Love You ‘Till Tuesday (Space Oddity: Major Tom)

The 60s were not kind to David Jones. The Konrads were his first band, formed in 1962 when Jones was just 15. Already, Jones’s ambition was far greater than that of his bandmates, and he left them for another group called The King Bees. The band released the single “Liza Jane” in 1964, which was a commercial failure. Jones left them to join the Manish Boys, which released “I Pity the Fool” in 1965, which featured a guitar solo by (then) session guitarist Jimmy Page. It also flopped. The same year, Jones then left them to join The Lower Third, who released the (appropriately titled) single “You’ve Got A Habit of Leaving”. It was yet another commercial failure, but it returned much later on 2002’s Heathen. Their second single, “Can’t Help Thinking About Me” had some critical success, but it didn’t chart. This single was significant for being the first time that Jones had used the name David Bowie on a release. The Lower Third left Bowie behind because of financial disagreements. Bowie moved on to lead the band The Buzz (and simultaneously, The Riot Squad, though their recordings have never materialized). The Buzz backed Bowie on the single “Do Anything You Say” in 1966. By 1967, however, Bowie had transitioned into a solo career. The single “The Laughing Gnome” and his debut album David Bowie, were both failures. His music career went dark for two years while he explored mime (which he had begun studying while with The Lower Third), theatre, and dance under Lindsay Kemp. Kenneth Pitt, Bowie’s manager, sought to create a promotional film of Bowie performing to push his music career into the public while leveraging some of Bowie’s recently acquired skills. The resulting film, Love You till Tuesday, didn’t find a distributor, and remained unseen until 1984. The eighth song included was the science fiction flavored “Space Oddity”, and introduced the character of Major Tom.