Opened in September 2025, the David Bowie Centre houses the singer’s archive, which has 80,000-90,000 items, the figure varying a little according to different sources I’ve read. It’s part of the Victoria and Albert’s East Storehouse location, itself only opened a little more than a year ago in London. It does exhibit some of the archive for the public, for whom admission to the Storehouse is free. But only 200 or so items are on display at any one time, though that pretty small exhibit space will rotate ones from throughout the collection.

Fortunately, the public can also access other items in the collection, though you need to make appointments through the centre’s website. Retrieving physical objects is very popular, but if you want to stick to paper documents and photos, you can arrange to see much material at once. That’s what I did for a couple days in May, concentrating only on the first ten years or so of his professional career, spanning about 1963-73.

Even being this selective, there’s too much to sum up about what I saw to include in one or even several blogposts. In addition, some of the items of most fascination to me have actually been documented in other sources, though it’s neat to see them in person, especially when they’re represented by pieces in Bowie’s own handwriting.

For instance, Kenneth Pitt reproduced or quoted from many letters he sent David when he was managing Bowie for about four years from spring 1966 to spring 1970 in his book Bowie: The Pitt Report. Many of those letters are in the archive, and again while it’s interesting to see the (usually typewritten) correspondence in person, much of the essence has been reported in that 1985 book and elsewhere. (That book is recommended to anyone interested in Bowie’s early career.)

Likewise some of the most interesting documents relating to Bowie’s early career failures have been reported or reprinted elsewhere, such as his failure to pass an audition with BBC radio in late 1965, with detailed comments from seven judges. There’s also a 1968 letter from the Beatles’ Apple organization, then just getting off the ground, politely passing on working with Bowie, and again that’s one of the more reproduced and commented upon items in the whole archive.

This post will discuss material from 1968 that hasn’t been reprinted or reported upon in many or any sources, to my knowledge. There have been many books on Bowie, and lots written about him in magazines and online, so quite possibly what I’m writing about here has indeed surfaced elsewhere. If so and any readers want to fill in some blanks, such comments are welcome. Even if coverage of these documents has appeared elsewhere, I hope at least this might be of interest to readers who haven’t encountered it.

1. Going in chronological order, we start with a letter from “Calvin,” almost certainly Calvin Lee, to Bowie on April 22, 1968:

“A friend of mine—Lou Reizner (card enclosed) is recording Warren Beatty and mentioned that he needed some story songs. Anyway I got him to buy your LP and he likes some of the material and would like you to contact him.”

This is odd, and even in some ways weird, on several levels. A rather enigmatic figure, Lee by the late 1960s had hazily documented involvement in the British music scene, particularly by the end of the decade with Mercury Records, for whom Reizner was the European Director (according to his business card, also in the archive). Lee and Bowie had met in June 1967, and this indicates that Lee was championing Bowie a good year or so before Mercury did sign the singer.

It’s notable that the letter is written on Apple Corps Ltd. stationery. Although the Apple label wouldn’t start releasing discs for about four months, it was already active as a music publisher, as well as in some other fields. I don’t recall coming across indications that Lee was involved with Apple, though maybe it’s possible he just knew someone there or filched some letterhead.

According to Kevin Cann’s detailed David Bowie: Any Day Now: The London Years: 1947-1974, Ken Pitt visited Apple Music’s Terry Doran the very next day, April 23, trying to get a new record deal for his client. The termination of Bowie’s association with Deram Records, which had issued the 1967 debut LP Lee referred to in his letter, had been confirmed just the day before. Could Lee have played a part in alerting Pitt and Bowie to possibilities at Apple?

Mercury would indeed sign Bowie – but not until June 20, 1969, more than a year later. Could Lee, again, have alerted Lou Reizner to Bowie’s potential by April 1968 at the latest?

Not to ignore the elephant in the room, could Warren Beatty have played a role, if very slight, in bringing Bowie to Mercury’s attention? And what would Bowie have been doing even considering writing material for the actor, who was very hot in spring 1968, when Bonnie and Clyde had elevated the already well known Beatty to superstardom? And what was Beatty doing recording an album anyway?

One guesses this would have fallen under the dubious “Golden Throats” category of records made by celebrities—especially, but not limited to, actors—known more for their work on screen, or on the playing field or another endeavor, than their vocal abilities. Some such actors of the era had passable if unremarkable such skills, like Peter Fonda, whose 1967 single “November Night” was written by a then barely known Gram Parsons, and Goldie Hawn, whose 1972 LP had covers of songs by celebrated writers like Donovan, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Dolly Parton, and didn’t usually stick to their more famous compositions (and who’d co-star with Beatty in the 1975 hit movie Shampoo). Other golden throats objectively couldn’t sing, most notoriously William Shatner, though his Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy wasn’t great shakes either.

Bowie’s first album—which did come out in the US as well as the UK, though it made barely any impact in either country—was indeed full of “story songs,” a la “Maid of Bond Street,” “Little Bombardier,” and “She’s Got Medals.” What would Beatty have sounded like had he chosen one or some of these to sing, or some other songs Bowie put on non-LP singles or studio outtakes at the time, like “The Laughing Gnome”? We don’t know, because no records by Beatty were actually released. Maybe there was a good reason for that, whether or not sessions were actually conducted. (One of the LP’s songs, “Silly Boy Blue,” was placed with a prominent real vocalist, Billy Fury, though the British singer never had success in the US, and he was in steep commercial decline by the time he covered “Silly Boy Blue” in 1968.)

Would Bowie have felt insulted by stooping to writing story songs for Beatty? Maybe not. He’d just lost his recording contract, had no track record of significant commercial success, and wasn’t even playing live much. All the way through to his true ascent to sustained stardom in 1972 with Ziggy Stardust, he was trying to place material with other artists, not all of them as credible as Mott the Hoople, who had a hit with “All the Young Dudes.” “Oh You Pretty Thing” was a 1971 British hit for Peter “Herman” Noone, lead singer of Herman’s Hermits.

2. 1968 was the least productive year of Bowie’s early career, at least as far as record releases go. There were none, and as he was performing and studying mime, as well as taking minor acting roles, he might have been weighing concentrating on a different field than music altogether. But there were still recording sessions, demo sessions, radio sessions, and some live performing, Bowie leading a couple groups. On October 20, Turquoise, also including guitarist Tony Hill and singer-guitarist (and, at the time, Bowie’s girlfriend) Hermione Farthingale, played a live show at The Country Club in London. On October 24, they recorded a couple Tony Visconti-produced songs at Trident Studios.

The Turquoise name was possibly at least partially inspired by a production in which Bowie was a performer, Pierrot in Turquoise, in late 1967 and early 1968. This was presented by mime artist Lindsay Kemp’s Theatre Group, and the production’s designer, Natasha Korniloff, had a brief relationship with Bowie. She’d go on to do costume design on several Bowie tours and projects after he became a star, perhaps most notably for how he appears on the cover of the 1980 album Scary Monsters, though her name’s spelled as “Natasha Kornilof” on the program for their performances at London’s International Theatre Club on January 3, 4, and 5 of 1968.

But by November 17, Bowie was leading the group Feathers at The Country Club, singer-guitarist John Hutchinson replacing Hill. A possible, and maybe probable, reason for the name change is in an October 29 letter from Pitt to Bowie: “You will recall my advising you of the unsuitability of the name Turquoise for your trio presentation because another group were already using it. More recently I asked you what you were now going to call the trio and you reaffirmed your intention to use the name Turquoise and appeared to doubt that others were using the name. I therefore send you herewith a copy of Decca’s current advertisement which announces the release this Friday of a disc by a group called Turquoise.”

What of the “other” Turquoise who might have slightly affected Bowie’s career? They didn’t become as big as Bowie, of course, but they weren’t as obscure as might be assumed. They put out two rare singles, albeit on a major label, Decca (whose Deram subsidiary had put out Bowie’s 1966-67 material on an LP and non-album singles). According to The Tapestry of Delights, a huge discography of British rock from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s, they were from the same London neighborhood as most of the Kinks, Muswell Hill, and “closely linked to Ray Davies—hence the strong Kinks influence in some of their songs. Keith Moon and John Entwistle took a keen interest in them and they were produced and managed by Tom Keylock, the Rolling Stones’ tour manager.”

All four of Turquoise’s songs have made their way onto compilations of British psychedelic rarities. They’re fair but unremarkable psychedelic-tinged pop, sometimes indeed with a late-‘60s Kinks feel without the distinguishing quality of Ray (and for that matter Dave) Davies’ songs of the time. Their first single actually came out in March 1968, predating Pitt’s letter of warning by quite a bit. It’s hard to believe Bowie could have kept getting away with using the name Turquoise and/or pretending they didn’t exist. What’s more, there was an even more obscure US act named Turquoise that put out a couple singles in 1967.

Turquoise’s second single, “Woodstock,” is an entirely different song than the famous Joni Mitchell composition of the same name that was a hit for both Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Matthews Southern Comfort. The Woodstock festival that inspired Mitchell’s song, of course, hadn’t even happened when Turquoise’s “Woodstock” came out in late 1968. More incidental notes: Like Bowie, Turquoise had a connection to Apple, though a stronger one, as Turquoise were actually signed to Apple’s publishing arm. A couple songs they recorded at Decca that were unreleased at the time show up on the compilation Good As Gold: Artefacts of the Apple Era 1967-1975.

3. As a side note to the Turqoise-named Bowie projects, in the program for the Pierrot in Turquoise performances at London’s International Theatre Club on January 3-5 of 1968, it’s stated that Bowie’s “songs have been sung by Anthony Newley, Peter, Paul and Mary, and match-sellers looking for leaves in the street.” Maybe Newley—the single biggest influence on Bowie on his recordings for Deram in late 1966 and 1967—sang David’s songs in concert. But he hadn’t recorded any, and was such a bigger name at the time that it seems unlikely he did. It’s not certain he even knew who Bowie was yet, though he certainly would by the time David became a star, as some other correspondence in the archive demonstrates (which might be referenced in a future blogpost).

As for Peter, Paul and Mary covering Bowie songs, they didn’t do any on their records. It seems even less likely these big US folk stars would have heard of Bowie by early 1968. It doesn’t seem impossible that Pitt or someone had tried to pitch Bowie songs to Peter, Paul and Mary, though that would have been aiming pretty high, as at that point his songs had only been covered by artists who were even less known than Bowie was at the time. 

The concluding phrase about his songs being done by “match-sellers looking for leaves in the street” indicates that these claims could have been irreverently facetious, in any case.

4. Turquoise—Bowie’s group Turquoise, that is—were very short-lived, seldom performed, and are generally hazily documented. A press release-type sheet in the archive fills in some details, though some might be more wishful thinking than reality. It probably dates from late summer 1968, shortly after they formed, and doesn’t post-date August, since it indicates they’d be playing a “debut” at the Roundhouse, one of London’s top venues, in late August. They would play, with several other acts, a benefit at the Roundhouse on September 14.

Subsequent to this perhaps slightly postponed debut, performances at Middle Earth, one of London’s top psychedelic venues; “Arts Lab”; and the Country Club Hampstead are listed. The act are described as “a mixed-media group. Folk-song, mime, poetry, blues, jazz.” A November single release on the Regal Zonophone label pairing Bowie’s composition “Ching-A-Ling” with Tony Hill’s “Folly Fayre” is listed under the “present position” section.

That single didn’t appear, and it doesn’t seem Bowie or Turquoise ever had a deal with the Regal Zonophone label, a division of EMI Records. Regal Zonophone would have been a logical possible home for a more-or-less hippie rock act like Turquoise, as it had success in the late 1960s with the Move, Procol Harum, and Joe Cocker. At a guess, it was hoped they could release discs on Regal Zonophone since “Ching-A-Ling” was produced by Tony Visconti. Visconti had already produced the first two Tyrannosaurus Rex albums (featuring Marc Bolan) for Regal Zonophone, the first having already reached the UK Top Twenty. Maybe Bowie and Visconti hoped Tony’s connection to Regal Zonophone could lead to a deal with the label.

“Folly Fayre” might be a Tony Hill composition that was recorded under the title “Back to Where You’ve Never Been” at Turquoise’s sole recording session, produced by Visconti, on October 24 (where a version of “Ching-A-Ling” was also cut). But no Turquoise version of a song titled “Folly Fayre” or “Back to Where You’ve Never Been” has surfaced. When John Hutchinson replaced Hill and the trio name changed to Feathers, the backing vocals for “Ching-A-Ling” were re-recorded on November 27, and the revised track used in the 1969 Bowie half-hour promo film Love Me Till Tuesday. That version ultimately found release quite a few years later on the Love Me Till Tuesday soundtrack album.

Going back to the “Present Position” part of the press release, some perhaps more optimistic, even outlandish, future activities are listed. There’s a “30 min. television show commissioned by German/Austrian TV “No Smoking Allowed in the Exhibition Hall” also to be shown on the BBC,” though this would not be filmed. On his own, Bowie did film appearances on German TV for the Music for Young People program on September 20 and Music for Everyone on November 11, though these seem to be different productions from “No Smoking Allowed in the Exhibition Hall.”

Even more improbably, there’d be a “college and university tour of U.S.A. in March 69,” and an LP titled simply Turquoise in February 1969. And also a “Roundhouse” film for BBC2 television. Maybe Bowie and/or Pitt were pitching these ideas, but it seems unlikely any got far into actual development.

The brief sketch of Tony Hill, then 24, describes him as a “highly rated blues/folk guitarist. Founder member of one of Britain’s first underground groups the Misunderstood. Much poetry, many songs. Own record to be released soon on Apple.” This is one of the most intriguing notes, and quite possibly claims, of the release. Hill was indeed a key member of one of the greatest overlooked early psychedelic rock groups, the Misunderstood, who had moved to Britain from southern California before Hill joined. Falling rather in the area between the psychedelic Yardbirds and early Pink Floyd, they tragically broke up after just one single when the lead singer was drafted, though the 45 and other tracks they recorded in late 1966 (since reissued on Misunderstood compilations) testify to the band’s brilliance.

Did Hill actually record his own record for Apple? One thread of possibility is that the group Hill joined after leaving Turquoise, High Tide, did sign to Apple Publishing in early 1969. Maybe Hill was already in contact with Apple, or at least hoped to be signed by Apple as a writer and/or recording artist, by the time of this press release. A Tony Hill solo album from 1968 would certainly be interesting to hear, or at least of interest to Misunderstood fans. But if he did any recording for Apple (or at all on his own), it hasn’t surfaced, though High Tide would indeed put out LPs (though not for the Apple record label).

“Turquoise are fast becoming a much sought-after group on entertainment value alone,” boasts the final sentence, though this again seems highly unlikely for an act that had just formed. “Their angelic appearance belies the prolific and hard-hitting quality of their material.” This sort of hype was hardly rare in the music business then and isn’t now, but it was hype nonetheless, as nice as it might be to hear an LP documenting Turquoise’s brief existence.

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There are of course more rare items from note that I saw in the archive, even from 1968 itself, if we count set lists, which I’ve not covered in this post as I might discuss a few from several different years in a subsequent one. And I’ll discuss other material from the archive in other posts later this year.