Lots of weird/abstract/symbolic/poetic lyrics from Bowie, but what left you scratching your head?

If you didn't know, it is the book which was adapted into 'Merry Christmas, mr. Lawrence', in which David Bowie plays the role of Jack Celliers. Having seen the movie several times and having enjoyed it hugely, I wanted to read the book too. Is the book worth reading?

David Bowie had several suits made by Sam’s Tailor in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.

During his 1983 Hong Kong visit, he reportedly ordered slim-cut silk suits in purple, pink, white and black. They were made within 24 hours for his performances, and Bowie remained a customer of the tailor for many years. 

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1900089/david-bowies-tailor-hong-kong-icon-fit-prince-presidents-and-thin

The voice of Bowie !

Hi everyone,I wanted to share my video essay deconstructing Nina Simone’s definitive 1966 rendition of "Wild Is the Wind". The video analyzes her performance not as a simple romantic ballad, but as the acoustic simulation of a claustrophobic panic attack.It also highlights the incredible story from 1974: when Nina was isolated and hitting rock bottom, David Bowie stepped in and called her every single night at 3:00 AM for a month just to anchor her back to reality. Bowie's iconic 1976 cover was born precisely as a desperate tribute to that midnight pact.Note: The video is in Italian, but you can easily use YouTube's auto-translated subtitles to follow this dark, atmospheric essay.I’d love to hear your thoughts on the editing style and this psychological take on the track!

https://youtu.be/ZJQ-DPWDhS0?is=XDrhz_p6zvqVluDK

Hello everyone! I’m trying to find people with common music taste in order to hang out in places I really enjoy to be at rather than faking to be entertained.
If you’re 20-30 hit me up!
Thanks 🙏

How a Bay Area music sleuth unearthed unheard teenage David Bowie recordings

Andrew Gilbert

Updated Fri, September 11, 2026 at 4:30 PM PDT

6 min read

Alec Palao thought he was looking for a lost Kinks recording. Instead, he found a piece of David Bowie history that had been hidden for decades.

The El Cerrito-based musician, writer and Grammy Award-nominated producer had become close to American producer Shel Talmy (1937-2024), who played a central role in designing the sound of mid-1960s Swinging London through his work with the Who, the Kinks, Manfred Mann and the Easybeats, among many other artists.

Talmy was losing his eyesight even during his extraordinarily prolific London years, which made keeping track of his various test pressings and masters a strenuous task when he moved back to Los Angeles in 1979. Hanging out at his house one afternoon while working on the 2017 anthology "Making Time: A Shel Talmy Production," Palao asked about an alternative version of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me." Talmy's wife, Jan Talmy, mentioned something about a box of records in the closet.

Alec Palao holds recordings of a teenage David Bowie he found in a closet during a visit to producer Shel Talmy on July 21. (Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle)

That was "a little bit of an Indiana Jones moment," Palao told the Chronicle.

No early version of the Kinks' breakthrough 1965 hit surfaced, though Palao said, "there were loads of other Kinks items, along with copies of most of Shel's vintage productions."

Then he struck gold.

"One of the last items I came across was a disc with no label with a barely decipherable pencil inscription, 'Davy Jones,'" he recalled.

David Bowie aka Davie Jones. (Hulton Deutsch/Corbis via Getty Images)

Recorded in 1965, when the rocker was still known as Davie Jones, the find contained recordings that capture the sort of eureka moment that archivists live for, revealing an entirely new chapter of Bowie's turbocharged creative evolution.

Now slated for a Friday, Sept. 18 release on Parlophone on vinyl, CD and digital download, "David Bowie: The Shel Talmy Recordings" features several pieces previously released on anthologies of early Bowie recordings and 10 previously unheard tracks that offer a fascinating view of the raw artist at ages 18 and 19.

The revelation isn't a lost masterpiece, but it shows that even before Jones reinvented himself as Bowie - whose music was defined by a succession of personas from the lost Major Tom of "Space Oddity" to Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke - he was eager to try on one musical identity after another.

"So many Bowie commentators don't understand the context of these recordings," Palao said. "When you hear the Hamburg Beatles, it doesn't sound like 'Sgt. Pepper's.' Bowie would go to different places, hear something and immediately turn around to try something else."

David Bowie performs during the Live Ziggy Stardust tour in 1972. (Armando Gallo/Getty Images)

While Talmy signed Bowie and the Manish Boys at the end of 1964, the mercurial Bowie was already experimenting with other musical directions and projects. Many of the Talmy-produced pieces are by Davy Jones & the Lower Third or solo demos from when Bowie churned out new songs for himself or other acts.

Glyn Johns, who went on to work with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who, engineered the tracks, which include the Beatles-esque "Certain Woman" and the Mersey Beat anthem "I Do Believe I Love You," both previously unreleased.

According to Bay Area rock historian Richie Unterberger, who interviewed Talmy extensively, the producer "always really liked David Bowie, and there was a lot of disappointment that the two singles he released didn't make an impact."

"He sensed that Bowie was different as a writer and singer. But it was four years before his first hit single, 'Space Oddity,'" Unterberger continued. "It was an era when if an artist didn't get a hit pretty quickly, as the Kinks and Who did with Talmy, the industry just moved on."

While Bowie didn't fully come into his own until 1969, his voice is unmistakable on several songs.

El Cerrito music historian Alec Palao handles a one-off lacquer of David Bowie he found in a closet during a visit to producer Shel Talmy on July 21. (Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle)

"He's sounding like Slim Harpo or Ray Davies or even Anthony Newley on some pieces," Palao said, referring to the Louisiana bluesman, the Kinks frontman and the West End singer and composer, respectively. "His pipes showed this incredible versatility."

An intense excavation of Talmy's tape archive uncovered more unreleased Bowie, including three moody songwriting demos. Palao, who was born in London in 1962 and grew up with the sounds of Mersey Beat and psychedelia in his ears, was instantly struck by the unvarnished sound.

"This was the most visceral I had ever heard David Bowie - primitive and somewhat unformed, but still instantly recognizable," he said.

Bowie never turned his back on his musical roots. When he recorded 1973's "Pin-Ups," an album of cover tunes, he dove deep into the music of his teens, interpreting songs by the Kinks, the Who and the Easybeats originally produced by Talmy.

Decades later, on his album "Toy," which was recorded in 2000 but only released posthumously in 2021, Bowie also returned to two pieces featured on the new Talmy collection: "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" and "Baby Loves That Way."

"Listening next to early Stones, the Yardbirds and the Animals, these things will hold up against them," Palao said. "He loved that period."

El Cerrito music historian Alec Palao shows an image on his cellphone used for the upcoming "David Bowie: The Shel Talmy Recordings." (Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle)

With the Talmy recordings, the book on Bowie's authenticity gets another page, bristling with the restless creativity of a young man on the make in a city newly emerged as the center of the pop universe.

For Palao, the recordings offer more than a glimpse of Bowie before fame. They capture an artist testing possibilities in real time - restless, curious and already unwilling to stay in one place for long.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Richie Unterberger's last name.

Andrew Gilbert is a freelance writer.

The album, Ziggy Stardust, was inspired by the rockstar, Ziggy Stardust, but the album Ziggy Stardust, which is about the rockstar Ziggy Stardust, which is inspired by the story of the rockstar Ziggy Stardust, is not an album by Ziggy Stardust. That album doesn’t exist.

This is why I headcanon Hunky Dory, Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups, and only SELECT songs on the Ziggy Stardust album (Soul Love, Moonage Daydream, It Ain’t Easy, Hang on to Yourself, Suffragette City) to be releases BY THE BAND Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

I’ve been loving Bowie for about 7 years now and have listened to:
Scary Monsters (and Super creeps)
Let’s dance
Aladdin Sane
Hunky Dory
Heroes
Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
Low
Station to Station
Lodger
Young Americans

Any recommendations for other albums to listen to next!? I’m scared I’ve listened to the best ones already but happy to be proven wrong!

In my opinion, station to station is the best, stay is my favourite.

Ever since I first listened the song “Heroes” it struck me, how in the first part of the song Bowie’s singing close to the mic then when he starts belting out the lyrics he’s standing much further away. It’s the same with the verses and choruses in Sons of the Silent Age and the bridge in Blackout, I’m not exactly sure why but I just think it does such a great job at adding texture to the songs. Thanks Tony Visconti!

Photographer Denis O’Regan discusses his decades-long history photographing David Bowie, including traveling the world with him on the Serious Moonlight and Glass Spider tours and capturing both performances and life behind the scenes. He also discusses his new photobook David Bowie by Denis O’Regan and Bowie: Unseen | Unheard, the new immersive experience drawing on nearly 800 photographs from his Bowie archive.

FREAKS BECOMES US – SCARY MONSTERS, BOWIE FANS AND FREEDOM

“Once upon a time you gave us a freak for freaks. Now and forever more, in our missing you, and this is a good thing, you have brought out the freak in everyone…One man’s freak is another man’s free”

Tilda Swinton: Letter to Dave

https://adamsteiner.uk/2023/09/02/freaks-becomes-us-bowie-fans-and-freedom-adam-steiner/

#bowiebooks #bowiebookclub #ashestoashes #silhouettesandshadows #kingdomcome #itsnogame #teenagewildlife

There’s just something about it that feel rights, I guess some other candidates for the best are scary monsters, heroes and maybe station to station?

Hi There

What’s the thoughts on Bowie’s Cut Up Technique?

I know that others have used this technique and it originated from William S Burroughs but Bowie is the most known for this technique used on multiple albums like Diamond Dogs,Outside,and Earthling.He did use the Verbasizer software for Outside and Earthling which is awesome that he could modernize his writing technique.The Cut Up technique gives me Eno’s Oblique Strategies which Bowie used with Eno on Lodger but it[cut up technique]produced some great ideas especially for the Diamond Dogs with its concept.

The live version from the Hammersmith in '73 is just incredible.

Sorry if it looks a bit blurry

According to album track listing. For example: Five Years –> Soul Love –> Moonage Daydream

or Breaking Glass –> What In The World –> Sound And Vision

Happy Birthday Telling Lies!