Credit: Dangerous Minds / Record Sleeve

David Bowie’s eponymous 1969 release, David Bowie, is an album that includes some of my favourite “underdog” deep catalogue cuts from Bowie’s discography, namely ‘Cygnet Committee’, ‘Janine’, ‘Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud’ and the epic seven-minute-long hippie anthem ‘Memory of a Free Festival’.

I find it hard not to think of ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ as Bowie’s very own ‘Hey Jude’ knock-off. It isn’t, exactly, but that there is an obvious similarity few would deny.

‘Memory of a Free Festival’ is a ghostly-sounding evocation of what seems to be some mind-blowing hair-like manifestation from long ago and far away. Still, the actual event it celebrates (the Beckenham Free Festival of August 16th, 1969, organised by Bowie and Mary Finnigan) was only about three weeks in the rearview mirror when the song was written and recorded. It took place in dreary old Croydon, not exactly the fairy wonderland implied by the song’s blissed-out chant. It could be thought of as a British variation on the same themes of transcendental longhaired communal spirituality as explored in Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’.

‘Memory of a Free Festival’ is essentially two separate songs: the long, slow build-up, with Bowie accompanying himself on a cheap Rosedale Electric Chord Organ, and then the long, drawn-out chorus/chant fade: “The Sun Machine is coming down and we’re gonna have a party,” a line that is repeated 27 times.

It doesn’t even really sound like a song someone wrote. It sounds like something that just happened. The first half of ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ is like watching a slideshow of a party you don’t remember attending. Then the second half kicks in, and it’s pure cult—27 repetitions of a single line, and somehow every one of them feels different. Like Bowie’s trying to convince himself that whatever they had back in Croydon was something bigger, something sacred. You can feel it slipping through his fingers as he’s singing it.

Marc Bolan, Radio 1’s ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris, his wife Sue, and future Sony bigwig Tony Woollcott were among those recording the overdubbed background vocals and crowd noises. The two songs were connected by the sound of a cymbal being struck by a small rubber mallet and then slowed and manipulated on tape.

At the request of the American label, Mercury Records, the song was re-recorded as a harder-rocking “electric” version—and split into an A and B side of a 45rpm single—by a pre-Spiders from Mars band that included Mick Ronson in his first session with Bowie, drummer Mick Woodmansey and producer Tony Visconti, who played bass. This version also has a Moog synthesiser played by classical music producer Ralph Mace, who would play the electronic instrument again on The Man Who Sold the World soon afterwards.

The US single was a huge flop, selling but a few hundred copies, which probably shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise considering that the really, really catchy bit doesn’t even start until around the three-minute mark, and thus the B-side.

This isn’t one of Bowie’s big songs. It never shows up on the greatest hits or the expensive reissues with the gold foil sleeve. But that’s fine. It wasn’t made to be remembered. This was Bowie in transition, standing halfway between flower children and aliens, trying to conjure magic from a grey English park and an organ that probably smelled like mildew. It’s naive, overlong, maybe even a little embarrassing—but it’s honest. And that’s rare, especially from someone who’d spend the next decade turning honesty into theatre. Just a kid in a kaftan trying to save a feeling before it disappears forever.

The original version of ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ as it appeared on the David Bowie (Space Oddity) album:

The far superior re-recorded ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ single, parts one and two:

Echo-drenched, more chaotic alternative album mix with two extra minutes, clocking in at 9.22. Unreleased until 2009. Listen LOUD:

There’s also a fourth version of “Memory of a Free Festival” recorded at the BBC in early 1970 that was included on the ‘Bowie at Beeb‘ set: