Bowie and the Beatstalkers

I mentioned a few days ago that I was listening to an oddball compilation album of Bowie covers called, Oh! You Pretty Things: The Songs of David Bowie. Unlike most cover albums, this one mostly doesn’t feature Bowie’s greatest hits performed by other artists, but rather— and it took me a while to figure this out— mostly songs Bowie was involved with writing or producing for other artists. I’ve only listened to it through a few times and consequently didn’t think much about the three obscure and pretty lousy songs attributed to a band called the Beatstalkers.

To the extent I thought of it, I figured that the Beatstalkers were an obscure band that recorded their own version of three highly obscure early Bowie songs, maybe for comedic effect or just to capitalize on Bowie’s name while singing songs that might sound new.

It turns out that the band was a pretty big deal in Scotland in the 60s, spoken of in the same breath as the Beatles. It was less that the band was trying to cover songs they first heard Bowie perform, but that Bowie sold them the songs to hopefully make hits. “Silver Treetop School For Boys” had already been recorded by an even more obscure band called The Slender Plenty. Bowie himself tried to coach the Beatstalkers on how he thought the song should be performed. He was also personally involved in their recording of, “Everything is You,” on which he sings backup on at least once version. The same goes for “When I’m Five,” which, while still obscure, is really the only one of the three for which one of his own versions is (slightly) better known.

I found an article about the Beatstalkers and their relationship to Bowie from the on-line rock magazine UCR, and here’s a link: link.

I’ll link to “Everything is You,” and a few days ago I linked to “Silver Treetop School,” so you can hear for yourself— I think these are pretty wretched songs. What’s interesting is that they are artifacts from a time that Bowie was trying to find his way as a songwriter, singer, producer… it seemed he wasn’t quite sure. Since the Beatstalkers were popular somewhere on the planet at least for a brief time, it also gives a little insight into what Bowie thought his music should sound like. A few years later he stopped caring about what his music should sound like and became a star.