"Life on Mars?" is a song by the English musician David Bowie, first released on his 1971 album Hunky Dory. Conceived as a parody of Frank Sinatra's 1969 song "My Way", "Life on Mars?" was recorded on 6 August 1971 at Trident Studios in London, and was co-produced by Bowie and Ken Scott. The track features piano by the keyboardist Rick Wakeman and a string arrangement by the guitarist Mick Ronson. "Life on Mars?" is primarily a glam rock ballad, with elements of cabaret and art rock. The lyrics are about a girl who goes to a cinema to escape reality, and include surreal images that reflect optimism and the effects of Hollywood.
In June 1973, at the height of Bowie's fame as Ziggy Stardust, RCA Records issued "Life on Mars?" as a single in the United Kingdom, where it peaked at number three. To promote the single, Mick Rock filmed a video that shows Bowie in make-up and a turquoise suit singing the song against a white backdrop. Bowie frequently performed "Life on Mars?" during his concerts, and the track has appeared on numerous compilation albums.
Commentators generally consider "Life on Mars?" to be one of Bowie's finest songs; some have called it one of the greatest songs of all time. Critics have praised Bowie's vocal performance and the string arrangement. The song has appeared in films and television programmes, and the British television series Life on Mars was named after it. Artists including Barbra Streisand, and Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, have recorded cover versions of the song; and following Bowie's death in 2016, "Life on Mars?" was frequently chosen as a tribute to the artist in live performances and cover versions. That year, a "stripped down" version of the song, remixed by Scott, was released, along with a reedited version of the promotional video including an extended outro.
Background and writing
In early 1968, David Bowie was hired by his music publisher David Platz to write English lyrics for the 1967 French song "Comme d'habitude", but his version, titled "Even a Fool Learns to Love", was rejected by the song's French publishers due to Bowie's obscurity. Soon after, the songwriter Paul Anka bought the rights to "Comme d'habitude" and rewrote it as "My Way", which was made famous by the singer Frank Sinatra in 1969. The success of "My Way" prompted Bowie to write "Life on Mars?" as a parody of Sinatra's recording. He told Michael Parkinson in a 2002 interview: "That really made me angry for so long—for about a year... eventually I thought, 'I can write something as big as that, and I'll write one that sounds a bit like it'." Bowie believed using "Comme d'habitude"/"My Way" as a basis was not "theft" but "a statement of rightful ownership". He acknowledged "My Ways influence in the liner notes for Hunky Dory (1971), which state that "Life on Mars?" was "inspired by Frankie".
In the liner notes for the 2008 compilation iSelect, Bowie wrote that he began humming the melody in a park in Beckenham, Kent; after returning home to Haddon Hall, he wrote the rest of the song that afternoon on piano. Haddon Hall, an Edwardian mansion converted to a block of flats, served as a communal residence for Bowie, Mick Ronson and Tony Visconti starting in 1970. It was in this atmospheric setting, described by one visitor as having an ambiance "like Dracula's living room", that Bowie composed over three dozen songs, including many that would appear on Hunky Dory and its follow-up The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972). One Melody Maker reviewer said that "Life on Mars?" was written after "a brief and painful affair" with the actress Hermione Farthingale. While on tour in 1990, Bowie introduced the song by saying, "You fall in love, you write a love song. This is a love song." Bowie's original handwritten lyrics were vastly different from the finished recording, aside from the chorus; they were more akin to the tone of Hunky Dorys other Nietzsche-inspired songs: "There's a shoulder-rock movement and the trembling starts / And a great Lord signs in vain / What can you buy when there's no-one to tell you / What a bargain you made..."
Recording Early demo Bowie recorded a solo demo of "Life on Mars?" in June 1971 at Radio Luxembourg studios in London. This early demo contains only the first verse and chorus, and several lyrical variations from the finished track, including "It's a simple but small affair"; "Her mother is yelling no, and her father has asked her to go"; and "It's a time for the lawman beating up the wrong guy." The demo was later released as part of the 2022 box set Divine Symmetry: The Journey to Hunky Dory. In the liner notes, Tris Penna observes that Bowie's newly discovered method of composing on piano enabled him to develop "a far more ambitious musical palette". According to the biographer Marc Spitz, Bowie's demos of "Life on Mars?", "Oh! You Pretty Things" and "Andy Warhol" around this time inspired Bowie's new manager, Tony Defries, to secure him a new recording contract, eventually signing him to RCA Records.
Studio version
Work on Hunky Dory began at London's Trident Studios in June 1971. "Life on Mars?" was recorded on 6 August, the final day of the sessions. According to the biographer Chris O'Leary, Bowie and co-producer Ken Scott considered the track to be "the Big One", and saved it for the end of the sessions. The keyboardist, session musician and Strawbs member Rick Wakeman, played piano on the track. In 1995, Wakeman said he met with Bowie in late June 1971 at Haddon Hall, where he heard demos of "Changes" and "Life on Mars?" in "their raw brilliance", calling them "the finest selection of songs I have ever heard in one sitting in my entire life [...] I couldn't wait to get into the studio and record them". In 2016, Wakeman recalled that after leaving the studio and meeting up with a group of friends in a pub, he noted that he had "just played on the best song that I'd ever had the privilege to work on".
Along with Wakeman on piano, the backing band consisted of Mick Ronson on guitar, Trevor Bolder on bass and Mick Woodmansey on drums. Ronson also composed the song's string arrangement, his first time doing so. Woodmansey recalled that Ronson's inexperience initially clashed with the more professional BBC Symphony Orchestra players: "They were good players, but it was impossible to build any sort of rapport with them because we inhabited such different worlds." Ronson was nervous but took charge, capturing two takes before the string section leader requested a third take, which appears on the final song. In 2016, Woodmansey told NME that "Life on Mars?" was the first time he realised the "calibre" of Bowie's songwriting, saying, "It had just gone to another level." In his 2017 book Spider from Mars: My Life with Bowie, Woodmansey called "Life on Mars?" the "highlight" of his recording career with Bowie and the track he's "most proud of". Bowie recorded his vocal performance in one take. Scott called him "unique" and "the only singer I ever worked with where virtually every take was a master".
Composition Music The biographer David Buckley describes "Life on Mars?" as a "soaring, cinematic ballad". The song has been classified as glam rock by Gold Radio and Uncut, and as rock and roll and music hall by Pitchfork; while Michael Gallucci of Ultimate Classic Rock said the melody "bridges cabaret and art rock". "Life on Mars?" has a complex structure; the verses are primarily in the key of F major but chords change throughout, including C7 ("told her to go"), F ("but her friend"), and later on, C9 to A ("lived it ten times"). The pre-chorus sections range from F major to B major, the dominant key throughout the choruses; Bolder's bassline has a rising chromatic scale of E—E—F—G. Bowie delivers his vocals passionately during the choruses and almost nasally in the verses.
Ronson based his string arrangement on the bassline Bolder worked on during rehearsals for the track. The other instruments act as a counterpoint to the strings during the chorus: according to O'Leary, Woodmansey plays a "snare-medium tom fill to echo a descending violin line", while Wakeman adds "dancing" replies on piano. Ronson plays recorder at the second verse's "Ibiza" line. Woodmansey recalled approaching his drum part as "John Bonham plays classical music". Bowie noted Wakeman "embellished the piano part" of his original melody and Ronson "created one of his first and best string parts" for the song. The author Peter Doggett describes Ronson's string arrangement as "gargantuan", and Christopher Sandford said that Hunky Dory would be best remembered for the "lush, orchestral arrangement" of "Life on Mars?"
Towards the song's end, Ronson performs a short, "vibrato-saturated" guitar solo that was recorded in one take. The strings then play "grand sweeps" before a climactic tom-roll, which several biographers compare to the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra, which was used as the main theme of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). After a false ending, Wakeman's piano plays the chorus melody "off in the distance", during which a telephone's ring and studio chatter are audible. According to Pegg, the telephone bell rang during an earlier, scrapped take that was still present at the end of the tape; Bowie decided to keep it for the final mix. Ken Scott explained that Ronson became annoyed and audibly cursed during the prior take when the telephone rang, and so in the final mix Scott quickly faded out the earlier take at that point.
Lyrics
According to BBC Radio 2, "Life on Mars?" has "one of the strangest lyrics ever", consisting of a "slew of surreal images" like a Salvador Dalí painting. Spitz said that the song has a theme of optimism, while Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times believed that there was "a sense of helplessness" to it. In the song, a "girl with mousy hair" visits a cinema to escape from reality. Sandford writes that it "sets up a complex parallel world in which the cinema becomes life". After the girl becomes "hooked to the silver screen", Bowie uses an array of images that are typical of films, naming Mickey Mouse, John Lennon, "Rule, Britannia!", Ibiza and the Norfolk Broads.
At the time of Hunky Dorys release, Bowie summed up "Life on Mars?" as, "A sensitive young girl's reaction to the media." In 1997, he said, "I think she finds herself disappointed with reality... that although she's living in the doldrums of reality, she's being told that there's a far greater life somewhere, and she's bitterly disappointed that she doesn't have access to it." A key motif throughout the song is Hollywood, which Doggett describes as "a manufacturer of dreams and stars that have become stale with repetition". This is evident in the line "the film is a saddening bore—she's lived it ten times or more", which Sandford calls "a neat, if well-worn trick, blurring the art-life divide". The Hollywood influence is also present in the line "look at those cavemen go", which is borrowed from the Hollywood Argyles' 1960 song "Alley Oop".
The identity of the "girl with the mousy hair" has been debated, with some claiming the girl is Farthingale. Pegg, however, states that no evidence supports this claim. Farthingale has also rejected this theory, telling Pegg: "I don't actually have mousy hair... I wasn't a person who lived at home with my parents, and I didn't live a fantasy life in films. Nothing about me fits into any of the words."
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