sammy Figueroa – percussion
 * Robert Sabino – keyboards, piano
 * Stan Harrison – tenor saxophone; flute
 * Robert Aaron – tenor saxophone
 * Steve Elson – baritone saxophone; flute
 * Mac Gollehon – trumpet
 * Frank Simms, George Simms, David Spinner – backing vocals

Production
 * Bob Clearmountain (Fast Forward Productions) – engineer; mixing
 * Dave Greenberg – assistant engineer
 * Bob Ludwig (Masterdisk) – mastering

Visuals
 * Greg Gorman – photography
 * Mick Haggerty – package design
 * Derek Boshier – cover painting

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Let's Dance (David Bowie album)


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Box art for Superman 64, a video game for the Nintendo 64.

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title: File:Superman64box.jpg


text:
Pin Ups

Pin Ups (also referred to as Pinups and Pin-Ups) is the seventh studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 19October 1973 through RCA Records. Devised as a "stop-gap" album to appease his record label, it is a covers album, featuring glam rock and proto-punk versions of songs by British bands from the 1960s that were influential to Bowie as a teenager, including the Pretty Things, the Who, the Yardbirds and Pink Floyd.

The album was recorded from July to August 1973 at the Château d'Hérouville in Hérouville, France following the completion of the Ziggy Stardust Tour. It was Bowie's final album co-produced with Ken Scott. Two members of the Spiders from Mars backing band contributed, guitarist Mick Ronson and bassist Trevor Bolder, while Mick Woodmansey was replaced by Aynsley Dunbar on drums. Following a surprise announcement at the end of the tour that the Spiders were breaking up, tensions were high during the sessions, which was reflected in the tracks. The album cover, featuring Bowie and 1960s supermodel Twiggy, was taken in Paris and originally intended for Vogue magazine.

Released only six months after Aladdin Sane and preceded by a cover of the Merseys' song "Sorrow" as the lead single, Pin Ups was a commercial success, topping the UK Albums Chart, but received negative reviews from critics, who criticised the songs as generally inferior to the originals. Retrospective reviewers have described it as uneven, while others believe it had a good premise, but suffered from poor execution. Bowie's biographers have noted it as an experiment in nostalgia. Some publications have regarded it as one of the best covers albums. It has been reissued numerous times and was remastered in 2015 as part of the box set Five Years (1969–1973).

Background
By 1973, David Bowie was at his commercial peak. At the end of July, five of his six albums were in the top 40 and three were in the top 15, according to biographer David Buckley, an "unprecedented feat" for a solo artist. Bowie's most recent LP, Aladdin Sane, came out in April, but his label, RCA Records, wanted a new album by Christmas. Having just completed the Ziggy Stardust Tour, Bowie was exhausted from the extensive touring schedule. His manager at the time, Tony Defries, was negotiating for larger royalties with Bowie's music publisher and recommended he not record any new compositions until negotiations were finished. Although he had intended his next project to be an adaptation of George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, he devised a record of cover versions as a "stopgap" album.

On the final day of the tour, 3July 1973, Bowie unexpectedly announced that "this is the last show we'll ever do". Although this was later understood to mean that Bowie was retiring the Ziggy Stardust character, the announcement came as a surprise to the audience, as well as the Spiders from Mars' members Trevor Bolder and Woody Woodmansey, who were not notified in advance of the speech. This created tension between the two and Bowie. They were further aggravated when they found out Mike Garson, who played piano on Aladdin Sane, was being paid a bigger wage than the Spiders, who were being paid the same amount as they were from before Bowie's stardom. Garson subsequently informed Woodmansey over the phone that his services were no longer required. Garson and Mick Ronson were guaranteed positions on the new album, alongside Aladdin Sane players Ken Fordham and Geoffrey MacCormack. Session drummer Aynsley Dunbar replaced Woodmansey and Bolder was invited back after bassist Jack Bruce of the band Cream declined.

Composition
According to biographer Nicholas Pegg, Pin Ups was Bowie's tribute to bands that had inspired him as a teenager. Bowie later explained: "These are all bands which I used to go and hear play down the Marquee between 1964 and 1967. I've got all these records back at home." According to biographer Chris O'Leary, he chose the tracks by "going through a stack of 45s in his rooms at the Hyde Park Hotel before leaving for France". Musician Scott Richardson, a Pretty Things fan, convinced Bowie to cover two of their songs. Other artists selected included the Yardbirds, the Kinks, Pink Floyd and the Who, all of whom O'Leary cites as actual influences on Bowie's music. The final tracklist included the Pretty Things' "Rosalyn" and "Don't Bring Me Down", Them's "Here Comes the Night", Pink Floyd's "See Emily Play", the Mojos' "Everything's Alright", the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" and their rendition of Billy Boy Arnold's "I Wish You Would", the Easybeats' "Friday on My Mind", the Merseys' "Sorrow", the Who's "I Can't Explain" and "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", and the Kinks' "Where Have All the Good Times Gone". Bowie had also considered re-recording his 1966 single "The London Boys" but the idea was discarded.

Rather than provide new arrangements for the tracks, the songs on Pin Ups stay true to the originals, albeit performed in glam rock and proto-punk styles. Regarding this, Bowie explained: "We just took down the basic chord structures and worked from there... Some of them don't even need any working on – like 'Rosalyn' for example. But most of the arranging I have done by myself and Mick, and Aynsley too." Author Peter Doggett writes that only two tracks, "I Wish You Would" and "See Emily Play", contained varied arrangements from the originals.

Recording
Pin Ups was recorded at the Château d'Hérouville in Hérouville, France, in sessions lasting for three weeks from July to August 1973. Having just recorded the album Tanx there, T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan recommended the studio to Bowie. The Château had also become popularised after Elton John recorded his 1972 album Honky Château there. It was co-produced by Bowie and Ken Scott and marked the final collaboration between the two. O'Leary writes that rehearsing consisted of playing the band the original track a few times before recording began. Tensions were high during the sessions. Bolder, believing he was unwanted, recorded his bass parts quickly and departed. Meanwhile, Richardson recalled Ronson overworking himself: "He did everything in the studio, he tuned everybody's instruments, he worked on all the arrangements... [he had] a tremendous burden on him"; he also grew wary of his future after the collapse of the Spiders. Scott was facing personal issues on top of pressure from his management company to leave over MainMan not paying him royalties, while Bowie had, in O'Leary's words, an "increasingly remote and truculent attitude in the studio".

A version of the Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" was recorded during the sessions. It was never released; Bowie donated the backing track to Ronson for his 1975 solo album Play Don't Worry. The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" was also attempted during the sessions, but was left abandoned. Bowie would later cover it for the aborted Astronettes project in October 1973, while he officially covered it for 1984's Tonight. The sessions were put on hold on 16 July for the recording of Scottish singer Lulu's covers of Bowie's tracks "Watch That Man" and "The Man Who Sold the World". The Pin Ups personnel contributed to the recording, including Bowie, Ronson, Garson, Bolder and Dunbar.

Pin Ups was the first of two "1960s nostalgia" albums that Bowie had planned to release. The second would have contained Bowie covering his favourite American artists, but was never recorded. Rumoured tracks to have appeared for the project include the Stooges' "No Fun", the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" and Roxy Music's "Ladytron". Bowie also considered making a Pin Ups sequel: he had compiled a list of songs he wanted to cover, some of which showed up on his later releases of Heathen (2002) and Reality (2003).

Artwork and packaging
The cover photo for Pin Ups reflected the theme of swinging London by featuring 1960s supermodel Twiggy, who had previously been name-checked on Aladdin Sane's "Drive-In Saturday" as "Twig the Wonder Kid". The photo was taken midway through the sessions at a Paris studio by her then-manager and partner Justin de Villeneuve; he recalled in 2010: "Twiggy and I had first heard David mention her on Aladdin Sane... We loved the album so much I called David and asked him if he would like to do a shoot with Twiggy. He jumped at the idea." Twiggy recalled in her autobiography In Black and White that she was "really quite nervous" meeting Bowie, but "he immediately put me at ease. He was everything I could have hoped for and more". During the shoot, Bowie and Twiggy had different skin tones, partially attributed to the latter just returning from holiday in California. The problem was solved by returning Aladdin Sane make-up designer Pierre Laroche, who used make-up masks to balance the tones out. Twiggy found the final result "enigmatic and strange", later calling it one of her favourite images and "possibly the most widely distributed photograph ever taken of me." The photo was originally slated to appear in Vogue magazine. Twiggy stated that the photo was met with apprehension from Vogue, who didn't want a man appearing on their front cover, so Bowie opted to use it as the album cover instead; de Villeneuve later recalled Vogue being infuriated by the decision.

The original LP's rear sleeve featured two photos by photographer Mick Rock, one of a concert shot from the Ziggy tour and another of Bowie wearing a double-breasted suit cradling a saxophone. Bowie wrote in the book Moonage Daydream: "I chose the performance photos for the back cover as they were favourite Rock shots of mine. I also did the back cover layout with the colour combination of red writing on blue as it again hinted at Sixties psychedelia." A discarded idea for the sleeve came from photographer Alan Motz, who told Sandford that he "wanted to shoot Bowie metamorphosing into an animal". This idea would be used for Bowie's next album, Diamond Dogs (1974).

Release
RCA issued the lead single "Sorrow", featuring a cover of Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam" as the B-side, on 12 October 1973; it had been delayed from its original release date of 28 September. The single was a commercial success, peaking at number three on the UK Singles Chart and stayed on the chart for 15 weeks, becoming one of his biggest hits. Pin Ups followed suit a week later on 19 October, issued with the catalogue number RS 1003, only six months after his previous album Aladdin Sane. On the album sleeve, Bowie was simply referred to as "Bowie". In America, the advertising campaign read: "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 album's release coincided with former Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry's covers album These Foolish Things. As Ferry had recorded his album weeks before Bowie began work on Pin Ups, Ferry was annoyed at the perceived copying of his project, calling it a "rip-off". According to Sandford, he allegedly went to his label Island Records to request they file an injunction to prevent Pin Ups from being released before These Foolish Things. Instead, O'Leary writes that Bowie phoned Ferry to inform him of Pin Ups and requested permission to record a Roxy Music song. Ferry later told Buckley, "At first I was a bit apprehensive, but Bowie's record turned out to be very different. I myself was always very anxious to be different from other people... and to forge my own furrow." In the event, both albums were released as planned and charted on the same day, 3November 1973.

In the UK, Pin Ups came at the height of Bowie's popularity there. The album had advance copies of 150,000, which was 50,000 more than Aladdin Sane. Upon release, it spent 39 weeks on the UK Albums Chart and peaked at number one, remaining there for five weeks, matching the performance of Aladdin Sane. It brought the total number of Bowie albums concurrently on the UK chart to six. In the US, the album peaked at number 23 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart and remained on the chart for 21 weeks. O'Leary writes that Pin Ups was essentially a "new Bowie album" in America since only three of the original tracks that were released as singles had reached the top 40. Sandford writes that by Christmas 1973, the album was selling 30,000 copies a week. Upon release of the massive commercially successful Let's Dance (1983), Pin Ups returned to the UK chart again, peaking at number 57.

Critical reception
Pin Ups received primarily negative reviews from music critics on release, with many criticising the songs as generally inferior to their original counterparts. In Rolling Stone, Greg Shaw was unfavorable, believing that all the tracks were underproduced and Bowie's vocal performance was the album's "true failure", further saying his "excessively mannered voice" was "a ridiculously weak mismatch for the material" and that they were mixed too high to give the tracks the "edge" or "punch" they need to be effective. He concludes his review by saying, "while Pin Ups may be a failure, it is also a collection of great songs, most of which are given a more than adequate, and always loving, treatment. Maybe the fairest conclusion to draw is that Bowie can't sing any other way, did the best he could, and the result isn't all that bad." In the NME, Ian MacDonald felt that by not differentiating the songs from the originals, the renditions lack value, ultimately stating the record failed to live up to expectations and predicted that "unless he puts a banger under his own behind, I can foresee nothing but artistic frustration for Bowie in the next few years." Loraine Alterman of The New York Times was also negative, saying the album "suffers from too much style and technique and not enough musical substance".

Discussing Pin Ups as a whole, Record Mirror found the album "unsatisfying, too cluttered musically and over-produced". A writer for Sounds magazine also reacted negatively, declaring that Bowie "used R&B as a prop, not a springboard". In Christgau's Record Guide, veteran critic Robert Christgau found the idea of the record good, but its overall execution subpar. On the other hand, Billboard responded positively, stating that, "there's humor in this music if you want to take it as a look back in musical time." Robert Hilburn was also positive in the Los Angeles Times. Describing it as a "light, unpretentious, high-spirited album", he hailed Pin Ups as "one of the year's most inviting albums" and one that deserves special attention.

Legacy
Pin Ups continues to receive mixed-to-negative reactions in later decades. When reviewing the album as part of the 2015 box set Five Years (1969–1973), Pitchfork Douglas Wolk was unfavorable. He cited sloppy execution and the overall idea "more interesting in theory", believing that all the originals were "vastly" superior and Bowie added nothing interesting to any of them. He further believed that it didn't help that the Spiders from Mars were falling apart when recording it. Bruce Eder of AllMusic similarly found the album to be out of place with Bowie's output up to that point. He continued, "Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane had established Bowie as perhaps the most fiercely original of all England's glam rockers, so an album of covers didn't make any sense and was especially confusing for American fans," further criticising the song choices as unknown. Eder did praise Bowie's cover of "Sorrow" as a "distinct improvement" over the original. More positively, Dave Thompson called Pin Ups "the underrated classic in David Bowie’s glam-era crown".

Bowie's biographers have given Pin Ups mixed reactions. Buckley describes it as "uneven but beloved by many". O'Leary attributes its "scattershot feel" and "lack of a coherent style" to the dysfunctional nature of its recording, while Sandford acknowledges the album's lack of originality in the song arrangements. Doggett calls Pin Ups "an exercise in Pop Art", meaning it was "a reproduction and interpretation of work by [another artist], intended for a mass audience". James Perone, on the other hand, argues that Pin Ups predated the release of covers album by other English artists, such as John Lennon with Rock 'n' Roll (1975) and Elvis Costello with Almost Blue (1981) and Kojak Variety (1995). Perone also recognises the album's musical influence, stating that Bowie's version of "Here Comes the Night" was a forerunner in the post-punk and new wave sound of the late 1970s and early 1980s, presaging songs such as Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" (1983). Furthermore, he contests that "Here Comes the Night" foreshadowed the soul oriented directions of Young Americans (1975) and Station to Station (1976), while "See Emily Play" evokes the avant-garde experimentations of the artist's late 1970s Berlin Trilogy.

Some biographers have analysed the album as an experiment in nostalgia, which Doggett states "was already emerging as one of the dominant themes of the early seventies". Furthermore, Pegg writes that "it remains perhaps glam rock's most cogent expression of its own inherent nostalgia, an affectionate reminder of the process that had led to the charts of 1973." Meanwhile, Buckley states that the album "began an era of pop archeology" and that it "came at a time of uncertainty, a time when many cast backward glances as pop entered its first retroactive phase". In the Spin Alternative Record Guide, critic Rob Sheffield agreed, characterising the album's "Swinging London oldies" as "atrophied nostalgia".

In 2013, in a ranking of Bowie's albums up to that point, Gabriela Claymore of Stereogum placed Pin Ups at number 18 (out of 25), calling it "The only one of Bowie's '70s records you can safely call 'inessential'. She felt it was out of place coming off of Aladdin Sane, but stated, "For what it is, it's quite good". Following Bowie's death in 2016, Bryan Wawzenek of Ultimate Classic Rock ranked all of his 26 studio albums from worst to best, placing Pin Ups at number 21. He praised the song choices as "excellent", describing "Sorrow" as the highlight. However, he found that Bowie went "way, way, way over the top" on every other track. He concluded by stating: "In spite of all the effort, Pin Ups remains a slight affair." In the context of Bowie's entire career, Eder views Pin Ups as an artistic statement, in that it represented a "swan song" for the Spiders from Mars and an "interlude" between the first and second phases of his international career, with his next album Diamond Dogs being the end of his glam rock era: "It's not a bad bridge between the two, and it has endured across the decades."

Despite mixed reactions overall, some publications have praised Pin Ups as a covers album, calling it one of the finest in the genre. Pierre Perrone of The Independent and the writers of NME would classify Pin Ups as one of the best cover albums in 2013 and 2019, respectively, with the former describing it as "[t]he covers album that launched a thousand copycats." Radio X called it the best covers album ever in 2023. Eder states that today it is still dismissed by many as just another covers album, including Wolk, who in 2015 described it as "quick-and-sloppy".

Reissues
Pin Ups has been reissued several times, on vinyl and other media. The album was first released on compact disc by RCA in the mid-1980s. In 1990, it was reissued by Rykodisc with two bonus tracks: a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Growin' Up" (recorded during the sessions for Diamond Dogs and featuring Ronnie Wood on guitar) and "Amsterdam", the B-side to "Sorrow". This reissue charted at number 52 on the UK Albums Chart for one week in July 1990. It was remastered in 1999 by Peter Mew at Abbey Road Studios for EMI and Virgin Records, and issued on CD with no bonus tracks. It was again remastered in 2015 for inclusion on the box set Five Years 1969–1973 by Parlophone and rereleased separately, in 2015–2016, in CD, vinyl and digital formats. Pin Ups was reissued as a limited edition half-speed mastered LP to celebrate its 50th anniversary on 20 October 2023.

Personnel
Album credits per the Pin Ups liner notes and biographer Nicholas Pegg.
 * David Bowie – vocals, guitar, tenor and alto saxophone, harmonica, arrangements, backing vocals, Moog synthesiser
 * Mick Ronson – guitar, piano, vocals, arrangements
 * Trevor Bolder – bass guitar
 * Aynsley Dunbar – drums
 * Mike Garson – piano, organ, harpsichord, electric piano
 * Ken Fordham – baritone saxophone
 * G. A. MacCormack – backing vocals

Production
 * David Bowie – producer
 * Ken Scott – producer
 * Dennis MacKay – engineer
 * Andy Scott – engineer

title: Pin Ups


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The Man Who Sold the World (album)

The Man Who Sold the World is the third studio album by the English musician David Bowie, originally released through Mercury Records in the United States on 4November 1970 and in the United Kingdom on 10April 1971. Produced by Tony Visconti and recorded in London from April to May 1970, the album features the first appearances on a Bowie record of future Spiders from Mars members Mick Ronson and Mick Woodmansey.

Following the largely acoustic and folk rock sound of David Bowie (1969), The Man Who Sold the World marked a shift toward hard rock, with elements of blues rock. The lyrics are darker than his previous releases, exploring themes of insanity, religion, technology and war. None of its songs were released as singles; some tracks appeared as B-sides between 1970 and 1973. Originally titled Metrobolist, a play on the film Metropolis (1927), the title was changed at the last minute by Mercury without Bowie's consultation.

The album was released with different cover artwork in the US and the UK. For the US release, the artwork was a cartoon-like drawing by Michael J. Weller of a cowboy in front of an asylum. The UK cover by Keith MacMillan features Bowie wearing a Michael Fish-designed blue dress. A 1972 reissue by RCA Records featured a black-and-white picture of Bowie's then-current character Ziggy Stardust; reissues since 1990 have revived the original UK artwork.

The Man Who Sold the World was originally better received by music critics in the US than in the UK. Nevertheless, it was a commercial failure in both countries; the 1972 reissue managed to chart in both the US and the UK. Retrospectively, the album has been praised by critics for the band's performance and the unsettling nature of its music and lyrics, being considered by many to be the start of Bowie's "classic period". It has since been reissued multiple times and was remixed in 2020, under its original title Metrobolist, for its 50th anniversary.

Background
David Bowie's breakthrough single "Space Oddity" was released in July 1969, bringing him commercial success and attention. However, its parent album, David Bowie (Space Oddity), released later that year, was not as successful, partly due to the failure of Philips Records to promote the album efficiently. By 1970, the attention Bowie had garnered from "Space Oddity" had dissipated and his follow-up single, "The Prettiest Star", failed to chart. Realising that his potential as a solo artist was dwindling, Bowie decided to form a band with bassist Tony Visconti, who previously worked with Bowie on Space Oddity, and drummer John Cambridge. Calling themselves Hype, the group still needed a guitarist.

On 2February 1970, Bowie met guitarist Mick Ronson following a performance at the Marquee Club in London. The two connected immediately and agreed to work together. Following their meeting, Ronson joined Hype. For the group's performances, the members wore flamboyant superhero-like costumes. Bowie halted Hype performances at the end of March 1970 so he could focus on recording and songwriting, as well as resolve managing disputes with his manager Kenneth Pitt. The new single version of the Space Oddity track "Memory of a Free Festival" and an early attempt at "The Supermen" were recorded during this time.

Cambridge was dismissed from Hype at the end of March, with a new drummer, Mick "Woody" Woodmansey, joining the group at the suggestion of Ronson. According to biographer Kevin Cann, Cambridge was dismissed by Bowie, but according to biographer Nicholas Pegg, Visconti recalled that the dismissal was Ronson's request. On his first impression of Bowie, Woodmansey said in 2015: "This guy was living and breathing being a rock & roll star." By April 1970, the four members of Hype were living in Haddon Hall, Beckenham, an Edwardian mansion converted to a block of flats that was described by one visitor as having an ambiance "like Dracula's living room". Ronson and Visconti built a makeshift studio under the grand staircase at Haddon Hall; Bowie recorded many of his early 1970s demos there.

Recording
Recording for The Man Who Sold the World began on 17April 1970 at Advision Studios in London, with the group beginning work on "All the Madmen". The next day, Ralph Mace was hired to play the Moog synthesiser, borrowed from George Harrison, following his work on the single version of "Memory of a Free Festival". At the time, Mace was a 40-year-old concert pianist who was also head of the classical music department at Mercury Records. During this time, Bowie terminated his contract with Pitt and met his future manager Tony Defries, who assisted Bowie in the termination. Recording moved to Trident Studios in London on 21April and continued there for the rest of April until mid-May. On 4May, the band recorded "Running Gun Blues" and "Saviour Machine", the latter of which was originally the working title for the title track, before Bowie reworked the song into a different melody to form the final version of "Saviour Machine". Recording and mixing was moved back to Advision on 12May and completed ten days later. Bowie recorded his vocal for the title track on the final day.

As Bowie was preoccupied with his new wife Angie at the time, as well as his managerial issues, the music was largely arranged by Ronson and Visconti. Ronson used the sessions to learn about many production and arrangement techniques from Visconti. Although Bowie is officially credited as the composer of all music on The Man Who Sold the World, author Peter Doggett quoted Visconti as saying that "the songs were written by all four of us. We'd jam in a basement, and Bowie would just say whether he liked them or not." In Doggett's narrative, "The band (sometimes with Bowie contributing guitar, sometimes not) would record an instrumental track, which might or might not be based upon an original Bowie idea. Then, at the last possible moment, Bowie would reluctantly uncurl himself from the sofa on which he was lounging with his wife, and dash off a set of lyrics." Conversely, Bowie was quoted in a 1998 interview as saying, "I really did object to the impression that I did not write the songs on The Man Who Sold the World. You only have to check out the chord changes. No-one writes chord changes like that." "The Width of a Circle" and "The Supermen", for example, were already in existence before the sessions began.

Music and lyrics
The Man Who Sold the World was a departure from the largely acoustic and folk rock sound of Space Oddity. According to music critic Greg Kot, it marked Bowie's change of direction into hard rock. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described the album as "almost all hard blues rock or psychedelic folk rock", while Doggett writes that it is "filled with propulsive hard rock". Much of the material has a distinct heavy metal edge that distinguishes it from Bowie's other releases, and has been compared to contemporary acts such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. According to Marc Spitz, Ronson was intent on making a heavy blues album "worthy of Cream."

Like the music, the lyrics are significantly darker than its predecessor. According to Doggett, they contain numerous themes that Bowie would continue to explore throughout the rest of the 1970s decade, including "madness, alienation, violence, confusion of identity, power, darkness and sexual possession". The lyrics have also been seen as reflecting the influence of such figures as Aleister Crowley, Franz Kafka and Friedrich Nietzsche. Since Bowie wrote most of the lyrics at the last minute, O'Leary writes that The Man Who Sold the World is a more "coherent" concept album than his fifth and eighth albums, Ziggy Stardust (1972) and Diamond Dogs (1974), respectively. He continues, saying that the songs "mirror and answer each other", sharing similar themes and imagery.

Side one
The opening track, "The Width of a Circle", is an eight-minute epic that delves into progressive rock. Originally debuted in February 1970 at a BBC session, the song is led by Ronson's widely lauded guitar work, using feedback and improvisation throughout. The lyrics reference the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran and in the song's second half, the narrator has a sexual encounter with God in the devil's lair. Pegg describes the song's sound as reminiscent of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. The lyrics of "All the Madmen" were inspired by Bowie's half-brother Terry Burns and reflect the theme of institutionalised madness. The song contains a recorder part that creates an atmosphere, which Buckley describes as "childlike dementia". Doggett describes the Moog synthesiser as an integral part of the recording, noting that it gives the track a "stunning conclusion". Spitz calls the track "terrifying".

For "Black Country Rock", Bowie had a small portion of the melody and four quickly-written lines that he gave to Ronson and Visconti, who expanded upon them to create the song. A blues rock and hard rock song, Bowie impersonates Marc Bolan in his vocal performance. "After All" is musically different from the rest of The Man Who Sold the World, being more akin to folk rock than hard rock. Featuring an "oh, by jingo" chant that is reminiscent of music hall numbers, the lyrics follow a group of innocent children who have not experienced the corruptions of adulthood. Similar to "The Supermen", the song references the works of Nietzsche and has been described by Buckley and Pegg as an underrated gem.

Side two
The lyrics of "Running Gun Blues" discuss gun-toting assassins and Vietnam War commentary, specifically the Mỹ Lai massacre of 1968. Although the lyrics reflect the themes of Space Oddity, the music reflects the predominant hard rock style of The Man Who Sold the World  and points to Bowie's future musical direction. Similar to the previous track, "Saviour Machine" is rooted in blues rock and hard rock. The lyrics explore the concept of computers overtaking the human race; Bowie's metallic-like vocal performance enhances the scenario. Like the majority of the tracks, "She Shook Me Cold" was mostly created by Ronson, Visconti and Woodmansey without Bowie's input. Spitz compares the song's blues style to Led Zeppelin, while O'Leary and Pegg write that Ronson was attempting to emulate Cream's Jack Bruce. The lyrics explore a sexual conquest similar to "You Shook Me" (then-recently covered by Jeff Beck) and Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain".

The album's title track has been described by multiple reviewers as "haunting". Musically, it is based around a "circular" guitar riff from Ronson. The lyrics are cryptic and evocative, inspired by numerous poems, including "Antigonish" (1899) by William Hughes Mearns. The narrator has an encounter with a kind of doppelgänger, as suggested in the second chorus where "I never lost control" is replaced with "We never lost control". Bowie's vocals are heavily "phased" throughout and contain none of the, in Doggett's words, "metallic theatrics" that are found on the rest of the album. The song also features güiro percussion, which Pegg describes as "sinister". "The Supermen" prominently reflects the themes of Nietzsche, particularly his theory of Übermensch, or "Supermen". Like other tracks on the album, the song is predominantly hard rock. It was described by Bowie in 1973 as a "period piece", and later "pre-fascist".

Cover artwork
The original 1970 US release of The Man Who Sold the World employed a cartoon-like cover drawing by Bowie's friend Michael J. Weller, featuring a cowboy in front of Cane Hill asylum. Weller, whose friend was a patient there, suggested the idea after Bowie had asked him to create a design that would capture the music's foreboding tone. Drawing on pop art styles, he depicted a dreary main entrance block to the hospital with a damaged clock tower. For the design's foreground, Weller used a photograph of actor John Wayne to draw a cowboy figure wearing a ten-gallon hat and holding a rifle, which was meant to be an allusion to the song "Running Gun Blues". Bowie suggested Weller incorporate the "exploding head" signature on the cowboy's hat, a feature he had previously used on his posters while a part of the Arts Lab. He also added an empty speech balloon for the cowboy figure, which was intended to include the line "roll up your sleeves and show us your arms"—a pun on record players, guns, and drug use—but Mercury found the idea too risqué and the balloon was left blank. According to Pegg, "at this point, [Bowie's] intention was to call the album Metrobolist, a play on Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis; the title remained on the tape boxes even after Mercury had released the LP in America as The Man Who Sold the World".

Bowie was enthusiastic about the finished design, but soon reconsidered the idea and had the art department at Philips Records, a subsidiary of Mercury, enlist photographer Keith MacMillan to shoot an alternate cover. The shoot took place in a "domestic environment" of the Haddon Hall living room, where Bowie reclined on a chaise longue in a cream and blue satin "man's dress", an early indication of his interest in exploiting his androgynous appearance. The dress was designed by British fashion designer Michael Fish. It has been said that Bowie's "bleached blond locks, falling below shoulder level" in the photo were inspired by a Pre-Raphaelite painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In the United States, Mercury rejected MacMillan's photo and released the album with Weller's design as its cover, much to the displeasure of Bowie, although he successfully lobbied the record label to use the photo for the release in the United Kingdom. In 1972, he said Weller's design was "horrible" but reappraised it in 1999, saying he "actually thought the cartoon cover was really cool".

While promoting The Man Who Sold the World in the US, Bowie wore the Fish dress in February 1971 on his first promotional tour and during interviews, despite the fact that the Americans had no knowledge of the then-unreleased UK cover. The 1971 German release's artwork presented a winged hybrid creature with Bowie's head and a hand for a body, preparing to flick the Earth away. The 1972 worldwide reissue by RCA Records used a black-and-white picture of Ziggy Stardust on the sleeve. The image remained the cover art on reissues until 1990 when the Rykodisc release reinstated the UK "dress" cover. The "dress" cover has appeared on subsequent reissues of the album.

In 2011, when the Victoria and Albert Museum in London was putting together the list of Bowie artifacts for the David Bowie Is show, the curators asked for the dress to display, but found that the dress had gone missing from Bowie's collection.

Release
The Man Who Sold the World was released in the US through Mercury on 4November 1970, with the catalogue number SR-61325. It was subsequently released in the UK on 10April 1971 by Mercury, with the catalogue number 6338 041. Bowie was initially aggravated that Mercury had retitled the album from his preferred title of Metrobolist without his consultation, but following its release in the US, Bowie attempted to persuade the label to retitle the album Holy Holy after his newly released single of the same name. Following the commercial flop of "Holy Holy", the title remained The Man Who Sold the World for the UK release. According to Cann, the album was disliked by Mercury executives. However, it was played on US radio stations frequently and the "heavy rock content" increased interest in Bowie. Cann also writes that The Man Who Sold the World developed an underground following and laid "solid foundations" for Ziggy Stardust.

None of the songs from the album were released as singles at the time, although a promo version of "All the Madmen" was issued in the US in 1970. Mercury released "All the Madmen" as a single, with Space Oddity "Janine" on the B-side, but withdrew it. The same song appeared in Eastern Europe during 1973, as did "The Width of a Circle". "Black Country Rock" was released as the B-side of "Holy Holy" in the UK in January 1971, shortly before the release of The Man Who Sold the World. The title track appeared as the B-side of both the US single release of "Space Oddity" in 1972 and the UK release of "Life on Mars?" in 1973.

Commercial performance
The Man Who Sold the World was initially a commercial failure. Pegg writes that by the end of June 1971, the album had sold only 1,395 copies in the US. The same year, Bowie stated: "[it] sold like hotcakes in Beckenham, and nowhere else". Following his commercial breakthrough with Ziggy Stardust in 1972, RCA reissued The Man Who Sold the World in the UK and the US on 10November. This release peaked at number 24 on the UK Albums Chart, where it remained for 30 weeks, and number 105 on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart, spending 23 weeks on the chart. The album's 1990 reissue charted again on the UK Albums Chart, peaking at number 66.

Critical reception
Upon release, The Man Who Sold the World was generally more well-received critically in the US than in the UK. Music publications Melody Maker and NME originally found The Man Who Sold the World "surprisingly excellent" and "rather hysterical", respectively. Reviewing for Rolling Stone in February 1971, John Mendelsohn called the album "uniformly excellent" and commented that Visconti's "use of echo, phasing, and other techniques on Bowie's voice ... serves to reinforce the jaggedness of Bowie's words and music", which he interpreted as "oblique and fragmented images that are almost impenetrable separately but which convey with effectiveness an ironic and bitter sense of the world when considered together".

Colman Andrews of Phonograph Record felt that record was a mixed bag, finding the lyrics both good and bad and Bowie's voice to be undistinguishable from other British artists, but enjoyed his vocal performance. Overall, Andrews stated, "[The Man Who Sold the World] TRIES to define some new province of modern music, even if it's not completely successful. For that alone it deserves some attention." The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau considered the album and its predecessor to be "overwrought excursions". Mike Saunders from Who Put the Bomp magazine included The Man Who Sold the World in his ballot of 1971's top 10 albums for the first annual Pazz & Jop poll of American critics, published in The Village Voice in February 1972.

Subsequent events
After the completion of The Man Who Sold the World, Bowie became less active in both the studio and on stage. His contract with music publisher Essex had expired and Defries, his new manager, was facing prior contractual challenges. In August 1970, Visconti parted ways with Bowie owing to his dislike of Defries and his frustration with Bowie's lack of enthusiasm during the making of The Man Who Sold the World; it was the last time he would see the artist for three or four years. Ronson and Woodmansey also departed due to other personal conflicts with Bowie. Despite his annoyance with Bowie during the sessions, Visconti still rated The Man Who Sold the World as his best work with him until his fourteenth studio album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980).

Although his new single "Holy Holy", recorded in November 1970 and released in January 1971, was a commercial flop, the single earned Bowie a contract with music publisher Chrysalis. The critical success of the album in the US prompted Mercury to send Bowie on a promotional radio tour of the country in February 1971. Upon his return, he wrote the majority of the material that would appear on the follow-up albums Hunky Dory (1971) and Ziggy Stardust. Bowie also convened with Ronson and Woodmansey, who returned to play on both records. Following the commercial disappointment of Hunky Dory, Bowie finally found commercial success with Ziggy Stardust in 1972. Ronson and Woodmansey, along with bassist Trevor Bolder, would become famous as the Spiders from Mars.

Influence and legacy
The Man Who Sold the World has been retrospectively described by Bowie's biographers and commentators as the beginning of Bowie's artistic growth, many considering it the first album where he began to find his sound. Buckley has described it as "the first Bowie album proper", and NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray stated, "this is where the story really starts". Erlewine cited The Man Who Sold the World as the beginning of Bowie's "classic period". Annie Zaleski of The A.V. Club called the album his "career blueprint", writing that it was musically a forerunner to the "swaggering electric disorientation" of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane (1973), but its greater importance on sequencing and atmosphere, as well as stronger songwriting, predated Hunky Dory. Paul Trynka calls The Man Who Sold the World Bowie's "first truly gripping work". Pegg finds it one of the best and most important albums in the history of rock music. In a 2013 readers' poll for Rolling Stone, it was voted Bowie's tenth greatest album.

The album has been praised for the band's performance and the unsettling nature of its music and lyrics. In a review for AllMusic, Erlewine complimented its "tight, twisted heavy guitar rock that appears simple on the surface but sounds more gnarled upon each listen". He viewed its music and Bowie's "paranoid futuristic tales" as "bizarre", adding that: "Musically, there isn't much time for innovation ...but there's an unsettling edge to the band's performance, which makes the record one of Bowie's best albums." In a review upon the album's reissue, a writer for Q called it "a robust, sexually charged affair", while a Mojo columnist wrote, "A robust set that spins with dizzying disorientation ... Bowie's armoury was being hastily assembled, though it was never deployed with such thrilling abandon again." Douglas Wolk of Pitchfork called the album the "dark horse" of Bowie's catalogue. Comparing The Man Who Sold the World to its predecessor, he praised the arrangements as tougher and "more effective", and complimented his artistic growth.

The album has since been cited as inspiring the goth rock, dark wave and science fiction elements of work by artists such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, Gary Numan, John Foxx and Nine Inch Nails. It has been claimed that glam rock began with the release of The Man Who Sold the World, though this is also attributed to Bolan's appearance on the UK television programme Top of the Pops in March 1971 wearing glitter. In his journal, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana listed it at number 45 on his top 50 favourite albums list. The title track provided an unlikely hit for Scottish pop singer Lulu, which was produced by Bowie and Ronson, and would be covered by many artists over the years, including Richard Barone in 1987, and Nirvana in 1993 for their live album MTV Unplugged in New York.

Reissues
The Man Who Sold the World was first released on CD by RCA in 1984. The album was reissued by Rykodisc/EMI in 1990 with bonus tracks, including a 1971 rerecording of "Holy Holy" that had originally been issued as a B-side in 1974. "Holy Holy" was incorrectly described in the liner notes as the original single version recorded in 1970. Bowie vetoed inclusion of the earlier recording, and the single remained its only official release until 2015, when it was included on Re:Call 1, part of the Five Years (1969–1973) compilation. Additionally, the liner notes incorrectly listed the personnel for "Lightning Frightening" as those who played with Bowie during the Space Oddity period, when in fact the personnel were members of the Arnold Corns sessions proto-group.

In 1999, The Man Who Sold the World was reissued again by Virgin/EMI, without the bonus tracks but with 24-bit digitally remastered sound. In 2015, the album was remastered for the Five Years (1969–1973) box set. It was released on CD, vinyl and digital formats, both as part of the compilation and separately.

On 6 November 2020, the album was reissued by Parlophone under its working title of Metrobolist to commemorate its 50th anniversary. The reissue featured an updated version of the original Weller artwork as its official cover. For this release, Visconti remixed every song, except "After All", because he felt the original mix (as remastered in 2015) was "perfect as is". In 2021, a companion 2-CD set called The Width of a Circle was announced to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the British release. A press notice stated that the collection, released on 28 May, will "feature non-album singles, a BBC In Concert session, music for a TV play and further Visconti remixes wrapping up (Bowie's) recordings from 1970 and revealing the first sonic steps toward Hunky Dory".

Track listing
All tracks are written by David Bowie.

Side one
 * 1) "The Width of a Circle" – 8:05
 * 2) "All the Madmen" – 5:38
 * 3) "Black Country Rock" – 3:32
 * 4) "After All" – 3:52

Side two
 * 1) "Running Gun Blues" – 3:11
 * 2) "Saviour Machine" – 4:25
 * 3) "She Shook Me Cold" – 4:13
 * 4) "The Man Who Sold the World" – 3:55
 * 5) "The Supermen" – 3:38

Personnel
Adapted from The Man Who Sold the World liner notes and biographer Chris O'Leary:
 * David Bowie – lead vocals, backing vocals, 12-string acoustic guitar, Stylophone
 * Mick Ronson – lead and rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals, recorder, piano
 * Tony Visconti – bass, backing vocals, recorder
 * Mick Woodmansey – drums, timpani, percussion
 * Ralph Mace – Moog synthesiser

Technical
 * Tony Visconti – producer
 * Ken Scott – engineer
 * Gerald Chevin – engineer
 * Robin McBride – executive producer

title: The Man Who Sold the World (album)


text:
Les Misérables (1995 film)

Les Misérables is a 1995 French war film written, produced and directed by Claude Lelouch. Set in France during the first half of the 20th century, the film concerns a poor and illiterate man named Henri Fortin (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who is introduced to Victor Hugo's classic 1862 novel Les Misérables and begins to see parallels to his own life. The film won the 1995 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Plot
As the film opens, Henri's father, a chauffeur also named Henri, is falsely accused of having murdered his boss. During his trial and imprisonment, Henri's mother finds a job in a tavern on a Normandy beach. There Henri sees a film adaptation of Les Misérables. His father dies attempting to escape from prison, and upon hearing the news Henri's mother commits suicide. Henri grows up an orphan and learns boxing.

The film next takes up the story of Elisa, a ballerina, and André Ziman, a young Jewish journalist and law student. They meet following a performance of a ballet based on Les Misérables. Later, during World War II, André and Elisa, now married, and their daughter Salomé attempt to cross the Swiss border to escape the Nazis. They encounter Henri, who owns a moving company, and they discuss the Hugo novel. The Zimans entrust Salomé to Henri and enroll her in a Catholic convent school. André and Elisa are ambushed while trying to cross the frontier. Elisa is arrested and André wounded. Farmers who find him give him shelter.

The members of a local gang and Henri join the French Resistance, but the gang members take advantage of their anti-Nazi attacks to steal from local houses. Elisa and other women are forced to entertain the Nazi occupiers. She is sent to a concentration camp for being defiant. After staging an attack on a train transporting funds for the Vichy government, Henri and his mates travel to Normandy to visit the tavern where he lived as a child. The D-Day invasion is launched the next day and Henri supports the Allied forces when they conquer the beach. In the process he saves the life of the tavern owner's son Marius.

At the war's end, Henri accepts an offer to run a seaside camp in Normandy. There he receives a letter from Salomé, who has no way of contacting her family. He takes her with him to the resort, which he names Chez Jean Valjean. Elisa, having survived a Nazi concentration camp in German-occupied Poland, joins them later.

A former Vichy police agent accuses Henri of abetting the gang's activities during the war and of robbing and burning a train. He is imprisoned to await trial. Meanwhile André's one-time rescuer is holding him captive, hoping to live off his bank account. The farmer has told André that the American D-Day invasion failed and the Nazis now rule the world. With evident reluctance, the farmer's wife supports her husband in these lies until he attempts to poison André. Then she shoots her husband before he can feed André the poisoned soup. As she checks to see if her husband is dead, he grabs her and chokes her to death. André escapes from his cellar prison on a bad leg and emerges to find the farmer couple dead and a liberated Europe. He rejoins his wife and daughter at Chez Jean Valjean and then represents Henri at his trial and wins his acquittal.

As the film ends, Henri, now the mayor, presides at the civil marriage of Salomé and Marius in the presence of André and Elisa and the mother superior of the school that sheltered Salomé. André Ziman quotes Victor Hugo: "The best of our lives is yet to come."

Cast

 * Jean-Paul Belmondo as Leopold/Henri Fortin/Henri's father (also named Henri Fortin)
 * Michel Boujenah as André Ziman
 * Alessandra Martines as Elisa Ziman
 * Salomé Lelouch as Salomé Ziman, child
 * Margot Abascal as Salomé Ziman, adult
 * Annie Girardot as Madame Thénardier
 * Philippe Léotard as Thénardier
 * Clémentine Célarié as Catherine
 * Philippe Khorsand as Policeman
 * Ticky Holgado as Nice Street Urchin
 * William Leymergie as Toureiffel
 * Jean Marais as Msgr. Myriel
 * Micheline Presle as Mother Superior
 * Sylvie Joly as the Innkeeper
 * Daniel Toscan du Plantier as Count de Villeneuve
 * Michaël Cohen as Marius
 * Jacques Boudet as Doctor
 * Isabelle Sadoyan as Madame Magloire
 * Robert Hossein as Ceremony Master
 * Darry Cowl as Bookseller
 * Antoine Duléry as Crazy Street Urchin
 * Jacques Gamblin as Church Attendant
 * Joseph Malerba as The pumpman
 * Pierre Vernier as Prison Director
 * Nicolas Vogel as Le général de Verdun
 * In the film within the film
 * Jean-Paul Belmondo as Jean Valjean
 * Rufus as Monsieur Thénardier
 * Nicole Croisille as Mme. Thénardier
 * Clémentine Célarié as Fantine
 * Philippe Khorsand as Javert

Reception
The film opened at number one at the French box office with a gross of 8,510,740 Francs ($1.7 million) for the week. The film received positive reviews from critics with a score of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert wrote he liked this film's "expansive freedom and (the) energy of its storytelling". The Los Angeles Times called it "a spectacular-looking film" that "eventually becomes needlessly drawn-out", and added: "the cast is staunch...but Belmondo...easily walks away with the picture." Variety said it was the "mightiest of Lelouch’s humanist hymns", and Belmondo "gives one of the finest perfs of his career". Janet Maslin, who reviewed the film for The New York Times, meanwhile complained about "odd variations on Hugo's themes."

Accolades
The film won the 1995 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Annie Girardot won the 1996 César Award for Best Supporting Actress.

title: Les Misérables (1995 film)