1970, along with other album track "Running Gun Blues". At this point, the track was recorded under the working title "Saviour Machine" and did not contain the title phrase. According to Kevin Cann, the lineup featured Bowie on acoustic guitar, Mick Ronson on electric guitar, producer Tony Visconti on bass, Woody Woodmansey on drums and percussion, and Ralph Mace on Moog synthesiser; Ronson and Woodmansey would later become famous as a part of the Spiders from Mars. According to Visconti, Bowie recorded his vocal on 22 May at Advision Studios, the final day of mixing for the album which, when traveling to Advision, Bowie had intended to name Metrobolist, a homage to Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis. Chris O'Leary writes that Bowie wrote the lyrics in the reception area of the studio while Visconti waited at the mixing console. Once he finished, he quickly recorded his vocal, Visconti added a "flange" effect and mixed the track in a few hours, sending the tapes to the label later that night. Bowie's last-minute addition frustrated Visconti, who recalled in 1977: "This was the beginning of [Bowie's] new style of writing – 'I can't be bothered until I have to'. When it was finished, on the last day of the last mix, I remember telling David, 'I've had it, I can't work like this anymore – I'm through...David was very disappointed." This frustration was mostly due in part to his dissatisfaction with the recording sessions: he was mostly in charge of budget and production, as well as maintaining Bowie's interest in the project. Bowie later told BBC Radio 1's Stuart Grundy in 1976: "It was a nightmare, that album. I hated the actual process of making it." Bowie's original recording is described by author Peter Doggett as "enigmatic", while Nicholas Pegg describes it as giving an "unassuming air of pathos and menace". Doggett notes that the track contains none of the "metallic theatrics" that are found on the rest of the album. Musically, the song opens with a repeating electric guitar riff from Ronson with an acoustic guitar from Bowie underneath it. (The electric bass and Moog synthesiser notwithstanding) O'Leary writes that apart from Ronson's electric guitar, the song is primarily acoustic. The chord structure is in the key of F with an A major chord "borrowed" from the D minor scale, similar to fellow album track "All the Madmen". Throughout the song,