David Bowie’s lost 2001 album Toy, which mixed new songs and new versions of lesser-known songs from 1964-71, is receiving an official release as part of the latest raft of posthumous reissues.
The album’s co-producer Mark Plati called Toy “a moment in time captured in an amber of joy, fire and energy. It’s the sound of people happy to be playing music.
“David revisited and re-examined his work from decades prior through prisms of experience and fresh perspective – a parallel not lost on me as I now revisit it 20 years later. From time to time, he used to say, ‘Mark, this is our album’ – I think because he knew I was so deeply in the trenches with him on that journey. I’m happy to finally be able to say it now belongs to all of us.”
Recorded in Manhattan in 2000, Toy revisited songs including his debut single as Davie Jones With the King Bees, Liza Jane; his third single, You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving; and Silly Boy Blue from the eponymous 1967 David Bowie album.
Bowie’s idea for his 23rd album took root in 1999, when he performed Can’t Help Thinking About Me for the first time in 30 years for an episode of VH1 Storytellers.
Together with his band – Plati, Sterling Campbell, Gail Ann Dorsey, Earl Slick, Mike Garson, Holly Palmer, Emm Gryner, Lisa Germano, Gerry Leonard and Cuong Vu – the idea was to record “old school” with the musicians playing live, to make the most of the “show-honed” group Bowie had assembled for his 2000 Glastonbury headline set.
“I still get really elated by the spontaneous event and cannot wait to sit in a claustrophobic space with seven other energetic people and sing till my tits drop off,” Bowie wrote in a tour diary for Time Out in 2000.
They planned to “keep it loose, fast, and not clean things up too much or dwell on perfection”, Plati wrote on his blog, then to choose the best takes and release the album by surprise – an unfamiliar concept at the time.
It marked the rekindling of Bowie’s relationship with longtime producer Tony Visconti – albeit as strings arranger – which had lain fairly dormant since Bowie asked Nile Rodgers to produce his 1983 album Let’s Dance.
“The songs are so alive and full of colour, they jump out of the speakers,” Bowie told BowieNet in 2001. “It’s really hard to believe that they were written so long ago.”
But release was delayed and ultimately stymied, Bowie told fans in a webchat later that year, owing to scheduling conflicts and “major problems” at EMI/Virgin, “which has put an awful lot on the back burner”.
In the meantime, Bowie started work on an “experimental” new album. Visconti later said Bowie was “hurt terribly” by the label’s refusal to release Toy, which led to his departure from the label. Heathen was released in 2002 via Bowie’s own imprint ISO on Columbia Records.
The re-recordings of Uncle Floyd and Afraid appeared on Heathen; other songs from the Toy sessions were released as B-sides to that album’s singles, and included on a deluxe edition of the 2014 compilation album Nothing Has Changed.
A version of the album leaked in 2011 after an Australian man sold a copy of the album on eBay, which was then uploaded to filesharing sites.
The album will finally receive its official release on 26 November as part of a new box set, David Bowie 5: Brilliant Adventure (1992–2001), alongside new remasters of Black Tie White Noise, The Buddha of Suburbia, Outside, Earthling, Hours, the live album BBC Radio Theatre, London, June 27 2000 and rarities compilation Re:Call 5.
An expanded edition, Toy:Box, will be released on 7 January 2022. It closes with a new song constructed from a jam at the end of a live take of I Dig Everything. The package includes previously unseen photographs by Frank Ockenfels III, alternative mixes and proposed B-sides, and “Unplugged and Somewhat Slightly Electric” remixes of 13 Toy songs.
Bowie’s estate recently agreed a new licensing agreement with Warner Music Group to oversee his full back catalogue. The label previously held worldwide rights to Bowie’s music released between 1968 and 1999; it now controls the rights to Bowie’s catalogue up to his death in 2016. The albums covered by the new deal, Heathen, The Next Day and Blackstar, were originally released via Sony Music.
“It’s an incredible honour to have been chosen as the stewards of one of the most important and dynamic bodies of creative work in modern culture,” Max Lousada, Warner Music Group CEO of recorded music, said in a statement.
Lousada said the “expanded partnership” would help them deliver “innovative, career-spanning projects and attract new generations to his extraordinary musical universe”.