Velvet Goldmine

David Bowie recorded “Velvet Goldmine” on 11 November 1971 at Trident Studios in London during the Ziggy Stardust sessions. Bowie and Ken Scott produced the track, with Mick Ronson on electric guitar, piano and backing vocals, Trevor Bolder on bass and Mick Woodmansey on drums. Left off The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it was first released by RCA in 1975 on the “Space Oddity” maxi-single with “Changes.” Its belated issue made a provocative Ziggy-era outtake part of Bowie’s first UK number-one single package. The track remains one of Bowie’s best-known unreleased-at-the-time Ziggy outtakes and a compact example of the Spiders from Mars’ glam-rock attack. Its title later gained wider cultural reach through Todd Haynes’s 1998 film Velvet Goldmine.