After his debut album flopped, David Bowie spent a couple of years regrouping. He sang Velvet Underground covers and rip-offs with a rock band called the Riot Squad; he started a folk trio called Feathers with his then-girlfriend Hermione Farthingale. And, inspired in part by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space
This article originally appeared on www.rollingstone.com: David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’: How ‘2001’-Inspired Hit Led to Rushed 1969 LP