Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.

Producer Gus Dudgeon explains Bowie recording "Space Oddity" in Italian: from Strange Fascination by David Buckley:

David Platz told me that there was an Italian version of "Space Oddity" by two Italian boys, and that they'd done it really well and that it would obviously threaten the chances of the original version in that country. So I booked a studio and an Italian translator to work with Bowie on his pronunciation. We went into the studio and put the track up, and the guy had it written out phonetically on paper. It was all pretty funny most of the time because Bowie was crackin' up and I was crackin' up and this bloke was saying, 'No no no! You've got to say it alike thees: "Reg-az-za So-lo". Make it a-fall at the end.' We finally get there, and he's happy with it and so Bowie's saying to him casually as he's putting his jacket on, 'You must have had a bit of a problem translating the lyric - the astronaut up in space and that sort of thing' and the Italian bloke is frowning and saying, 'No, is no problem. What you just sing is a love story. It's about a boy, he meets a girl in a mist at the top of a mountain and they fall in love and they have a long kiss and they go home'. But Bowie said, 'Well, my story is about fuckin' astronauts!' But the man said, 'No, no, that's a-no good for Italy,' and Bowie just laughed it off. He said, 'Well, that's hilarious. I've just put in all that time singing some bloody love song about some tart in a blouse on a mountain in a mist falling in love!'