The Lower Third

The Lower Third were the third of the groups with whom David Bowie recorded. Formed in 1963 in Margate, they moved to London in early 1965, and shortly afterward, Bowie (then still going by his real name, David Jones) won an audition to be the band's singer. In the 1960s Bowie unabashedly sponged off the day's trends to dictate the evolution of his own music. Although the two previous groups he had recorded a single apiece with, Davie Jones & the King Bees and the Manish Boys, had been into R&B, the Lower Third would get into mod rock, in the style of the Who and the Kinks. That would be made easier by the presence of producer Shel Talmy, who produced the Who and the Kinks, behind the board on the band's first single. (Talmy had already produced Bowie on the Manish Boys' sole 45.) Although the Lower Third played on the mid-1965 single "You've Got a Habit of Leaving"/"Baby Loves That Way," it was actually billed to Davy Jones, with no mention of the Lower Third. "You've Got a Habit of Leaving," released in August 1965, was so reminiscent of the Who, and its guitar solo so close to the autodestructive style of Pete Townshend, that one suspects Bowie wrote this right after hearing the Who's then-current single, "Anyway Anyhow Anywhere." The B-side, "Baby Loves That Way," was more ordinary, and did have a trace of the feyness that would become a more audible part of the Bowie persona as the years rolled by. The single was derivative, and Pete Townshend even told Bowie at show where the Lower Third supported the Who that a song the Lower Third were rehearsing sounded like one of Townshend's. But the single at least gave Bowie a chance to get his own songs recorded. The Lower Third made one more single with Bowie, "Can't Help Thinking About Me"/"And I Say to Myself," for...