“I still don’t know what I was waiting for”
April 18th sees the release of the latest special limited David Bowie 7″ picture disc, the Record Store Day 2015 edition of Changes.
Collectors of the 40th anniversary series of picture discs (which celebrate the original RCA releases of Bowie’s singles), have long bemoaned the absence of Changes from the series on account of it being the first Bowie single on RCA.
For some mad reason, the 40th anniversary releases commenced with Starman, and we didn’t really appease fans with the April 1st story last year regarding a Changes picture disc.
So it is with those reasons in mind that it gives us great pleasure to finally announce this release. Here’s a bit more about the disc.
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‘CHANGES’ was first released in January 1972 and was the first of two singles taken from the album ‘Hunky Dory’, the other being ‘Life On Mars?’ It was originally backed with the ‘Hunky Dory’ track ‘Andy Warhol’.
The AA-side for the 2015 picture disc is ‘EIGHT LINE POEM (GEM PROMO VERSION)’ which is making its official debut with this picture disc.
In August 1971, David Bowie’s then management had a small run of promo LPs made to secure him and another Mainman artist, Dana Gillespie, a record deal. This promo album, featuring seven songs by Bowie on side A and five by Dana Gillespie on the reverse, is often referred to as the GEM Promo, a reference to GEM Records, the company that pressed the album.
The white label LP came in a plain white card cover (sometimes with a green Gem logo sticker) with typed green Gem labels pasted over the white labels, or simply hand-written white labels. The stamped matrix number (BOWPROMO 1A-1/1B-1) is another identifier. Most of the Bowie songs on this promo LP would appear four months later on Hunky Dory. However, as the recording and mixing of that album was not yet completed, it transpired that the Gem Promo LP was the only source for the Bowie song ‘Bombers’, which would not get an official release for a further 20 years. The GEM Promo also contained alternative takes/mixes of the tracks. The 2015 AA-side version of ‘EIGHT LINE POEM’ is taken from this promotional album.
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DAVID BOWIE – CHANGES LIMITED EDITION 7″ PICTURE DISC FOR RECORD STORE DAY 2015
A-Side Changes
(David Bowie)
Produced by Ken Scott and David Bowie
AA-Side Eight Line Poem (GEM promo version)
(David Bowie)
The images used for the picture disc were taken by Brian Ward from the Hunky Dory album shoot. The mono image is a previously unpublished shot from the session.
CHANGES is released on Parlophone April 18th 2015