“People coming up to me and saying, ‘Good album, good songs.’ That hadn't happened to mebefore”: David Bowie on his first classic album

Bowie in 1971.

On this day (17 December) in 1971, David Bowie’s first great album was released. Hunky Dory was also the first in a run of ten consecutive classics that made him arguably the greatest and most innovative artist of the ’70s.

Bowie had shown flashes of brilliance before Hunky Dory, most notably with the 1969 single Space Oddity - described at the time by US trade magazine Record World as “a blast-off set to music… haunting and eerie…”