Early Bowie music available to stream for first time — SkimNews
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- Alec Palao discovered five unreleased Bowie songs filed under his birth name "Davie Jones" ten years ago after spotting faint pencil markings on records; five more previously unheard tracks came his way afterward, totaling ten.
- The tracks form "The Shel Talmy Recordings," named for Bowie's first professional producer, who had kept a 1965 acetate in his collection alongside material by The Kinks, The Who, Manfred Mann, and The Easybeats.
- Palao called the recordings "probably the most visceral, raw you'll ever hear the man," and early collaborator Dana Gillespie said they capture Bowie "trying to find his voice" — noting the tracks "don't really sound like David."
- Six of the unreleased tracks will be available on vinyl at Record Store Day and HMV outlets, tapping into Bowie's 2022 Music Week ranking as the best-selling vinyl artist of the 21st century, ahead of The Beatles.
- The album is licensed to Warner Music Group's Parlophone label with royalties paid to Bowie's estate; Warner purchased Bowie's publishing rights in 2022.
- Gillespie, who met a 17-year-old Bowie at London's Marquee Club and later worked with him on "Ziggy Stardust," recalled him rushing her into a Denmark Street listening booth to share a remastered "I Pity The Fool" featured on the album.
- Bowie's "Andy Warhol" from his fourth studio album was originally written for Gillespie, and she remembered him saying of his childhood home in Bromley: "Whatever it takes, I want to get out of here."
Why it matters: Bowie's estate and Warner — which already controls his publishing rights after a 2022 purchase — now have fresh, officially licensed product to sell into a vinyl market where Bowie already outsells the Beatles, giving the estate a new royalty stream nearly a decade after his death. For fans, the release fills a documented gap: most of what the teenage Davie Jones recorded in 1965 London was previously lost or little known. The decade-long gap between Palao's discovery and the release also illustrates how producer archives (Talmy's alongside tapes by the Kinks and Who) remain an underexplored source of major-artist unreleased material.
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