David Bowie with Dana Gillespie - Make Way For The Rock And Rollers (2013)

“Make Way For The Rock And Rollers,” this new Godfather release credited to David Bowie with Dana Gillespie, and featuring a nice “Hunky Dory”-era cover portrait of the two artists, is likely to be mainly of historical interest to Bowie collectors and completists not in possession of one of those elusive and expensive 500 promo LPs. The package is a pristine audio reproduction of that long-ago DeFries promo, presented in typically lavish Godfather fashion, both audio and visual. The recordings come housed in a sumptuous tri-fold cardboard cover jacket with an array of slightly color tinted “Hunky Dory” photo session publicity stills of a long-locked Bowie — a far cry from the plain LP sleeve that housed, and white labels that adorned ,the original promotional album. (Alas, unfortunately save for the front cover and a modest insert booklet featuring a longer-pan shot of the front cover, there are no other publicity shots of the equally photogenic Gillespie to be had, boudoir or otherwise. A pity, that).

The bulk of “Rock and Rollers,” mostly recorded at London’s Trident Studios in 1971, belong to Bowie, although Gillespie does get five tracks to herself, including a crisply magnetic cover of Bowie’s (and Bowie/Ronson-produced) “Andy Warhol,” which Bowie reportedly originally wrote for her. She also delivers an expressively poignant vocal on “Never Knew,” which happens to be one of the finest tacks here and wouldn’t sound out of place on an early ‘70s Laura Nyro, Sandy Denny, or Joni Mitchell album. Likewise, the Grace Slick-Ian pop-rock of “All Cut Up On You” demonstrates Gillespie’s self-assured strengths as a vocalist seemingly as capable of as many stylistic permutations in her way as Bowie was in his. Small wonder she later proved herself so adroit in live musical theater.

But back to Bowie. Curiously and incredibly, the promo did/does not include “Changes,” Bowie’s biggest hit from “Hunky Dory” and one of the defining songs of his illustrious career. It does, however, include “It Ain’t Easy,” a terrific track that would not appear until the follow-up “Ziggy Stardust” record six months later. Although this track is the same version that would appear on “Ziggy,” the remaining Bowie selections all feature different, early mixes from the album proper. Some of the differences are subtle and fairly nominal: Fadeout times, instrumental emphases, or a dollop of echo added or subtracted (no reverb on Bowie’s vocals on the promo version of “Queen Bitch,” but some reverb added to Ronson’s guitar part, for instance). Other disparities are more dramatic: We get an entirely different vocal take on “Eight Line Poem,” for example, with the echo effect also removed on the word “collision” in the lyrics. (For a detailed track-by-track breakdown, this site proved very helpful and useful: http://www.illustrated-db-discography.nl/bowpromo.htm). All are presented here in superb stereo sound quality, but there is no mention in Godfather’s liner notes where and how this was sourced. We’re guessing either the original master tapes (yes, it sounds that good), or a pristine copy of the promo (if the latter is the case, a big thank you to whomever lent out their copy for this release).