David Bowie with Dana Gillespie – Make Way For The Rock And Rollers – Â
Sound Quality Rating
Recorded At Trident Studios ,London 1971
01. Oh You Pretty Things.flac
02. Eight Line Poem.flac
03. Kooks.flac
04. It Ain’t Easy.flac
05. Queen Bitch.flac
06. Quicksand.flac
07. Bombers – Andy Warhol intro.flac
08. Mother Don’t Be Frightened.flac
09. Andy Warhol.flac
10. Never Knew.flac
11. All Cut Up On You.flac
12. Lavender Hill.flac
Bonus Tracks : The Shadow Man Studio Outtakes 1971
13. Looking For A Friend.flac
14. How Lucky You Are.flac
15. Shadow Man.flac
16. Rupert The Riley.flac
17. Tired Of My Life.flac
Label: Godfather Records GR953
Audio Source: Studio
Artwork: included, taken from the gallery
Total Running Time: 56:43
Itâs all but impossible to remember a time when anyone had to introduce David Bowie. But back in the summer of 1971 â a year before Bowieâs breakthrough album, âThe Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Marsâ would catapult him to worldwide fame and forever change the thing people thought of when someone mentioned âBowieâ (no, itâs not just a hunting knife) â his manager went to work promoting this scuffling, relatively unknown talent.
That manager, Tony DeFries, knew he had something special on his hands in the soon-to-be-issued âHunky Dory,â the LP that would precede âZiggyâ by a mere six months (in those heady days, Bowieâs early albums proliferated nearly as quickly as Dylan and Beatlesâ LPs had the previous decade). He was also prepping for the release of another one of his Mainman management companyâs new artists, a promising young singer-actress named Dana Gillespie, whose 1973 debut would be co-produced by Bowie and his guitarist Mick Ronson.
As was the order of the day back then, DeFries decided to maximize the collective crossover potential of his two clients by pressing up a reported 500 promotional LPs to be sent to press and radio station programmers (a Holy Grail long referred to by collectors as âBOWPROMO1âł after the etchings in the LPâs inner run-off groove). Although Bowieâs career, as we all know, blasted off like Major Tomâs rocket ship, Gillespieâs equally stylistically diverse debut, titled âWerenât Born A Man,â would prove far less successful (despite the rather randy LP cover art of a fetching Dana in a boudoir-ready lingerie get-up that while musically misleading â there were no striptease numbers, for instance â left little doubt that she was indeed very much of the female persuasion, as her albumâs title indicated). Gillespie would eventually transition to a successful and varied acting and recording career, appearing in British stage adaptions of the Whoâs âTommyâ (playing The Acid Queen) and âJesus Christ Superstarâ (as Mary Magdalene, no less â talk about range). And, having eventually turned to the blues as her genre of choice, sheâs rarely stopped singing and recording scores of albums over the past 45 years.
That said, âMake Way For The Rock And Rollers,â this new Godfather release credited to David Bowie with Dana Gillespie, and featuring a nice âHunky Doryâ-era cover portrait of the two artists, is likely to be mainly of historical interest to Bowie collectors and completists not in possession of one of those elusive and expensive 500 promo LPs. The package is a pristine audio reproduction of that long-ago DeFries promo, presented in typically lavish Godfather fashion, both audio and visual. The recordings come housed in a sumptuous tri-fold cardboard cover jacket with an array of slightly color tinted âHunky Doryâ photo session publicity stills of a long-locked Bowie â a far cry from the plain LP sleeve that housed, and white labels that adorned ,the original promotional album. (Alas, unfortunately save for the front cover and a modest insert booklet featuring a longer-pan shot of the front cover, there are no other publicity shots of the equally photogenic Gillespie to be had, boudoir or otherwise. A pity, that).
The bulk of âRock and Rollers,â mostly recorded at Londonâs Trident Studios in 1971, belong to Bowie, although Gillespie does get five tracks to herself, including a crisply magnetic cover of Bowieâs (and Bowie/Ronson-produced) âAndy Warhol,â which Bowie reportedly originally wrote for her. She also delivers an expressively poignant vocal on âNever Knew,â which happens to be one of the finest tacks here and wouldnât sound out of place on an early â70s Laura Nyro, Sandy Denny, or Joni Mitchell album. Likewise, the Grace Slick-Ian pop-rock of âAll Cut Up On Youâ demonstrates Gillespieâs self-assured strengths as a vocalist seemingly as capable of as many stylistic permutations in her way as Bowie was in his. Small wonder she later proved herself so adroit in live musical theater.
But back to Bowie. Curiously and incredibly, the promo did/does not include âChanges,â Bowieâs biggest hit from âHunky Doryâ and one of the defining songs of his illustrious career. It does, however, include âIt Ainât Easy,â a terrific track that would not appear until the follow-up âZiggy Stardustâ record six months later. Although this track is the same version that would appear on âZiggy,â the remaining Bowie selections all feature different, early mixes from the album proper. Some of the differences are subtle and fairly nominal: Fadeout times, instrumental emphases, or a dollop of echo added or subtracted (no reverb on Bowieâs vocals on the promo version of âQueen Bitch,â but some reverb added to Ronsonâs guitar part, for instance). Other disparities are more dramatic: We get an entirely different vocal take on âEight Line Poem,â for example, with the echo effect also removed on the word âcollisionâ in the lyrics. (For a detailed track-by-track breakdown, this site proved very helpful and useful: http://www.illustrated-db-discography.nl/bowpromo.htm). All are presented here in superb stereo sound quality, but there is no mention in Godfatherâs liner notes where and how this was sourced. Weâre guessing either the original master tapes (yes, it sounds that good), or a pristine copy of the promo (if the latter is the case, a big thank you to whomever lent out their copy for this release).
Whether hearing these rare versions or the officially released tracks, this material makes a convincing case for âHunky Doryâ as much more than merely the promising predecessor to its far more famous, orange-maned counterpart. While âHunky Doryâ may have lacked the calculated genius of the all-encompassing, yet marvelously self-contained image that Bowie projected, promoted, and cultivated with âZiggy,â the album is every bit its musical equal. Just try to imagine the impact of what it must have felt like for a radio programmer, say, to hear songs like âQueen Bitchâ (reportedly written about, and upon meeting, Lou Reed in New York) or âOh! You Pretty Thingsâ for the first time. Even now, forty-plus years on, their brash immediacy and subversive pop sophistication is striking.
Godfatherâs title also tacks on five studio outtakes, also from the same year: 1971âs sessions for the ultimately aborted âShadow Manâ project that never saw the light of day once Bowie hit upon his âZiggyâ concept/personae. (Bowie did re-record a new version of âShadow Manâ in 2000 for an also aborted album that was to be titled âToyâ; that remade version later surfaced as B-side to the 2002 singles âSlow Burnâ and âEveryone Says âHiââ). Though these demos are presented in lesser quality than the promo properâs tracks, and with a smidgeon of acetate-like hiss, they make for a nice period-accurate bonus. Taken together, this handful of tracks offers the listener a prime example of what Bowieâs demos sounded like at the time, when he was still shaking off the last vestiges of his florid but floundering baroque folk-pop period and searching for a fresh voice.
Bowie collectors may have previously come across this non-earth-shattering fare â the Manfred Mann/âQuinn The Eskimoâ-soundalike, âLooking For A Friendâ; the Move-ish âRupert The Rileyâ; or the muted and unremarkable âShadow Manâ â on various earlier unofficial releases. But in its own way, the somewhat lackluster music nevertheless paints a dramatic portrait that illustrates just how creatively far Bowie was able to come in such a staggeringly brief amount of time. The relative ordinariness of the âShadow Manâ material stands in stark contrast to the brilliant creative watershed to come, when âHunky Dory,â âZiggy Stardust,â and âAladdin Saneâ were all written, recorded, and released within an amazing two years of each other.
In an interview nearly 30 years later, Bowie took note of that pivotal period in his life, when anything and everything seemed possible for this marvelously chameleon-like artist of many guises and gazes.âHunky Dory gave me a fabulous groundswell,â Bowie recalled in an interview with âUncutâ magazine in 1999. âI guess it provided me, for the first time in my life, with an actual audience â I mean, people actually coming up to me and saying, âGood album, good songs.â That hadnât happened to me before. It was like, âAh, Iâm getting it, Iâm finding my feet. Iâm starting to communicate what I want to do.â
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