Limited edition Ziggy-era David Bowie vinyl announced for Record Store Day

The album is taken from the Trident Studios 1/4” stereo tapes dated 15 December, 1971, which were created for the then provisional tracklisting for what would become The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars album.

The tracklisting for Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth) runs differently from the Ziggy Stardust LP and features four songs that didn’t make the final album. On Side 1, in the place of Starman, one of the last three tracks recorded for the album in February 1972, is  the Chuck Berry cover Round And Round. The track was finally released on a single as the B-side to Drive-In Saturday on 6 April 1973. Initially, closing Side 1 of the album was Bowie’s version of Jacques Brel’s Amsterdam, which would later appear as the B-side of Sorrow on 12 October 1973.

Side 2 of the 15 December 1971 tracklisting features two long-time non-LP fan favourites, Holy Holy and Velvet Goldmine. The former is a re-recording with The Spiders of David’s 1971 single. Again, this version of the track had to wait several years before surfacing as the B-side of Diamond Dogs on 14 June 1974. Velvet Goldmine is considered by many to be a lost Ziggy era classic, one Bowie often referred to as ‘He’s A Goldmine’ or ‘She’s A Goldmine’ in his notebooks and interviews. The track was recorded during the Ziggy sessions but was not released until 26 September 1975, alongside Changes backing the re-released album version of Space Oddity, which peaked at No. 1 in the UK singles chart in November 1975.

The cover of Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth) features a photo of Bowie taken at an early Ziggy Stardust period session by Brian Ward, and the two sides of the inner bags are the fronts of the two Trident Studios tape boxes. The album’s title comes from the lyrics of Starman, which, along with Rock ‘N Roll Suicide and Suffragette City, had not yet been recorded when this variation of the album was compiled.

Waiting In The Sky (Before The Starman Came To Earth) was cut on a customised late Neumann VMS80 lathe with fully recapped electronics from 192kHz restored masters of the original Trident Studios master tapes, with no additional processing on transfer. The half-speed vinyl cut was by engineer John Webber at AIR Studios in London.