The painful introduction to David Bowie on his self-titled debut album
While there is little argument from well-versed musos that David Bowie was born a star, you will find it equally challenging to discover a critic who deems his debut album among his finest work. However, with such a rich discography, it would be hard for any artist’s earliest work to break into a top five that includes such timeless classics as Ziggy Stardust, Heroes, Low, and countless others.
As a musician and a writer, Bowie is largely unparalleled. His continuous pursuit of creative evolution has become a marker of his life both within and outside the music industry. It can be seen across all of his albums, as he always intended to push himself forward with every new release. It makes the prospect of his debut record feel like both a daunting and dangerous listening opportunity. On the one hand, it provides the first stepping stone of a career that spanned oceans and universes with consummate creative ease, and on the other, it can easily be seen as the primordial ooze from which an icon would hastily exit.
The Starman may have held a confident swagger from the moment his teenage eyes caught a glimpse of the BBC cameras swirling his newly-formed ‘Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men,’ however, such confidence melted away upon the release of his self-titled debut album in 1967. The record was received with critical warmth, but thanks in part to label Deram’s lack of promotion, its release saw a cold reception from the public. As such, Bowie was cast aside as yet another folk-pop-adjacent singer who had listened to one too many Beatles albums, dived headfirst into Vaudeville caricature and failed to whittle down the influence of Elvis into anything tangibly enjoyable.
Revisiting the album in the 21st century, little has thawed and disagreed with those assertions is near-impossible. In fact, with the world of Bowie to look back through, it can be almost rage-inducing that such an album exists on his CV at all, undercutting his superior work with flaccid pop drivel. The album is essentially a piece of Baroque novelty pop that enriches very little of Bowie’s legacy. It retains some of his better moments from his pre-label days, such as a re-recording of ‘The London Boys’ and a raucous moment in ‘Love You Til Tuesday’. There are a few moments of goofy-smiling pleasure, orchestral arrangement and unique delivery that provide sparks of joy and remind us of the creativity that was bubbling beneath the surface. But that’s about it.
In truth, on the record, we find a 19-year-old Bowie is clearly without focus, and the album is a serious mess because of it. Much of that mess comes from the fact Bowie and his bandmate from The Buzz, Derek Fearnley, created many of the arrangements with the help of Freda Dinn’s Observer’s Guide to Music. Bowie later said of the process: “We didn’t realise how ludicrous [the scores] must have looked. I guess it was just the audacity of it that none of the guys laughed us out of the studio. They actually tried to play our parts and they made sense of them. They’re quite nice little string parts – we were writing for bassoon and everything. If Stravinsky can do it, then we can do it.”
Bowie’s vocals are still as prevalent as ever; his unique twang, salted with south London charm and peppered with mischief, is inescapable. And therein lies the difficulty for diehard Bowie fans. If you’ve grown up on the defiant creativity of David Bowie, then returning to this piece of his work, so clearly influenced by the piffle-skiffle of Paul McCartney’s special brand of music hall revelry, will be close to torturous. ‘Uncle Arthur’, the opening track, is perhaps the worst moment in Bowie’s rich history, possibly only topped by the following track ‘Sell Me A Coat’.
Shortly after releasing this album, Bowie would be given a rare acetate recording of The Velvet Underground, his love of New York street iconography would begin, and the foundations of the explosion of creativity the 1970s was about to allow were instantaneously laid. If you love the enigma that is David Bowie, then this album is likely worth forgetting about in its entirety, save for the knowledge that it provides the springboard for one of the century’s greatest musical artists.
