David Bowie: Toy

The legendary unreleased Bowie album Six years ago, the music world had to say goodbye to one of its legends: David Bowie. Now, in 2022, a true rarity of the British singer and musician will be released: the previously unreleased album "Toy" - as a box set with three CDs or six 10ʺ-vinyl singles. "Toy" was recorded after David Bowie's triumphant performance at the Glastonbury Festival in 2000. Bowie went into the studio with his band, consisting of Mark Plati, Sterling Campbell, Gail Ann Dorsey, Earl Slick, Mike Garson, Holly Palmer and Emm Gryner, to record new interpretations of songs he had already recorded between 1964 and 1971. He planned to record the album "old school" live with the band, select the best takes, and then release it as soon as possible - a remarkably prescient approach. Unfortunately, in 2001, the concept of releasing surprise albums and the technology needed to do so were still several years away, making it impossible to release "Toy," as the album was now called, as quickly as the singer wanted. In the meantime, Bowie did what he did best: He turned to something new, starting with a handful of new songs from the same sessions, which eventually gave birth to the album "Heathen", released in 2002. Today, twenty years after its original planned release, Bowie's co-producer Mark Plati says, "'Toy' is like a moment in time, captured in an amber of joy, fire and energy. It's the sound of people happy to be making music. David revisited his work from decades past through the prism of experience and new perspective - a parallel not lost on me as I revisit it now, twenty years later. From time to time he would say, 'Mark, this is our album' - I think because he knew I was so deep in the trenches with him on this journey. I'm glad to finally be able to say it's all ours now." The idea for "Toy" came about in 1999 during the filming of an episode of "VH-1 Storytellers." Bowie wanted to perform something from his pre-"Space Oddity" days, so he reached back to 1966 and pulled out "Can't Help Thinking About Me" for the first time in thirty years. The song remained in the setlist of the short promotional tour for the album "Hours...", and in early 2000 David and producer Mark Plati put together a list of some of Bowie's earliest songs to re-record. The album ends with a new song to which it owes its title: "Toy (Your Turn To Drive)" was born from a jam at the end of one of the live recordings of "I Dig Everything" Both the CD and vinyl box sets of "Toy" include alternate mixes and versions in addition to the album, including B-sides (versions of David's 1967 debut single "Liza Jane" and "In The Heat Of The Morning"), later mixes by Tony Visconti, and the "Tibet Version" of "Silly Boy Blue," recorded at The Looking Glass Studio during the 2001 Tibet House show in New York with Philip Glass on piano and Moby on guitar. Also waiting are "Unplugged & Somewhat Slightly Electric" mixes of thirteen "Toy" tracks. Producer Mark Plati comments, "While we were recording the basic tracks, Earl Slick suggested that he and I put acoustic guitars in all the songs. He said that was a Keith Richards trick, sometimes those guitars would be a main part of the track, and sometimes they would be more subliminal. Later, while mixing, David heard one of the songs that was just vocals and acoustic guitars; that gave him the idea that we should do some 'stripped-down' mixes like that, and that maybe one day they would be useful. Once we threw a few other elements into the pot, it felt like it could be a completely different record. I was only too happy to finish that thought two decades later." The track listing for each can be found below.