someone else," it would guarantee him a hit. Bowie's translation, titled "Even a Fool Learns to Love", took influence from his then-recent work as a mime and featured a reference to his 1967 track "When I Live My Dream". He later told Michael Parkinson in a 2002 interview that he "wrote some really terrible lyrics [to it]". Although Bowie recorded an unreleased demo in February 1968, the French publishers of "Comme d'habitude" rejected him, primarily due to his obscurity. Soon after, songwriter Paul Anka bought the rights to "Comme d'habitude" and rewrote it into "My Way", a song made famous by American singer Frank Sinatra in 1969. The success of "My Way" prompted Bowie to write "Life on Mars?" as a parody of Sinatra's recording. He told Parkinson: "That really made me angry for so long—for about a year... eventually I thought, 'I can write something as big as that, and I'll write one that sounds a bit like it. Bowie acknowledged the song's influence in the liner notes for Hunky Dory, which state that the song was "inspired by Frankie". Using "My Way" as a basis, Bowie wrote "Life on Mars?" relatively quickly. He later recalled in the liner notes for the 2008 compilation iSelect that he began humming the melody in a park in Beckenham, Kent, thereafter returning home to Haddon Hall and writing the rest of the song that afternoon on piano, which he primarily used to compose other songs of this period. Bowie believed that using "Comme d'habitude" as a basis was not "theft", but rather "a statement of rightful ownership". One Melody Maker reviewer suggested the song was written after "a brief and painful affair" with actress Hermione Farthingale. While on tour in 1990, Bowie introduced the song by saying "You fall in love, you write a love song. This is a love song." Despite writing it quickly, Bowie's original handwritten lyrics were vastly different—save for the chorus—than the finished recording, being more akin to the tone of Hunky Dorys other Nietzsche-inspired numbers: "There's a shoulder-rock movement and the trembling starts / And a great Lord signs in vain / What can you buy when there's no-one to tell you / What a bargain you made..." Recording Early demo Bowie recorded a demo of "Life on Mars?" between May and June 1971. According to biographer Nicholas Pegg, the demo runs at a short length of