DESCRIPTION:
Cygnet Committee is a song from David Bowie's 1969 album Space Oddity. It contains a mix of folk, balladry, and prog rock. Held to be "the first Bowie album proper", and his first deemed worthy by record companies of regular reissue, Space Oddity featured a notable list of collaborators, including session players Herbie Flowers, Tim Renwick, Terry Cox, and Rick Wakeman, as well as cellist Paul Buckmaster, multi-instrumentalist and producer Tony Visconti, and bassist John Lodge. At over 9 minutes this ambitious progressive folk rock song was Bowie's longest studio recording until the opening/title track of 1976's Station to Station. During 1969 Bowie and then-girlfriend Angela Barnett lived in Beckenham, where they ran the Arts Lab, trying to encourage young people to be creative. However, Bowie soon quit the Arts Lab, when he realized that most people were coming just to see him perform and not to participate. His disappointing encounter with the hippies during this time is the basis for the song, as he felt he was used and abused by the teens: "I gave them my life... They drained my very soul..."