The next box set installment in David Bowie’s archive series will include an unreleased album called “The Gouster.”
The follow up to 2015’s “Five Years (1969 – 1973)”, the next chapter in the music icon’s series is “Who Can I Be Now? (1974 – 1976)”, whose focus is the mid-70s transitional period Bowie experienced in the post-Ziggy Stardust years.
In character as The Thin White Duke, Bowie ventured heavily into soul music and, as “The Gouster” unfolded creatively, it eventually morphed into the “Young Americans” album.
“Gouster was a word unfamiliar to me but David knew it as a type of dress code worn by African American teens in the ‘60’s, in Chicago,” producer Tony Visconti explains in the liner notes from the forthcoming box set. “But in the context of the album its meaning was attitude, an attitude of pride and hipness. Of all the songs we cut we were enamored of the ones we chose for the album that portrayed this attitude.
“David had a long infatuation with soul as did I. We were fans of the TV show Soul Train. We weren’t ‘young, gifted and black’ but we sure as hell wanted to make a killer soul album, which was quite insane, but pioneers like the Righteous Brothers were there before us.”
“So ‘The Gouster’ began with the outrageous brand new, funkafied version of David’s classic ‘John, I’m Only Dancing’, a single he wrote and recorded in 1972, only this time our version sounded like it was played live in a loft party in Harlem and he added (Again) to the title.”
According to Visconti, the 7-song record turned out exactly as the pair intended: “Forty minutes of glorious funk, that’s what it was and that’s how I thought it would be.”
Further details on “Who Can I Be Now? (1974 – 1976)” will be unveiled next week.
The package marks the first release from Bowie’s archives since his passing from cancer in January at the age of 69.
See also:
David Bowie premieres I Can’t Give Everything Away lyric video
David Lee Roth pays tribute to David Bowie on The Roth Show
VIDEO: Lady Gaga performs David Bowie tribute at Grammy Awards
David Bowie’s son expecting first child
Search David Bowie at hennemusic
