In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy set an formidable aim for America: ship a human being to the moon and convey them again in a single piece.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” he stated throughout a joint session of Congress. The endeavor turned often known as Project Apollo.

Two and half years later, Kennedy can be lifeless, however the moon mission was hardly deserted. After practically eight years of testing, coaching and myriad different preparations — to not point out pressure with the Soviet Union — Apollo 11 was scheduled for launch on July 16, 1969. And if that wasn’t spectacular sufficient, the touchdown itself can be televised for tens of millions all over the world to observe.

What did all of that must do with David Bowie? At first, not a lot. A 12 months previous to the scheduled moon touchdown, the rising singer-songwriter — who by then had only one album to his title, launched to little fanfare — had gone to see Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie adopted a gaggle of astronauts, scientists and one remarkably sentient laptop as they traveled to Jupiter on a mission to analyze alien life.

This, Bowie would later say, was enormously impactful, inspiring him to work on a brand new music titled “Space Oddity.”

“I was out of my gourd anyway, I was very stoned when I went to see it [Space Odyssey], several times, and it was really a revelation to me,” he stated to Performing Songwriter in 2003. “It got the song flowing.”

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But when Bowie introduced it to producer Tony Visconti, who might have misunderstood the music’s intentions, there have been doubts.

“When David played it to me, I said to him, ‘I know what you’re doing. There’s a guy up in space now. NASA just put a guy in space in his tin can. I know what you mean by the tin can,'” Visconti defined throughout an look on The Bob Lefsetz Podcast in 2023. “I said, ‘But it’s a cheap shot. It’s based on a special event.'”

Since Visconti wasn’t , Bowie as a substitute labored with producer Gus Dudgeon, who would later work extensively with Elton John. Cheap shot or not, it was determined by the label that in an effort to maximize the music’s potential success, it needs to be rush-released as a single on July 11, 1969, 5 days earlier than the launch of Apollo 11.

Mission Accomplished

This turned out to be a fruitful choice. The BBC picked up the music and used it of their protection of the touchdown, however solely when the Apollo 11 mission was accomplished and all three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, had been safely again on Earth.

“I’m sure they really weren’t listening to the lyric at all [Laughs]. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to juxtapose against a moon landing,” Bowie recalled in 2003. “Of course, I was overjoyed that they did. Obviously some BBC official said, ‘Oh, right then, that space song, Major Tom, blah blah blah, that’ll be great.’ ‘Um, but he gets stranded in space, sir.’ Nobody had the heart to tell the producer that [Laughs].