The (sort of) forgotten Bowie album.

Not that it’s obscure. Pin Ups topped the UK album charts in 1973. That iconic sleeve featuring Bowie and Twiggy has not been forgotten but its contents largely have. Maybe because it was a rather pointless collection of 60s covers, not that different from the originals. They seemed like “oldies” at the time even though The Merseys had hit the Top Ten with Sorrow, for instance, only seven years earlier. I was discussing this with my friend Brian Jones at lunchtime as we wandered round a new David Bowie photographic at a gallery in Heddon Street, just opposite where the Ziggy Stardust cover was shot. We agreed that the Pin Ups was proof that, in 1973, Bowie could do whatever he liked. And that he still does. And probably always will.