It is a great album, and an astonishing document for its time.

David had a long time love for the Velvet underground, and  their songs  “Waiting for the Man” and  “White Light White Heat” were live staples for long periods of his career.

David’s ability to write pop songs in the seventies should never be underestimated, “Oh You Pretty things”, “Life on Mars”  and “Man who sold the World” amongst them.

Somehow, he and Ronson morphed Lou from off beat cult artist to pop star with one song “Walk on the Wild Side”, the song which underwrote the albums’ success and Lou’s bank balance for his entire career. Remarkably, four out of the eleven songs were written while he was in the Velvets and had been previously performed . “Satellite of Love” receives the most radical and remarkable reworking.

By all accounts Reed was a difficult character, and drug addict, making this successful  reincarnation even more unlikely. Anecdotally, it appears that there was a genuine friendship between them, Bowie got to work with an underground Hero, Reed with a man who had a pop stardust signally absent from the Velvets.

The early 70’s were weird times. In America the Federal Communications Commission banned the Who’s “my Generation” from the radio for “disrespect to elders” and the Rolling Stones “King Bee” for sexual innuendo :

“ Well I’m a king bee

Buzzing around your hive

Well I’m a king bee, baby

Buzzing around your hive

Yeah, I can make honey baby

Let me come inside”

The BBC forced the Rolling Stones to change  the recording “lets spend the night together” to “lets spend some time together”

 But  for both ,Candy giving head was fine…

The song “Wild Side” is the greatest Queer statement before frankie Goes to hollywood’s “Relax and totally anachronistic with the time – Gilbert o Sullivan’s Clair, Eltons “Crocodile Rock” and Donny Osmond were the competition.

Bowie and Reed showed a casual ambivalence to sexuality and marginalised communities, both, I assume   for commercial reasons, and a desire to be an icon for no one.

 Reed explores gender and sexuality  on the album in a time when exploring such topics was not an acceptable notion in mainstream pop culture.  Reed was unarguably a pioneer in this regard,  but wanted e to be a pop star on very specific terms.  He is a real person on this album, not a manufactured idol. He never sought to be a  touchstone for many marginalized people .

Bowie/Ronson also give us    a brutal rock treatment on “Vicious”, the sonic polar opposite to Wild Side” allegedly inspired by Andy Warhol quipping that Reed should write something Vicious “Oh, you know, like I hit you with a flower”’.

Somehow, Reed/ Ronson/ Bowie fuse trend androgynous glam rock, with something dark and powerful ,from which David walks away with Ziggy, a sanitised hybrid of  the sleaze of New York which he had found himself beguiled by.

I always argue that if you want to understand Bowie you need to undeestand the following  albums, Iggy pops “The idiot, “Lust for life”, Davids’ “pin Ups”,  Scott walker’s Scott 1  and 2 and Lou’s Transformer. Listen to “life on mars” then “Perfect day”,  “Moonage day” dream then “Vicious”. Go on, I dare you…

Anyone who wants to grasp the genius of Ronson will be converted.