The Man Who Sold The World: Vinyl LP

The Man Who Sold the World is the third studio album by David Bowie. The album was Bowie's first with the nucleus of what would become the "Spiders from Mars," the backing band made famous by The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in 1972.

When this album was first released in the fall of 1970, the cover used was a much less controversial one. Because it was predicted that "America wasn't ready for a drag queen rocker," wrote Michael Fremer of analogplanet.com, a substitute cover featuring a cartoon of a gun-toting cowboy whose hat had been shattered by a bullet was issued instead. The Bowie dress cover was used, however, when the UK released the album a few months later.