David Bowie 1: David Bowie

David Bowie has recorded many albums, to be sure, but those who began following him early in his ascent would doubtless find their reflections tinted by the man’s extravagant concert tours and public appearances. But today, outside of the grainy clips on YouTube, it’s the albums themselves that are the artifacts of a fascinating career, and that’s what we’re going to explore here.
Bowie’s career began in Mod London, taking him through several bands and styles before he found the right mix of his influences to stick. And even when he did find something he liked, he’d abandon it for his next album, confounding fans and irritating critics for the duration of his career.

Once he became a superstar, the work he did on his way there would be repackaged constantly, more for commercial reasons than to preserve some early glimpse of genius. Much of the Mod stuff can be found on a Rhino collection called Early On (1964-1966), but it wasn’t until he signed with the “progressive” Deram label that he started writing his own songs and trying to carve out an identity not immediately recognizable as somebody else’s image.

As it was the beginning of the Summer of Love, the contents of David Bowie are placed firmly within the genres of chamber pop and Kinksy character studies. The arrangements are loaded with oboes, bassoons, trombones and tubas, heavy handed even for the wartime nostalgia in “Rubber Band”, “Little Bombardier” and “She’s Got Medals”. “Join The Gang” seems to poke fun at the very people he hoped would buy his records, with a manic sitar passage and even a quote from “Gimme Some Lovin’”. Chances are they weren’t impressed by “Love You Till Tuesday”, an unconvincing campaign for free love sung overly Cockney and too close to that other Davy Jones.

“Silly Boy Blue” stands out for being a decent melody and unironic lyric, as does “Come And Buy My Toys”, played simply over acoustic and bass. But “We Are Hungry Men”, a sci-fi satire encouraging cannibalism to combat overpopulation, sits uncomfortably next to the more romantic “When I Live My Dream”. “Please Mr. Gravedigger”, a sneezy monologue in prose over rainy sound effects, closes the album; clearly, he was hoping to be remembered as provocative.

While his voice is recognizable as pure Bowie, it’s obvious why this album was not a huge hit. Three decades later the man himself would revisit some of the songs for an album that was shelved, though some things did emerge as B-sides. Of the dozens of compilations covering the original material, there are two decent options for those who must have everything. 1997’s The Deram Anthology 1966-1968 is a chronological single disc overview, prefacing the first album with such singles as “The Laughing Gnome”, notorious for being extremely silly to the point of being unlistenable, and ending with an early version of “Space Oddity”. Save that last track, this collection has since been surpassed by the David Bowie Deluxe Edition, which presents the original LP in stereo and mono on one disc, and a pile of stereo and mono singles plus various BBC sessions on another. (Fourteen years later, another so-called Deluxe Edition contained only the stereo mix on one disc, and 14 of the 2010 bonuses on the other, with rare versions of “Space Oddity” and “The Laughing Gnome” to rope in completists.)

David Bowie David Bowie (1967)—2
2010 Deluxe Edition: same as 1967, plus 39 extra tracks
2024 Deluxe Edition: same as 1967, plus 16 extra tracks