Post by staggerstag on Jul 18, 2018 3:57:30 GMT
Still, to this day, dismissed, disliked, positively reviled in some quarters, by professional critics and music/Bowie fans alike. I still have the two studio albums on cassette, both of which I bought shortly after their day of release but which I now have nothing to play them on, but thanks to YT I can still enjoy them. There are fortunately some admirers of Tin Machine, albeit few and far between, but the general consensus is that the band's output is one for the Dead Letter Box.
But who can forget the goose-bumping opening chords of 'Prisoner of Love' from the first album? The song, with Reeves Gabriels' and David Bowie's guitar strokes prominent throughout, evolves as it progresses, the vocals growing in momentum and anger (the lyrics reportedly warning a female friend of Bowie's of the perils of drugs, or that which drug addicts come to call 'love', hence the title, I guess) Bowie is not hiding his own past when he sings "I'm a prisoner of love - but I'm coming up for air." - a probable reference to the killing off of the madly excessive cocaine-fuelled Thin White Duke/Station To Station era and Bowie's relocation to the relative sanity of Berlin for the recording of Low, "Heroes" and Lodger :
Prisoner of Love by Tin Machine
From the first strains of the opening track 'Heaven's In Here', with its conflicting but viable mash-up of guitar distortion, freaked out bass by Tony Sales, and Hawaiian-style lead guitar compliments, this is not a track for the Ziggy Stardust contingent but rather a rocking mix-up that just oozes all the signs that David Bowie was really, actually, enjoying himself in the studio in 88/89 :
Heaven's In Here by Tin Machine
There's more. The manic drumfire AK47 target practise of the title track and band name 'Tin Machine', the angry 'Crack City', very similar in feel, I have to say, to Lou Reed's 'Strawman' on the New York album. There's a nod to John Lennon as well. Who the f*** would attempt a cover of 'Working Class Hero' and come out of it in one piece to sing again? (the accusations of hypocrisy levelled at this song is understandable; how can a wealthy rock star in his luxury dwelling sing about working class heroes who eat sh*t sandwiches for dinner and cut coupons at Christmas, how can he possibly not be a hypocrite? It's a song, like the later 'Imagine' maybe, that is not completely autobiographical but more wishful, yearnful than the author cares to reveal. But for the overseas political knee-jerk hysteria and censorship that the song brought Lennon it must be said it has stood the test of time and is in no small way still applicable today, nearly fifty years on) Anyway, here is Bowie, seven years after the end of Tin Machine, performing a version of the first album's track 'I Can't Read' :
I Can't Read by David Bowie
Tin Machine II, the second and final studio album, has also long been consigned to the DLB by many. It opens with the lively rocker 'Baby Universal' and the track competes with very nearly anything the first album could throw at it. Again, a rough diamond in the jewellers' shop front of Bowie's catalogue :
Baby Universal by Tin Machine
Admittedly II comes in as runner-up to its predecessor but was a welcome fix as a follow-up album. There is anger, reflective slower numbers, seemingly chaotic white noise with the drummer's sticks getting tangled up to hell with the guitarists' amp leads, but it all comes together to make sense, nowhere more evident than on track three, the sublime 'You Belong In Rock n' Roll', with David's deep vocals really coming to a chilling fore :
You Belong In Rock n' Roll by Tin Machine
As the album nears its end it perhaps becomes evident that the time is up for Tin Machine. With a shortage of melody, but nevertheless lyrically abundant, the songs still show Bowie enjoying himself with this offshoot band. A bit like Nick Cave with Grinderman - another offshoot with just two studio albums to their credit - but, brother, what albums they were, like these two!
After Tin Machine's demise, Bowie's next album was the solo Black Tie, White Noise, featuring the spectacular 'Jump, They Say' which saw him return to devastating form following pre-Tin Machine album Never Let Me Down.
Jump, They Say by David Bowie
Never be anyone again like this man.
But who can forget the goose-bumping opening chords of 'Prisoner of Love' from the first album? The song, with Reeves Gabriels' and David Bowie's guitar strokes prominent throughout, evolves as it progresses, the vocals growing in momentum and anger (the lyrics reportedly warning a female friend of Bowie's of the perils of drugs, or that which drug addicts come to call 'love', hence the title, I guess) Bowie is not hiding his own past when he sings "I'm a prisoner of love - but I'm coming up for air." - a probable reference to the killing off of the madly excessive cocaine-fuelled Thin White Duke/Station To Station era and Bowie's relocation to the relative sanity of Berlin for the recording of Low, "Heroes" and Lodger :
Prisoner of Love by Tin Machine
From the first strains of the opening track 'Heaven's In Here', with its conflicting but viable mash-up of guitar distortion, freaked out bass by Tony Sales, and Hawaiian-style lead guitar compliments, this is not a track for the Ziggy Stardust contingent but rather a rocking mix-up that just oozes all the signs that David Bowie was really, actually, enjoying himself in the studio in 88/89 :
Heaven's In Here by Tin Machine
There's more. The manic drumfire AK47 target practise of the title track and band name 'Tin Machine', the angry 'Crack City', very similar in feel, I have to say, to Lou Reed's 'Strawman' on the New York album. There's a nod to John Lennon as well. Who the f*** would attempt a cover of 'Working Class Hero' and come out of it in one piece to sing again? (the accusations of hypocrisy levelled at this song is understandable; how can a wealthy rock star in his luxury dwelling sing about working class heroes who eat sh*t sandwiches for dinner and cut coupons at Christmas, how can he possibly not be a hypocrite? It's a song, like the later 'Imagine' maybe, that is not completely autobiographical but more wishful, yearnful than the author cares to reveal. But for the overseas political knee-jerk hysteria and censorship that the song brought Lennon it must be said it has stood the test of time and is in no small way still applicable today, nearly fifty years on) Anyway, here is Bowie, seven years after the end of Tin Machine, performing a version of the first album's track 'I Can't Read' :
I Can't Read by David Bowie
Tin Machine II, the second and final studio album, has also long been consigned to the DLB by many. It opens with the lively rocker 'Baby Universal' and the track competes with very nearly anything the first album could throw at it. Again, a rough diamond in the jewellers' shop front of Bowie's catalogue :
Baby Universal by Tin Machine
Admittedly II comes in as runner-up to its predecessor but was a welcome fix as a follow-up album. There is anger, reflective slower numbers, seemingly chaotic white noise with the drummer's sticks getting tangled up to hell with the guitarists' amp leads, but it all comes together to make sense, nowhere more evident than on track three, the sublime 'You Belong In Rock n' Roll', with David's deep vocals really coming to a chilling fore :
You Belong In Rock n' Roll by Tin Machine
As the album nears its end it perhaps becomes evident that the time is up for Tin Machine. With a shortage of melody, but nevertheless lyrically abundant, the songs still show Bowie enjoying himself with this offshoot band. A bit like Nick Cave with Grinderman - another offshoot with just two studio albums to their credit - but, brother, what albums they were, like these two!
After Tin Machine's demise, Bowie's next album was the solo Black Tie, White Noise, featuring the spectacular 'Jump, They Say' which saw him return to devastating form following pre-Tin Machine album Never Let Me Down.
Jump, They Say by David Bowie
Never be anyone again like this man.