“No one ever knew the number, so it never rang”: The intriguing mystery of the ringing phone captured at the end of David Bowie’s Life on Mars

Bowie Phone.

Amid the brimming number of David Bowie’s best-ever songs, there’s one incredibly well known masterwork that even the most ardent of Bowie-nerds would happily grant a top-slot position. That song of course, is 1971’s cinematic Life on Mars?

Recorded by Bowie and his soon-to-be Spiders from Mars with producer Ken Scott at the legendary Trident Studios in Soho, Life on Mars? marked a major leap forwards in terms of songwriting prowess for Bowie - then grappling for success a couple of years on from his towering 1969 hit Space Oddity.

Bowie had fell in with the Hull-originating Spiders when recording his previous album, 1970’s The Man Who Sold The World, via producer Tony Visconti. It proved to be a fruitful partnership.