“I don't wanna be angel, Just a little bit evil, I feel a devil in me...”
David Bowie’s Holy Holy was released on this day fifty years ago (15th January 1971), as the last of the Bowie releases on Mercury. It was clear the label wasn’t really giving the record the promotion it had given the preceding Bowie singles in terms of picture sleeves and press adverts. Picture sleeves were issued in Spain (top left) and Germany only.
A Blue Mink production with Bowie on vocals and guitar, the track also featured Herbie Flowers on bass, Barry Morgan on drums and Alan Parker on guitar, all three were members of Blue Mink at the time.
In a brief interview with Kid Jensen at the time, David told him that he was trying to record a feeling that “these are the last few years of this present civilisation”, but that he didn’t think that original idea came off too well. He added that he hoped to write more material on that theme. Five Years opened an album released the following year.
Holy Holy received a positive response from the music press generally and it’s likely DB welcomed the Syd Barrett comparison made in a Melody Maker review. (See snippet in our montage)
Despite the favourable reviews and a solo performance on acoustic guitar in one of his men’s dresses on Granada TV’s Six-O-One* in the UK, Holy Holy didn't perform well on any singles chart. It would take more than another year and another label before that kind of success arrived.
A far more urgent version of the song re-recorded with The Spiders in 1972 ended up as the B-side of the Diamond Dogs single release in June 1974. The Spiders’ version has been used erroneously on both the RCA Rare album release in 1982 and the 1990 Ryko reissue of The Man Who Sold The World, where it was listed as the original Mercury version in both instances. The Mercury version was finally given an official release on the David Bowie (Five Years 1969 – 1973) box set in 2015.
* On the set at Granada, David met TV producer Roger Damon Price, who claims that he told Bowie about an idea he was working on for a TV show called The Tomorrow People. The show was to feature a master race called The Homo Superior.
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