Early Bowie music available to stream for first time

Ten years ago Alec Palao was casually flicking through a collection of old records when he noticed some faint pencil markings that were enough to draw a gasp. "Davie Jones," it read.

What he had found was musical gold: five unreleased songs by a young David Bowie, filed away under his birth name.

From Friday, those tracks, plus another five unreleased songs that came Palao's way after the initial discovery, will be available to buy and stream.

"They are probably the most visceral, raw you'll ever hear the man," said Palao, a music historian and archivist.

For the music industry, David Bowie is big business. He entered the mainstream with his 1969 single, Space Oddity, and went on to achieve 11 number one albums.

He died in 2016, but remains one of Britain's most recognisable cultural icons.

Six of the previously unreleased tracks from the new collection will be available on vinyl, tapping into Bowie's popularity in that format specifically. In 2022, Bowie was named the best-selling vinyl artist of the 21st century by Music Week, ahead of The Beatles.

"It's just a fascinating window into London in 1965 and its possibilities," said Palao.

In the early sixties, Bowie was a teenager, performing as Davie Jones at London clubs and dreaming of stardom. Many of the tracks he recorded in that period are either little known or lost to time.

But his first professional producer, Shel Talmy, had kept a recording from 1965 among his collection of material by other artists he had worked with: The Kinks; The Who; Manfred Mann; The Easybeats.

It was within Talmy's collection that Palao came across the valuable 12-inch acetate.

That material and the five other previously unheard tunes, as well as demos and remastered songs, form part of a new, posthumous album called The Shel Talmy Recordings.

A limited edition vinyl will be sold at Record Store Day and HMV outlets.

In 2022, David Bowie's estate sold the publishing rights to decades of the singer's work to Warner Music Group. For this new material, Palao, along with Talmy Enterprises Incorporated, licensed the album to Warner, and it will be released by the company's subsidiary, Parlophone. Royalties will be paid to Bowie's estate by Warner.

"I think it's wonderful that people can get to hear the early Davie Jones music," said Dana Gillespie, an early collaborator of Bowie's.

She met him after a performance at the Marquee Club in London when Bowie was 17.

"They're songs that don't really sound like David but it's him trying to find his voice. He was experimenting."

Gillespie became close friends with Bowie, eventually working with him on his "Ziggy Stardust" album. Talmy worked with both artists and Bowie's song "Andy Warhol", on his fourth studio album, was originally written for Gillespie.

"He was very driven," remembered Gillespie, who is still touring and making music at the age of 77.

"Some time in the sixties, he asked me to come and visit his parents. We were in his little house in Bromley, and when his parents left the room he turned to me and said: 'Whatever it takes, I want to get out of here.' And he did," she said.

It is a decade since Palao found the recordings. Since then, it has been a long process to bring them to market. The result is an album that he says is "absolutely pure rock 'n' roll".

"If you're looking for clues as to what he was to become, there's maybe less of that," said Palao, "but objectively speaking, I feel it's important stuff."

Gillespie is excited by one song in particular.

"There was a famous café called the Gioconda in Denmark Street where I often used to go with David," she said, recalling the centre of musical life in London in the 1960s.

"One day when I was sitting there, David rushed in and took me by the hand. He said: 'You have to hear this'.

"He ran with me around the corner and squeezed us into a small listening booth. I had one speaker and he had the other, and he played me 'I Pity The Fool'."

A remastered version of the song can be heard in the new album.

For music historians, fans of Bowie, and those who were there, the new album is another chance to reconnect with an enduring cultural icon.

"David always wanted to be a big star," said Gillespie. "I'm so happy that his early stuff hasn't been forgotten."

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