Pre-fame Bowie is fascinating on many levels. His Deram label output is kind of similar to Dylan's earliest work in that we hear an artist still trying to work out who he wants to be. Dylan's first couple of albums are part folk troubadour, part next-generation Woody and part stand-up comedy.
Similarly, Bowie experimented with the cheeky-chappy pop of Love You 'Til Tuesday and Can't Help Thinking About Me the pure music-hall nonsense of She's Got Medals and Uncle Arthur, and then slightly more serious pieces like this.
And like Dylan, he never did decide on a particular direction, he just realised it was better not to put them all on the same album.
Bowie once said that if his early records had been successful, he would probably have ended up in West End musicals. In fact, I can see him playing a pretty good Phantom. It's not that big a step away from Jareth.
After Bowie did hit it big, these tracks were released on dozens of cheap and nasty collections. As skippable as many of the songs were, Bowie must have kept a soft spot for some of them. He attempted to rehabilitate some of the Deram era songs, including this one, on the shelved Toy album.
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