American band the Byrds had already shown an interest in science fiction themes in songs such as ‘Mr Spaceman’ and ‘CTA-102’; their principal songwriter Roger McGuinn was one of the first musicians to invest in the newly-available Moog modular synthesiser, which he purchased at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. McGuinn had previously been known as Jim, but after a flirtation with the Subud spiritual movement, its founder Bapak advised him to change his name on the basis that it would better “vibrate with the universe.” Bapak sent Jim the letter ‘R’ and asked him to send back ten names starting with that letter; as McGuinn relates, “I was into science fiction so I picked Rocket and Retro and React... Roger was the only proper name in the whole bunch of words I chose and the guru thought I was mad.” In 1968, the newly-renamed McGuinn then adapted Clarke’s ‘The Sentinel’ as ‘Space Odyssey’, with co-writer Robert J. Hippard, the lyrics relating how “in nineteen and ninety-six we ventured to the moon... here we saw the pyramid, it looked so very strange”, to the accompaniment of a futuristic sound-scape generated by the Moog synthesiser.
After
the 1969 moon landing, before the Space Age gradually faded from the wider
public consciousness, there was another spate of space-themed hit singles
(alongside numerous failed attempts to cash in on the space-craze), including
the apocalyptic imagery of Zager and Evans’ American number 1 ‘In the Year 2525.’ The most successful,
critically and commercially, of these opportunistic efforts was undoubtedly David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’. The tale of Major
Tom’s doomed excursion to the stars, released only days before the Apollo landing,
accompanied by exotic mellotron and stylophone instrumentation, remains perhaps
the pinnacle of space-themed popular music, coinciding perfectly with man’s
last ‘giant leap.’