David Bowie is the debut studio album by the English musician David Bowie, originally released in the United Kingdom on 1 June 1967 through Decca subsidiary Deram Records. Produced by Mike Vernon and recorded from November 1966 to March 1967 in London, the album followed a string of singles Bowie released for Pye Records that failed to chart. Vernon hired numerous studio musicians for the album's sessions; Bowie and his former Buzz bandmate Derek Fearnley composed music charts themselves using a musical guidebook.

The album displays a baroque pop and music hall sound influenced by Anthony Newley and the Edwardian styles of contemporary British rock bands. The songs are primarily led by orchestral brass and woodwind instruments rather than traditional instruments in pop music at the time, although some tracks feature guitar. The lyrical content varies from lighthearted childhood innocence to drug use and totalitarianism, themes that Bowie would return to in later works. The cover artwork is a headshot of Bowie with a mod haircut and wearing a high-collared jacket.

Released in both mono and stereo mixes, David Bowie received positive reviews from music journalists but was a commercial failure due to a lack of promotion from Deram. Two tracks were omitted for its release in the United States in August 1967. Following its release, Bowie provided more tracks for Deram, all of which were rejected and led to his departure from the label. Retrospective reviews unfavourably compare David Bowie to Bowie's later works, but some recognise it positively on its own terms. The album was reissued in a two-disc deluxe edition in 2010, featuring both mixes and other tracks from the period.

Background

David Bowie was let go from Pye Records in September 1966 following a string of singles that failed to chart. A lack of promotion from Pye also contributed to his disenchantment with the label. In order to secure him a new record contract, his soon-to-be manager Kenneth Pitt financed a recording session at London's RG Jones Recording Studios. On 18 October, Bowie and his backing band the Buzz conducted a four-hour session with a group of local studio musicians, producing a new version of the rejected Pye track "The London Boys" and two new songs, "Rubber Band" and "The Gravedigger".

Pitt showed acetates of the tracks to executives at Decca Records, who were impressed and signed Bowie to the label's progressive pop subsidiary label Deram Records. His contract gave him a deal that financed the production of a full-length studio album and paid £150 for the three tracks and a further advance of £100 for royalties on the album. According to the biographer Nicholas Pegg, being granted an album deal before having a hit single was a rare occurrence at the time. Decca A&R manager Hugh Mendl later said: "I had a minor obsession about David—I just thought he was the most talented, magical person.... I think I would have signed him even if he didn't have such obvious musical talent. But he did have talent. He was bursting with creativity."

Writing and recording

thumb|upright|alt=An older man with a gray shirt and blue jacket|David Bowie was produced by [[Mike Vernon (record producer)|Mike Vernon (pictured in 2017), who hired musicians that were integral to the album's sound.]]

Bowie spent time before the album sessions writing songs, accumulating almost 30 new compositions. According to the author Paul Trynka, his songwriting focused less on traditional instrumentation and more in favour of orchestral arrangements, in the vein of the Beach Boys' recently released Pet Sounds. The sessions officially commenced on 14 November 1966 at Decca Studio 2 in West Hampstead, London with the recording of "Uncle Arthur" and "She's Got Medals". Decca in-house producer Mike Vernon handled production while Gus Dudgeon engineered. Bowie's band the Buzz contributed with the exception of keyboardist Derek Boyes.

Rather than hire an arranger, Bowie and Buzz member Derek "Dek" Fearnley used Freda Dinn's Observer's Guide to Music, a musical guidebook, to study orchestra arrangements and requested Vernon hire the appropriate musicians. Fearnley had little experience writing music charts, while Bowie could not read music at all, so Fearnley found it a daunting task, later stating: "It was bloody hard work. I knew how to read the staves and that a bar had four crotches; David had never seen or written a note, so I was the one qualified to write stuff out." He found that when presenting the charts to the musicians, some of whom were members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, they threw them back and requested new scores, which he had to do himself while Bowie monitored from the control room.

"There Is a Happy Land", "We Are Hungry Men", "Join the Gang" and the B-side "Did You Ever Have a Dream" were completed by 24 November. Around the same time, Pitt and Bowie's current manager Ralph Horton decided that Bowie would cease live performances so he could focus on recording the album and that he would part ways with the Buzz. Bowie and the Buzz made their final live performance together on 2 December, the same day Deram issued the "Rubber Band" single. The sessions continued between 8 and 13 December with the recording of "Sell Me a Coat", "Little Bombardier", "Silly Boy Blue", "Maid of Bond Street", "Come and Buy My Toys" and "The Gravedigger", now titled "Please Mr. Gravedigger".

Besides the orchestra, Vernon hired several uncredited session musicians who were integral to the album's sound; credited players included guitarist John Renbourn, whose playing is heard prominently on "Come and Buy My Toys", and multi-instrumentalist Big Jim Sullivan, who contributed banjo and sitar on "Did You Ever Have a Dream" and "Join the Gang", respectively. Fearnley's friend Marion Constable also contributed backing vocals to "Silly Boy Blue". Vernon recalled having "a lot of fun" during the sessions and described Bowie as "the easiest person to work with", further adding that "some of the melodies were extremely good, and the actual material, the lyrics, had a quality that was quite unique". Dudgeon also found the material unique, telling the biographer David Buckley that "the music was very filmic, all very visual and all quite honest and unaffected".

A provisional running order was drawn up at the end of December 1966, which included tracks that were absent from the final album, such as "Did You Ever Have a Dream", "Your Funny Smile" and "Bunny Thing". In mid-January 1967, Bowie fired Horton as his manager after months of financial mismanagement and hired Pitt in his place. Bowie and the musicians reconvened at Decca on 26 January, recording the backing tracks for "The Laughing Gnome" and "The Gospel According to Tony Day", which were chosen as the next single; vocals were added in early February. A new version of "Rubber Band" was recorded for inclusion on the album on 25 February, as well as "Love You till Tuesday" and "When I Live My Dream". These tracks featured uncredited arrangements by Arthur Greenslade. The sessions completed on 1 March.

David Bowie was mixed in both mono and stereo, making it one of the first albums to be released in both formats. According to Pegg, the two variants featured minor differences in instrumentation and mixing: mono editions used slightly different mixes of "Uncle Arthur" and "Please Mr. Gravedigger".

Styles and themes

David Bowie consists of 14 tracks, all written entirely by Bowie. His influences at this time included Anthony Newley, music hall acts like Tommy Steele, British-centred material by Ray Davies of the Kinks, Syd Barrett's psychedelic nursery rhymes for early Pink Floyd and the Edwardian flair shared by the contemporary works of the Kinks and the Beatles. Pitt's desire for Bowie to become an "all-around entertainer" rather than a "rock star" also impacted the songwriter's style. According to the author James E. Perone, the songs include styles of up-tempo pop, rock and waltz; BBC Music retrospectively categorised David Bowie as baroque pop and music hall. Rather than using traditional instruments in pop music at the time, such as guitar, piano, bass and drums, the instruments on David Bowie likened to those in music hall and classical music, such as brass instruments (tuba, trumpet and French horn) and woodwind instruments (bassoon, oboe, English horn and piccolo). Buckley notes almost a complete absence of lead guitar in the final mix.

Brass-led tracks include "Rubber Band", "Little Bombardier" and "Maid of Bond Street", woodwind-led tracks include "Uncle Arthur" and "She's Got Medals". "Little Bombardier" and "Maid of Bond Street" are in waltz time, while "Join the Gang" includes sitar and a musical quotation of the Spencer Davis Group's recent hit "Gimme Some Lovin'". Newley's influence is present on "Love You till Tuesday", "Little Bombardier" and "She's Got Medals". Regarding the influence, Newley himself stated in 1992: "I always made fun of it, in a sense. Most of my records ended in a stupid giggle, trying to tell people that I wasn't being serious. I think Bowie liked that irreverent thing, and his delivery was very similar to mine, that Cockney thing."

thumb|upright=0.8|alt=A black and white photo of a man with a mustache|The album's sound has been compared to [[Anthony Newley (pictured in 1967).]]

"Love You till Tuesday" and "Come and Buy My Toys" are among the few songs on the album with an acoustic guitar, the former heavily augmented by strings. The latter is noted by the biographer Chris O'Leary as more minimalist in nature, and exemplifies folk in a way the author Peter Doggett likens to Simon & Garfunkel. "Please Mr. Gravedigger", which Buckley described as "one of pop's genuinely crazy moments", utilises various studio sound effects and no backing instrumentation. Biographers compare it to a radio play from the 1940s and 1950s and consider it a comedic parody of the old British song "Oh! Mr Porter".

Like the music, the lyrical themes on David Bowie are widespread, ranging from lighthearted, to dark, to funny to sarcastic. The characters range from societal outcasts, to losers, "near-philosophers" and dictators. According to O'Leary, David Bowie found Bowie composing third-person narratives compared to the first-person love stories of his previous releases, a statement echoed by Kevin Cann, who likens the song narratives to traditional folk stories. In 1976, Bowie commented that "the idea of writing sort of short stories, I thought was quite novel at the time". Marc Spitz writes that David Bowie contains several "vaguely dark, arcane English story songs" ("Please Mr. Gravedigger", "Uncle Arthur", "Maid on Bond Street") that Pitt envisioned Bowie performing in lounges. "Rubber Band", "Little Bombardier" and "She's Got Medals" all evoke the Edwardian theme.

Lighthearted themes, such as childhood innocence, are celebrated in "Sell Me a Coat", "When I Live My Dream" and "Come and Buy My Toys", as well as the psychedelic-influenced "There Is a Happy Land", which took its title and subject matter from the Andrew Young hymn of the same name. "Silly Boy Blue" expresses Bowie's then-recent interest in Buddhism. Darker ideals such as peer pressure and drug use are discussed in "Join the Gang", while "We Are Hungry Men" depicts a totalitarian world that reflects messianic worship and cannibalism in a comedic way. "Little Bombardier" concerns a war veteran who is forced to leave town after being suspected for pedophilia, and the a cappella "Please Mr. Gravedigger" details a child-murderer contemplating his next victim while standing in a graveyard.

Release

thumb|upright=0.6|alt=A closeup of a young man looking into the camera|Bowie in a trade ad for the "Love You till Tuesday" single.

David Bowie was released in the United Kingdom on 1 June 1967, with the catalogue numbers DML 1007 (mono) and SML 1007 (stereo). Its release coincided with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The American release, issued in August 1967, omitted "We Are Hungry Men" and "Maid of Bond Street", which Pegg speculates was possibly due to the US practice of trimming track listings in order to "reduce publishing royalties".

The sleeve photograph is a full-headshot of Bowie in a mod haircut wearing a high-collared jacket. The sleeve was taken by Fearnley's brother Gerald in his basement studio near Marble Arch, where Bowie and Dek Fearnley had conducted rehearsals for the sessions. Bowie himself chose the jacket and later recalled that he was "very proud" of it, quipping that "it was actually tailored". Spitz considers the image "very rooted" in the mid-1960s, while Consequence of Sound Blake Goble called it "perhaps the most uninteresting and dated album cover of Bowie's career" in 2018. Chris Welch of Melody Maker enjoyed the album as "a singularly rewarding collection" featuring "excellent" production. Welch was surprised Bowie had yet to impact the pop scene. A reviewer for Disc & Music Echo described the album as "a remarkable, creative debut album by a 19-year-old Londoner", declaring: "Here is a new talent that deserves attention, for though David Bowie has no great voice, he can project words with a cheeky 'side' that is endearing yet not precious... full of abstract fascination. Try David Bowie. He's something new." The journalist also suggested that Bowie could garner more attention if he "gets the breaker and the right singles".

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Retrospective reviews of David Bowie have unfavourably compared the LP with the artist's later works, although some have recognised it positively in its own terms. Reviewing in 2010, BBC Music's Sean Egan found an "unrefined" talent in Bowie, noting "above average" lyrics that are "hardly deep". Nevertheless, he praised Bowie's commitment to the project, concluding that "David Bowie is hardly an essential listen but historically interesting as unmistakably the entrée of someone with a future." Including Bowie's two albums with Tin Machine, the writers of Consequence of Sound ranked David Bowie number 26 (out of 28) in their 2018 list. Goble called it "an awkward artifact", representing signs of what was to come for the artist but as a standalone album, it remains "not essential".

Reissues and compilations

Bowie's Deram recordings have been recycled in a multitude of compilation albums, including The World of David Bowie (1970), Images 1966–1967 (1973), Another Face (1981), Rock Reflections (1990), and The Deram Anthology 1966–1968 (1997).

Deram first reissued David Bowie on LP in August 1984, followed by a CD release in April 1989. In January 2010, Deram and Universal Music reissued the album in a remastered two-disc deluxe edition package. Containing 53 total tracks, the collection compiles both the original mono and stereo mixes, Bowie's other Deram recordings, such as "The London Boys" and "The Laughing Gnome", single mixes, previously unreleased stereo mixes, alternate takes and for the first time, Bowie's first BBC radio session (Top Gear, December 1967).

Reviewing the deluxe edition for The Second Disc, Joe Marchese considered it a welcome supplement to The Deram Anthology 1966–1968 that showed Bowie had talent but lacked direction. He concluded that the set allows listeners to reexamine David Bowie and "makes the best possible case for this 'lost era' of Bowie history".