Discarded recordings David Bowie made in 1974 at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia have been found.
The unlabeled tapes were purchased in 2022 at a foreclosure sale by Max Ochester, a rare record collector and preserver of Philly music history. But, he didn't find out until last June what was on them when he brought them to a recording session he had.
"I was going to tape over them,” said Max. “We baked them overnight and then [producer] producer Brendan McGeehan threw them up on the reel-to-reel. I just wanted to check there was nothing on the tapes before I erased them.”
What he heard were some instrumentals followed by Luther Vandross singing “Foot Stompin’” by The Flares and that was followed by “Can You Hear Me” from Bowie’s Young Americans album.
“That’s when I was just like, 'Holy [crap], what do I have?', because I knew it was a Bowie song. And I knew that Luther sang on Young Americans.”
Another tape featured Bowie singing Bruce Springsteen's “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City” over the riff from “Fame.”
Also included on the three tapes is studio chatter between Bowie and his producer Tony Visconti, as well as a rough take of “Fascination.”
Dirk Devlin, one of Sigma's engineers who worked on the Young Americans album, says the reason why the tapes were unmarked and never heard is because of "one of our deceased compatriots. He was a squirrel.
We knew for a fact that he had out-takes and tapes. He would stash them in the mic locker. We didn’t approve of the fact that he was taking people’s intellectual property home with him, but he wasn’t selling any of it. I think he just wanted to have it.”
No word on what Max plans to do with the tapes.