David Bowie
Photo by Ros O'Gorman

David Bowie Debut Expanded And Reissued

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:58:38 +1100

The 1967 debut album from David Bowie is getting a makeover.

The album was released on the Deram album which also had Cat Stevens.

Bowie was one of the label’s earliest signings and both performers - in the fullness of time - would prove very wise investments indeed. Disc One features both the original mono and stereo mixes while Disc Two includes such rarities as the non-album b-sides 'The London Boys’ and 'The Gospel According To Tony Day’, plus 12 unreleased tracks, including Bowie’s first ever BBC session, commercially unreleased until now. Produced by Bernie Andrews and recorded in December 1967; when it was originally made however, Bowie was reluctant to re-work the recordings from David Bowie (even though the album was less than 6 months old), preferring to showcase fresh material for his largest audience to-date. It was Bernie Andrews, a huge fan of the first album, who over lunch talked him into recording four of its songs, including Lindsay Kemp’s favourite 'When I Live My Dream’.

Full track listing available on request, plus notes and chronology by Kevin Cann whose book, Any Day Now: David Bowie The London Years 1947-1974, is published by Adelita in 2010.

'With hindsight, there are indeed many surprises about David Bowie’s first album that are often difficult to measure or quantify, particularly when examined within the period in which it was made. In terms of a career that was rooted in R&B, jazz, rock n roll and pop, it was a debut that seemed to pretty much come from nowhere. A collection of disparate tales with no apparent theme offering little clue of what had been or what was to come. And, just as swiftly as he embarked on this ambitious new style and tenet, he quickly changed his methods once more, as though it had never really happened.

'But quite why this material still surprises, now some four decades on, is perhaps even odder, particularly as Bowie has since become almost as famous for his shape-shifting as he has for his music. His continued experimentation and capacious thirst for knowledge, together with his embrace of the irregular and unexpected is of course the stuff of legend.
The very fact that his first major work appears so different from everything else he has done is exactly what we have come to know and admire about him. That it also contains some very catchy and often beautiful songs is pretty good going too.'

What videos from the album:

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