The Shel Talmy Recordings (Limited) (180g)

LPA

1. You've Got A Habit Of Leaving (2026 Remaster)
2. I Pity The Fool (2026 Remaster)
3. Baby Loves That Way (2026 Remaster)
4. I’ll Follow You
5. Take My Tip (2026 Remaster)

LPB

1. I Want Your Love
2. Cupid
3. Keep Up With The Jones (Instrumental)
4. Certain Woman
5. Leave Her To Me
6. You Gotta Tell Her (2026 Remaster)

DAVID BOWIE THE SHEL TALMY RECORDINGS is the most complete collection of tracks recorded by a nascent David Bowie, then Davie Jones, with legendary ‘60s producer Shel Talmy, best known for his groundbreaking hits with The Who and The Kinks. The album features ten previously unheard tracks on CD and digital, and six songs on LP, with contributions from legendary Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, then a guitar slinger for hire, and Nicky Hopkins, celebrated piano player for The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Who and Jeff Beck.

As the musician and music historian Alec Palao puts it in his comprehensive sleeve notes that accompany the album, “David Bowie the artist is a book of chapters, the turn of each page delivering something completely different and unexpected from the last. And in perusal, a cardinal error would be to pit any of these episodes against the others, when in fact each fascinating phase in his career should be considered complementary. This collection, a primary chapter if not the very earliest instalment in David’s musical journey, deserves legitimate consideration. It is invariably tempting to search for clues in an artist’s tentative beginnings, and Bowie’s juvenilia has been dissected more than most, but this has rarely been done within the proper context. The sounds here should not be judged by the standards of his later career, but by the standards of what was happening in Britain at that precise point in time. In which case, they speak as loudly of the excitement of London and its music scene in that pivotal year of 1965 as they do for the launch of its brightest future star.”

Bowie and Talmy first encountered each other while frequenting London’s Denmark Street, which is now a guitar aficionado’s paradise but was then the centre of the British music industry, where budding songwriters sold their songs to the big publishers of the day. Talmy had already achieved huge success with The Who, The Kinks, and others, but was now branching out on his own to develop new talent. Talmy signed David and the Manish Boys in December 1964 and set about recording them, but Bowie was already moving on, forming Davie Jones & The Lower Third. The majority of the recordings Bowie made with Talmy featured The Lower Third or were solo demos. Talmy’s studio of choice was invariably IBC in Portland Place, also a favourite of The Who, who later recorded Tommy there, and which he considered to have the best outboard gear in London. The up-and-coming Glyn Johns, later to work with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and many more, was the engineer, and the producer had enough confidence in the combo’s abilities to bring in just the one outside player. Jimmy Page was the precocious guitar-slinger Talmy used to supercharge the more anaemic of his acts, and in this period, the future Yardbirds/Led Zeppelin eminence would frequently bring along his new toy, a custom-built fuzz pedal, to add extra bite.

This year in Bowie’s career clearly held great importance to him; in 1973, when he recorded the ‘Pin-Ups’ album, it was very much a love letter to that time in his life and to the sound of the bands that had inspired him. No fewer than four titles on ‘Pin-Ups’ (by The Kinks, The Who and The Easybeats) were originally produced by Shel Talmy. Featured on this new collection are tracks such as ‘You’ve Got A Habit Of Leaving’ and ‘Baby Loves That Way’, originally released as singles on Parlophone, that Bowie would return to later in his career, re-recording them with his Glastonbury band for the album ‘TOY’, which would finally be released in 2021.

By the end of September 1965, Davie Jones was now David Bowie, and he was once more writing another musical chapter, but the twenty-two songs featured here capture a very special time just before the ‘birth’ of David Bowie.