Before Ziggy, before the Thin White Duke, there was Davie Jones — a teenager hustling songs on Denmark Street. Parlophone is now releasing David Bowie: The Shel Talmy Recordings, the fullest account yet of the future icon's earliest sessions with the producer behind The Who and The Kinks. The set lands September 18, 2026, with ten never-before-heard tracks on the CD and digital editions, six on the LP, plus a red vinyl run at Bowie's official store.

The cast around the young singer is staggering in hindsight. Jimmy Page, then a hired-gun session guitarist fond of a custom fuzz pedal, supercharged the Manish Boys material; Nicky Hopkins — the piano man behind the Stones, Beatles and Jeff Beck — sat in with The Lower Third; and a young Glyn Johns engineered at IBC Studios, where The Who would later cut Tommy.

"I thought he absolutely was going to make it," Talmy said in 2017 — reckoning the pair were simply years ahead of the market.

Bowie himself never disowned this era: 1973's Pin-Ups was a love letter to the period, covering four songs originally produced by Talmy. Alongside the demos and alternate takes sit both sides of the early Parlophone singles "You've Got A Habit Of Leaving" and "Baby Loves That Way" — songs Bowie would circle back to decades on. By the end of September 1965, Davie Jones had a new name. The rest is a book of chapters.