David Bowie invited confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, Bowie renamed himself after the 19th-century American pioneer James Bowie and the knife he had popularised. His April 1967 solo single, "The Laughing Gnome", using speeded-up thus high-pitched vocals, failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut, "David Bowie", an amalgam of pop, psychedelia, and music hall, met the same fate. It was his last release for two years. Bowie met dancer Lindsay Kemp in 1967 and enrolled in his dance class at the London Dance Centre. He commented in 1972 that meeting Kemp was when his interest in image
David Bowie (1967 album) David Bowie (1967 album) David Bowie is the self-titled debut studio album by English musician David Bowie, released on 1 June 1967, on Deram Records. Its content bears little overt resemblance to the type of music that later made him famous, such as the folk rock of "Space Oddity" or the glam rock of "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars". "NME" critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have said, "a listener strictly accustomed to David Bowie in his assorted '70s guises would probably find this debut album either shocking or else simply quaint",