Decca re-release David Bowie's forgotten début

David Bowie Deluxe Edition by David Bowie (Universal/Decca Music)

David Bowie has long been a musical pioneer and ambassador of the UK's counter-culture; defying convention and going against the grain. Achingly beautiful and amazingly cool, his overlooked début album has been given the Deluxe treatment and shows fans a different side to The Thin White Duke.

Disc one features both the original mono and stereo mixes. While disc two includes rarities such as non-album b-sides The London Boys and The Gospel According To Tony Day, plus twelve unreleased tracks - including Bowie’s first ever BBC session, commercially unreleased until now.

Bowie’s shoe-in to music came from artists such as Little Richard, to which Bowie himself claimed to ‘have heard God’ and was later introduced to jazz maestros the likes of Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. These influences can be heard throughout the album. Opening with track Uncle Arthur, a song which mixes traditional R&B with jazz and strings, which sets the tone for the rest of the recording.

For me, single Rubber Band is the stand-out track. In-keeping with the feel of the album but with touches of psychedelia, it acts as a good warm-up to what audience would be treated to later in Bowie’s prolific career.

There is something quintessentially English about title and track Love You Til Tuesday. From the upbeat melody to the gentle trumpet and tingling of the xylophone. The track shows its age with da da da dum’s for a chorus, tongue-in-cheek annunciation and David Bowie chuckling through the lyrics. There is something so lovely about this humorous track.

Mime artist and Bowie's inspiration, Lindsay Kemp’s favourite track is When I Live My Dream. It is a beautiful track with a poignant sentiment that even the hard-nosed among us could relate to. The journey that Bowie paints with fantastical prose is perfect escapism. This story of lost love and heartache is complimented by sorrowful strings and punctuated by Bowie’s distinctive vocals. This is a track that could comfortably sit on Dusty Springfield’s seminal album Dusty In Memphis.

We Are Hungry Men is the track I would expect to hear from Bowie in the late sixties; its rebellious, left-wing political message must have caused controversy at the time. With megalomanic undertones that make a mockery of a society being shaped by consumerism.

As a body of work, Bowie made a paint-by-numbers album. Produced by Bernie Andrews and recorded in December 1967; Bowie preferred to showcase fresh material for his largest audiences rather than perform tracks from his début, despite it being less then six months old at the time. Which may be why it failed to make waves with the British music buying public.

Now with all the Bowie hero-worship and nostalgia, it still doesn't strike the right cord. It is easy to listen to and enjoyable. However, it’s not an album that you would want to repeatedly revisit nor one that inspires or evokes. It echoes what the British invasion did at the time with The Kinks and The Beatles, but doesn't quite hit the dizzy climbs of his contemporaries.

The album pre-dates the acclaimed The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars where Bowie launched his career as an androgynous and flamboyant glam-rocker. This marked the beginning of experimentation, reinvention and theatrical visuals in music that is synonymous with Bowie and the plethora of artists inspired by him. His début doesn't reflect this. If you’re expecting classic Bowie with tracks like Starman or Ashes to Ashes, you will be disappointed.

As a fan of Bowie (who could resist that crotch in Labyrinth!), he’s more of a singles artist more than an album artist. His strengths lie in building personas and being a beautiful renegade. Having seen him live at the old Wembley Stadium, his on-stage presence is unrivalled - radiating warmth and coming across as a bloody nice chap. Engaging the crowd with his performance and banter. David Bowie is a legend, but it’s his ability to excite and ignite that gives him that status, not his albums.

3 out of 5
First published 19/01/2010