"[4] After seeing an advanced screening of the film in early 1975, director Nicolas Roeg contacted Bowie to discuss a role in his upcoming adaptation of Walter Tevis's 1963 novel The Man Who Fell to Earth.

[10] Hughes told the biographer Marc Spitz that Bowie lived in an increasingly paranoid state, recalling he refused to use elevators because of his fear of heights.

His addiction severed friendships with the musicians Keith Moon, John Lennon and Harry Nilsson; he later said: "If you really want to lose all your friends and all of the relationships that you ever held dear, [cocaine is] the drug to do it with.

[21] During his days off from filming, he began writing a collection of short stories called The Return of the Thin White Duke,[22] which he described as "partly autobiographical, mostly fiction, with a deal of magic in it;" he also recalled taking "400 books" for the shoot.

[27] In the film, Bowie portrays the lead role of Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien who travels to Earth in search of materials for his dying planet, eventually becoming corrupted by humans.

With Roeg's agreement, Bowie developed his own look for the film, and this carried through to his public image over the next twelve months, as did Newton's air of fragility and aloofness.

[26] After completing his work on The Man Who Fell to Earth in September,[28] he returned to Los Angeles; his assistant Coco Schwab had recently acquired a house for him.

Tony Visconti, who after a three-year absence had recently returned to the Bowie fold mixing Diamond Dogs and co-producing David Live and Young Americans, was not involved because of competing schedules.

[36] Also returning from the Young Americans sessions were guitarists Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick, drummer Dennis Davis and Bowie's old friend Geoff MacCormick (now known as Warren Peace).

[26] A cover of "Wild Is the Wind", written by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington and first performed by Johnny Mathis in the 1957 film of the same name, was recorded during the sessions.

[44] With the massive commercial success of Young Americans, and a reissue of "Space Oddity" becoming his first UK number-one single, Bowie did not feel compelled to rush the process in L.A.[45] He arrived at Cherokee with fragments of songs rather than finished compositions, changing them as recording progressed.

[15] Buckley says that Bowie's only memory of the sessions was "standing with Earl Slick in the studio and asking him to play a Chuck Berry riff in the same key throughout the opening of 'Station to Station'."

[51] Developing the funk, disco and soul sound of Young Americans, the album also reflects the influences of electronic and the German music genre of krautrock, particularly by bands such as Neu!

[62] AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes it includes "everything from epic ballads and disco to synthesized avant pop" while extending "the detached plastic soul of Young Americans to an elegant, robotic extreme".

[50][65] The song is split into two parts: a slow, hypnotic march, introduced by a noise resembling a train—created by Slick on guitar using flangers and delay effects—before it abruptly changes to what Alan Light of Rolling Stone calls a "celebratory groove", which lasts for the rest of the track.

[75] AllMusic's Donald A. Guarisco likens the music of "Word on a Wing" to gospel and soul;[76] Perone compares it to the sound of American musician Roy Orbison.

Carr and Murray described him as a hollow man who sang songs of romance with an agonised intensity, yet felt nothing, "ice masquerading as fire",[32] exuberantly "throwing darts in lovers' eyes.

[51] The song was inspired by a dream of Iggy Pop's featuring a similar premise, as well as a scene in The Man Who Fell to Earth where Newton fills a room with television screens, each tuned to a different channel.

[25] The album cover is a black-and-white photograph taken by Steve Schapiro[89] on the set of the film The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which Bowie, as Newton, steps into the space capsule that will return him to his home planet.

[93] Writing for NME, Charles Murray praised the music throughout the record, but was critical of Bowie's vocal performance, particularly on "Word on a Wing" and "Wild Is the Wind".

[120] John Ingham of Sounds magazine gave immense praise to the album, naming "Golden Years", "TVC 15" and "Stay" some of Bowie's best songs up to that point and overall "a great record of our time".

[55] Rolling Stone writer Teri Moris applauded the album's 'rockier' moments but discerned a move away from the genre, finding it "the thoughtfully professional effort of a style-conscious artist whose ability to write and perform demanding rock & roll exists comfortably alongside his fascination for diverse forms ... while there's little doubt about his skill, one wonders how long he'll continue wrestling with rock at all".

[122] Critic Dave Marsh was extremely negative, calling it "the most significant advance in LP filler since Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music [1975]".

Considering "Word on a Wing" the "only complete success" on the LP, he panned the tracks as overlong, unexciting and uninteresting, further arguing that "it's rather appalling that the best thing [Bowie] can think of doing with his talent currently is fool around.

[125] Reviewing the record for the newspaper, Robert Christgau expressed some reservations about the length of the songs and the detached quality of Bowie's vocals, but deemed "TVC 15" his "favorite piece of rock and roll in a very long time" and wrote, "spaceyness has always been his shtick, and anybody who can merge Lou Reed, disco, and Dr. John ... deserves to keep doing it for five minutes and 29 seconds".

On the Isolar Tour, however, a series of incidents attracted publicity, starting in April 1976 with his detention by customs in Eastern Europe for possession of Nazi memorabilia.

[140] The controversy culminated on 2 May 1976, shortly before the tour ended, in the so-called 'Victoria Station incident' in London, when Bowie arrived in an open-top Mercedes convertible and apparently gave a Nazi salute to the crowd that was captured on film and published in NME.

[50] Paul Trynka was struck by the album's innovation, noting "a bizarre blend of spritely and monumental themes", and argues it "marks the point at which David Bowie moved from pop musician to phenomenon".

"[157] Sheffield later deemed it a "space rock masterpiece" in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), writing Bowie had recorded "the most intense music of his life".

He writes that it "surrenders all the subtlety of the original [mix] in favour of unimaginatively pushing everything to the front", resulting in a "messy racket", particularly evident in the backing vocals for "TVC 15".