A portrait taken on May 11, 1983, shows British singer David Bowie at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival. AFP/RALPH GATTI
Parlophone Records has announced two new albums by David Bowie, with never-before-heard songs being released digitally on a weekly basis from January 17.
Among the tracks is a rare version of “The Man Who Sold The World”, which arrived on January 8 in observance of what would have been Bowie’s 73rd birthday.
The song was recorded and mixed in November 1996 at Looking Glass Studios in New York during rehearsals for Bowie’s 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden.
During the rehearsal session, the legendary singer-songwriter was notably accompanied by Gail Ann Dorsey (bass), The Cure’s Reeves Gabrels (guitar), and Mark Plati (keyboard and programming).
This new version of “The Man Who Sold The World” will be featured in the upcoming six-track EP, David Bowie Is It Any Wonder?, which is titled after the late musician’s 1975 hit “Fame”.
Picture: Twitter
It will also appear on the upcoming nine-track EP, ChangesNowBowie, which will feature the rest of the songs recorded during the rehearsal for Bowie’s Madison Garden concert.
The mostly-acoustic session was later broadcast by the BBC on the musician’s 50th birthday on January 8, 1997, alongside an interview with Bowie by DJ and music critic Mary Ann Hobbs.
The cover art for ChangesNowBowie features a black-and-white portrait of Bowie, taken in 1996 by photographer Albert Watson in New York City.
The EP will be released in limited quantities on LP and CD for Record Store Day on April 18, 2020.
In addition to getting two posthumous records, David Bowie will be honoured in the forthcoming unauthorised film Stardust.
The musician will be portrayed by British actor Johnny Flynn in the movie, which will trace how Bowie created his iconic stage character Ziggy Stardust in the early 1970s.
Last January, Bowie’s son Duncan Jones said that the film will not feature performances by Bowie, tweeting: “If you want to see a biopic without his music or [the family’s] blessing, that’s up to the audience.”
The UK producers of the film later clarified in a statement to Entertainment Weekly that Stardust was not a biopic per se but “a moment in time film at a turning point in David’s life, and is not reliant on Bowie’s music”.
In the meantime, listen to Bowie’s 1996 version of “The Man Who Sold The World”:
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