David Bowie needs no introduction. The musical chameleon, fashion icon and the epitome of cool no matter what age or year, he has flattered the world over with his talents and remains, even ten years after his untimely death, one of the most popular and forward-thinking rock artists ever. But it wasn't always that way.
David Robert Jones, or Davie Jones as he was referring to himself as, was in quite the rut in 1965. He was into multiple types of art, he was big into London's burgeoning fashion scene, he read religious and philosophical texts in his spare time, he mimed and he, of course, had a keen interest in music. He wanted to be a famous artist, but he just couldn't find a way to the top. Mind the fact that he was just 18 years old at the time, he had performed with multiple bands and released a few low-budget singles that never charted. He knew that improvement, and hopefully fame, would come with time, but he didn't yet know how to stand out from the rest of the unknown acts that played in the same clubs. He would come to the same conclusion that would shape the rest of his career: he needed to change his sound.
Jones had released two singles up to this point, "Liza Jane" with The Konrads in 1964 and "I Pity the Fool" with The Manish Boys in 1965, and both had a blues sound that he would never attempt again, at least to that degree. But him performing with his new band, The Lower Third, allowed him to try out a newer sound that was faster-tempo and more raucous, similar to the Mod and Freakbeat sound that was starting to gain traction. This would put him and his band in a room with Shel Talmy, famed producer known for his work with The Kinks and an up-and-coming band known as The Who, and they'd whip up The Lower Third's first single "You've Got a Habit of Leaving", the song that would mark the start of this new phase in Jones' career. No more singles would follow for the remainder of the year, and Bowie would formally leave The Lower Third in early 1966.
Jones' work with The Buzz is where the best of his recordings of this era come from, and it will be used as the point of diversion for this alternate album. "Can't Help Thinking About Me", "I Dig Everything" and "Do Anything You Say" would be released as singles throughout 1966. Produced by Tony Hatch for Pye Records, none of them would end up doing very well, and they did nothing to sustain much interest in the singer. But what if they did? At least to a larger extent that would allow the label to put stock into a full album. In this hypothetical scenario, Davie Jones, now going by David Bowie after The Monkees' rise to fame, and The Buzz would record for an album in mid-1966, with the three non-album Pye singles from our timeline instead being released as singles to support an album. Four songs recorded with The Lower Third would be also be tacked on to extend the album's length, giving the album its full name. Without further ado, here are the results I came up with for such a scenario:
David Bowie With The Lower Third & The Buzz (1966)
Side A (15:11)
1. Good Morning Girl - 2:11 [1]
2. Do Anything You Say - 2:28 [1]
3. I Dig Everything - 2:43 [1]
4. Cupid - 3:09 [2]
5. You've Got a Habit of Leaving - 2:34 [2]
6. Keep Up With the Jones - 2:06 [2]
Side B (15:44)
1. Can't Help Thinking About Me - 2:44 [1]
2. I'll Follow You - 2:02 [2]
3. And I Say to Myself - 2:29 [1]
4. Glad I've Got Nobody - 2:33 [2]
5. Baby Loves That Way - 3:03 [2]
6. I'm Not Losing Sleep - 2:53 [1]
[1] David Bowie - I Dig Everything: The 1966 Pye Singles
[2] David Bowie - The Shel Talmy Recordings
Quite the dull cover! I didn't want anything too flashy going into it seeing how we're dealing with a new artist that the record label didn't really know what to do with yet. Plus, most Pye Records album covers were pretty boring anyways. Either way, the newly-released Shel Talmy Recordings was a huge help in patching up the holes that would've otherwise gone to songs that really don't fit this record.
Most of my comments have to do with the sequencing of the record rather than the material itself, since I went over most of that above. If you've listened to some of these recordings before, you'll know that this is a bit unconventional structurally, much more so than the rather boring cover or verbose title. That mostly comes down to me wanting to properly showcase Bowie's talents from this underrated era and not anything that could've realistically happened for a record that otherwise feels so clearly manufactured. The album opens with "Good Morning Girl", and, other than the title, feels like the best fit for an opener, somewhat in the same vain as "Out in the Street" from The Who's My Generation. An upbeat song that doesn't overstay its welcome while, at the same time, giving a preview of what's to come. Two of the three Pye singles come next and are the first clear interpretation of what Bowie is really about. This also follows a more realistic interpretation of what a tracklist like this would look like, with the singles coming first. "Cupid" is pure album filler, but it's specifically placed here to lead into the clearly superior "You've Got a Habit of Leaving", seeing how the two are both Lower Third songs that have the same vibe. "Keep Up With the Jones", an instrumental, ends Side A only because I wasn't exactly sure how else I wanted the side to end. It sounds like the last two songs, and I personally think it fits, so it's here.
"Can't Help Thinking About Me" starts the second side as a palette-cleanser and the best song on the whole record. If any song from this record should've gotten him on the charts, it's definitely this one. It also starts a trend that goes on for most of Side B: themes relating to longing and loneliness. And with Bowie transferring between multiple bands and unsure of his musical future, you can see why those themes were on his mind. "I'll Follow You" and "Glad I've Got Nobody" are both Lower Third songs that probably would've been re-recorded with The Buzz seeing how they were never released in our timeline, but they continue the same loneliness theme. "And I Say to Myself" and "Baby Loves That Way" are both B-sides that end up where they are because the former sounds to much like "Do Anything You Say to be on the same side, and the latter because it just feels like a penultimate song to me. Also, it's A-side, "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" is also the second-to-last song on the other side. Finally, the album ends with "I'm Not Losing Sleep", and just like "Good Morning Girl", feels like the clearly closer for its title and its quality. Musically, it sounds more-or-less the same, but the lyrics are quite grown-up compared to the rest, and it's a sign of where Bowie will end up in the future.
That mature future would have to wait though. By the time this album would've released in October 1966, Bowie had left The Buzz, transferred to Deram Records from Pye and had already started writing new songs, such as "Love You Till Tuesday" and "Rubber Band" that would make up his next album (his first album in our timeline). As you may know, these songs are drastically different from what came before, and not for the better. It's for this reason that I'm glad we can see what a pre-David Bowie (1967) album could look like and imagine a world where this would be people's first look into the mind of David Bowie instead of the actual record, which feels more like a vanity project in comparison.
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