Don’t fake it baby, lay the real thing on me…
Serious Bowie collectors would generally be happy to own the above promo and promo information sheet for the UK Philips Space Oddity 45.
For many years there was no debate about this and it was presumed this was the only version of a UK promo to exist.
However, at least ten years ago, or more, the item below appeared, purporting to be an unissued sleeve for the UK promo.
I wrote about it at the time and I have always doubted the authenticity of the sleeve, which I did another piece about in 2004 (12.09.2004 NEWS: SPACE ODDITY IN ALL TIME TOP 10 MOST EXPENSIVE DISCS) when Record Collector valued it at £3,000 GBP…without ever actually seeing a copy in the flesh.
I won’t rant again about Record Collector or spell out my original reasons for not believing the sleeve to be genuine, see aforementioned news piece if you’re interested.
However, thanks to the diligence of Bowie expert, Kevin Cann, new information has come to light that places further doubt as to the authenticity of this sleeve.
In his timeline for the 40th Anniversary issue of Space Oddity, Kevin has the following entry for August 25th 1969…
“Travels to Holland to perform ?Space Oddity? for a TV appearance on Doebidoe. Interviewed for Het Parool newspaper by the late Jojanneke Claassen at her flat in Amsterdam. David is photographed sitting cross-legged on the floor strumming his guitar, the pictures widely used for promotion by Philips.”
This begs the question, why would a sleeve be printed up in September (it would take a good couple of weeks from when the photograph was taken to getting the sleeve into production) for a promo that was made in June?
I challenge the men behind this ‘find’ to let us have a sixties specialist (with a superb knowledge of the Philips label) to take a good look at this sleeve. Either that, or just come clean!