Guest on August 23, 1999 of the program “Storytellers”, for the musical channel VH1, during which a star interprets his successes and recounts moments of his artistic life, David Bowie presents a new version of Can’t Help Thinking About Me, recorded in December 1965 and published on the A side of a 45-rpm. She will be on the program of a few concerts in medium-sized halls (including the Elysée-Montmartre, in Paris) which, from October to December 1999, accompany the release of her new album. Hours. On June 19, 2000, at the Roseland Ballroom, in New York, Bowie once more slips twice of his debut, I Dig Everything, a 1966 single and The London Boys, 1965 title marketed in early 1967.
The idea of making an album of a few songs from before the glory came in the early 1970s gained ground. In the summer of 2000, Bowie brought together at Sear Sound Studio in New York, the musicians of his then group. In ten days, fifteen songs are recorded. Most, therefore, covers from his 1960s (including Liza Jane, from 1964, the songs of the concerts, Silly Boy Blue, Karma Man…), with three from the beginning of 1970 (Hole in the Ground, Conversation Piece and Shadow Man), and a handful of new features – Afraid, Uncle Floyd who will become Slip Away, and Toy (You Turn To Drive).
Then additions are made, notably by the violinist Lisa Germano, the trumpeter Cuong Vu, choral parts, string arrangements supervised by Tony Visconti. A name for the album is chosen, Toy. Release dates are announced, postponed, the record company hesitates. Toy is set aside. Bowie changes phonographic company and is working soon on his future album, Heathen. Published in June 2002, we find there Afraid and Slip Away, and four covers of the summer of 2000 are scattered on singles. Toy joins the list of “lost albums”, the lost albums, which make the fans salivate.
Ambiance pop-rock
In 2011, appeared, broadcast on the Internet, a collage of fourteen tracks, from partially mixed recordings and those that have been officially published. We had to be satisfied with this pirate edition for ten years, until the legal publication of Toy, first as one of the elements of the retrospective 11-CD box set Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001), and at the start of the year, with a set of 3 CDs entirely dedicated to him.
Either twelve songs – the novelties Afraid and Slip Away are not part of it, but Toy (You Turn To Drive), which had been published in 2014 on the compilation Nothing Has Changed comes in conclusion – on a first CD, constituting a priori the album as Bowie had wanted it. A CD of different mixes does not add much apart from the presence of the new version of Liza Jane, a mix of The London Boys with stack of strings and harpsichord that leads to the Beatles, and Silly Boy Blue with a string quartet, a discreet rhythm. More interesting is the third CD which brings together acoustic takes of the different titles, reminiscent of Bowie’s folk-pop times.
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