It can all but break your heart, in pieces…
March 6th 1970 saw the release of both an album and a single for David Bowie in the shape of the Mercury 45, The Prettiest Star/Conversation Piece, and the Decca album, The World Of David Bowie.
The Prettiest Star was the beautifully melodic and worthy follow-up to Space Oddity and yet another label change for Bowie. Mercury was the sixth label that David had released UK singles on.
However, it looked like Mercury’s faith was well-placed with the signs looking good for another top ten UK hit, as suggested by this NME review of the single…
Sadly it was not to be and taking in to account the gentleness of both sides of the 45, it was an unusual follow-up considering David was plugging his new, rather loud, electric band, The Hype, in both the press and on stage at the time of the single’s release.
As you know, DB recognised how strong a song The Prettiest Star was and rescued it for the 1973 Aladdin Sane album, with Mick Ronson faithfully recreating Marc Bolan‘s original solo.
David also re-recorded the B-side, Conversation Piece, thirty years later for the Toy project and finally issued that version in 2002 as a Heathen bonus track.
Despite their blasé attitude towards Bowie’s post-Deram album offerings, DECCA realised it was time to cash in their chips following the Philips label’s success with Space Oddity, and they did exactly that with The World Of David Bowie (SPA58) on March 6th 1970.
Apparently, Bowie’s manager at the time, Ken Pitt, compiled the tracklisting for the album. He rounded up ten tracks from the original fourteen-track UK Deram album, (marked thus * in the tracklisting below) discarding We Are Hungry Men, Join The Gang, Maid of Bond Street and Please Mr. Gravedigger.
Joining the ten album tracks were The London Boys, plus three unreleased tracks recorded with Tony Visconti in 1968. Here’s the tracklisting…
Side 1
1 Uncle Arthur*
2 Love You Till Tuesday*
3 There Is A Happy Land*
4 Little Bombardier*
5 Sell Me A Coat*
6 Silly Boy Blue*
7 The London Boys (From Deram single DM 107)
Side 2
1 Karma Man (Previously unreleased)
2 Rubber Band*
3 Let Me Sleep Beside You (Previously unreleased)
4 Come And Buy My Toys*
5 She’s Got Medals*
6 In The Heat Of The Morning (Previously unreleased)
7 When I Live My Dream*
It seems from Pitt’s notes in his book, The Pitt Report, that he expected the single versions of both Love You Till Tuesday and When I Live My Dream to replace the album versions for this compilation, though this didn’t transpire.
According to the back of the sleeve, there was also a red label mono version of the album, (PA58) but I’ve never seen one and I doubt its existence…I would love to be proved wrong on this point though. (Happy to report I was proved wrong…see FOOTNOTE below.)
And while there was definitely an Australian pressing of this original version of The World Of David Bowie, I also doubt the existence of American releases of the vinyl album and 8-track cartridge that are widely reported…again, I would be very happy to eat my words if proved wrong.
Illustrated in the montage above is my original copy of the album, complete with the nineteen shillings and eleven pence recommended retail price sticker, (this was pre-decimal) as advertised in the trade press advert, also pictured.
The other two items pictured are the UK 8-track cartridge (ECSP 58) (bottom right) along with its outer cardboard slipcase on the left. This format had the same content as the vinyl version, albeit with the tracks in a different running order.
There will be many of you reading this wondering why I’m waffling on about this release. Well, for those of us that got into Bowie via Ziggy Stardust, this album was our first introduction to this material as the Deram album wasn’t in record store racks by this point.
The plan obviously worked for DECCA who milked these recordings for all their worth via myriad releases around the globe, right up to the present day…but that’s another story that needs a mini-site all of its own.
Having said that, these days they are for more respectful of the Deram/Decca recordings, and, as you know, the most recent release of this material by Universal: David Bowie – The Deram Album (Deluxe Edition) 2-CD in January, (01.18.2010 NEWS: DAVID BOWIE DEBUT DELUXE EDITION UK REVIEW BLITZ & 01.21.2010 NEWS: THE TIMES GIVES FOUR STARS TO DB DELUXE AND REALITY LIVE & 01.25.2010 NEWS: A REALITY LIVE AND DERAM DELUXE RELEASED TODAY) finally treats it with the respect it deserves.
Stay tuned for a contest to win copies of David Bowie – The Deram Album (Deluxe Edition) 2-CD, and if you’ve not already seen it, check out the beautiful Japanese version which houses the CDs in remarkably accurate reproduction mini-sleeves of both the original stereo version of the UK Deram album and the UK The World Of David Bowie original sleeve.
FOOTNOTE: Already had confirmation of the UK mono red label which is now another item on my wants list. Incredible that after thirty eight years of collecting, I’ve never seen one…but then again, I’ve never seen a laminated Hunky Dory, but we know there are a fair few of those out there.
I was relieved to receive confirmation that there were never any US issues on any format of the original TWODB. So the rumour that: “the 8-track cartridge released in the US (Decca ECS P 58) additionally had ‘Silly Boy Blue’,” seems to be one of those repeated errors that started even before the days of the internet.
