David Bowie’s self-titled 1967 debut album was the greatest record he released in his entire career… said nobody, ever. Well, maybe the odd person might, but let’s face it, they’re either clinically insane or a pretentious twat. I mean, he sounds like Anthony fucking Newley half the time!
However…
Even in this embryonic period of Bowie’s career, there’s still a lot to love, and there are undoubtedly flashes of the man’s future genius ensconced within, so for every grimace-inducing faux cockneyism (see the “because it’s only me” part of ‘Love You Til Tuesday‘ which is otherwise a charming song), there’s also a fair share of gems that, with the right production and honing, wouldn’t have been out of place during his astonishing purple period of the early 1970s.
One such wonder is the arresting single ‘Sell Me A Coat‘ which is full of warmth and you can certainly hear the seeds being sown for superstardom. Ditto ‘When I Live My Dream‘, which is quite lovely, even if Bowie hadn’t quite figured out at that point whether he wanted to be a cult, visionary icon or a composer of stage musicals.
‘Please Mr. Gravedigger‘ sounds like Norman Wisdom deciding to focus more on dark humour than slapstick, and ‘Uncle Arthur‘ is a jaunty knees up, like Chas and Dave meets Rain Dogs era Tom Waits. It’s quite baffling at times, but not without charm.
The whole thing is gorgeously packaged, a double-disc release on cloudy green vinyl, making it an essential purchase for any serious connoisseur of Bowie’s music, with the bonus of all the singles and B-sides from this period, and a rare version of one of his most iconic songs – ‘Space Oddity (Love You Til Tuesday Version)‘, which sounds akin to how Simon and Garfunkel might have done it. Even in this incarnation though, it oozes class.
Of the flipsides, the standout is surely ‘Did You Have A Dream‘, a vibrant, uptempo number that could quite happily have slotted onto Gerome Ragni and James Rado‘s 1968 musical soundtrack to Hair. And the B-side of ‘The Laughing Gnome‘ (which surely should have been the A-side!), ‘The Gospel According To Tony Day‘, sounds like it could well have been an influence on Blur.
So yes, sometimes David Bowie can come across as twee, naive or trying too hard, but clearly, there was enough here to set A&R folks’ tongues a-wagging. There was something there, even if nobody really knew what it was yet or how to nurture it. That all makes this reissue something of an essential purchase, even if tracks like ‘Little Bombardier‘ come across like Bud Flanagan performing the Dad’s Army theme tune. In all honesty, though, that just makes me like it even more.
