Tin Machine II (1991)

The Bowie Project #21 - Tin Machine II (1991)

Tin Machine was a band formed by David Bowie in 1988 at a point when he felt he was at a creative low and wanted to revitalise himself artistically. In 1989, they released their first album to mixed reviews but many critics have since stated the band were exploring a grunge influenced sound before that style had reached a mainstream audience. In 1990, the went on a hiatus while Bowie went on his Sound+Vision world tour which he said he was contractually obliged by his record label EMI to do. This was a greatest hits tour featuring almost all of his biggest songs and he said that once it was over he would retire those tracks and focus on performing new music, hoping to shed his past and no longer have to rely on his biggest successes.

Many of the songs performed on the tour were decided by a telephone poll and mail-in ballot where fans would call the number 1-900-2-BOWIE-90 to request songs. Money earned from these calls were donated to Save the Children as well as a Brixton charity. NME magazine ran a spoof campaign at the time called Just Say Gnome in an attempt to drive up votes for one of Bowie’s first singles from the 1960s, a novelty song called “The Laughing Gnome”, when Bowie had seen that the song was getting lots of votes he was actually considering playing it in the style of the Velvet Underground but after learning it was perpetrated by a music magazine he felt no obligation and did not play the track. In the end Bowie did not retire all the songs from the tour but he would never play “Young Americans” or “Rock n’ Roll Suicide” ever again, and only played “Space Oddity” on a single tour after this. Later tours would focus on lesser-known songs and would primarily focus on music made after 1990.

After the tour Bowie announced his split from his record label EMI, they were not happy with his output recently and were especially unhappy with Tin Machine, they wanted him to make commercially viable solo music to the equivalent of his mega hit album Let’s Dance from 1983. Instead, he signed with Victory Music, the first ever US label launched by a Japanese company the electronics giant JVC, and sought to finish recording the second studio album by Tin Machine which had already been partially recorded before his solo tour.

The result was Tin Machine II, an album that guitarist Reeves Gabrels described “as just as aggressive” as their previous album but more melodic stating: “Last time, we were screaming at the world. This time, I think, they're all love songs in a strange kind of way.” This album might be a little bit more accessible than the predecessor but by this point the novelty of David Bowie being in a band had kind of worn off and not that many people were really paying attention to them. This album was probably even more of a true collaboration than their last one and everyone is given time to shine, Bowie even takes a backseat and drummer Hunt Sales takes up lead vocal duties on two of the album’s thirteen tracks.

As a result of this album being released on a separate record label to most of the rest of Bowie’s work it can be quite hard to track down, it was out of print for a long time and it only received a CD reissue for the first time in 2020, despite this it remains unavailable on most music streaming platforms due to issues surrounding the rights.

The album opens strong with “Baby Universal” and you can tell it’s not going to be quite as heavy as the last record. This song was written originally during the early sessions for the first Tin Machine album, but Bowie set it aside because he considered it too catchy for what they were initially trying to do with the band. It’s a great album opener and upon hearing for the first time I started to think maybe people have been wrong about this record. This is an album that in discussions surrounding David Bowie people say you can skip, don’t even bother, not worth your time, but hearing a catchy, groovy, interesting song like this right from the get-go tells me that I might just hold back my judgement for a little bit longer. The song was released as a single and the band performed it on Top of the Pops, the song was later re-recorded in 1997 as part of the sessions for the Bowie solo album Earthling although it never made the cut and was eventually released on the 2020 EP Is it Any Wonder?

The bands record label wanted this album to have at least one big single they could promote, and they decided it would the second track “One Shot” and brought in big shot producer Hugh Padgham, who previously produced Bowie's 1984 album Tonight, the song was not a success although it did manage to reach number three in US Billboard Alternative songs chart. Despite all the extra effort put into the song by recruiting a new “notable” producer Reeve Gabrels said that the final version of the song ended up being a note-for-note remake of their original recording with a slightly better guitar solo.

“You Belong in Rock n Roll” was the first single released from the album and features Reeves Gabrels using a vibrator he got a local sex store to play his guitar solo. It features a laid-back vocal delivery from Bowie as well a saxophone solo demonstrating just how different the sound of this record is to the balls to wall hard rock aesthetic of their previous effort. It didn’t have much of an impact as a single but still remains Tin Machines most successful release reaching number 33 in the UK, 42 in France, and 51 in the Netherlands which tells you all you need to know about how much people were caring for the band. Not a bad song but just totally uninspired.

Next up we’ve got a Roxy Music cover with the song “If There Is Something” originally from their 1972 debut album, a band that featured future Bowie Berlin Trilogy collaborator Brian Eno. I think everything about this cover works really well, it’s a unique take on a track that originally started as a country rock parody, and here Bowie and the rest of the band are just having fun with it, I think this song brings together everything that’s really enjoyable Tin Machine, hits all the right notes for me, love the guitar work.

“Amlapura” is a large town in the East of Bali that Bowie visited the year before and its beauty really stuck with him. The song mixes colonial imagery with the volcanic eruption from 1963 which nearly destroyed the town speaking of the dead children buried under lava. Bowie also re-recorded a version of this with the vocals in Indonesian. It’s a slow-moving track and a moment of dreamy respite from an album filled with harder sounds.

A song I like just for a slightly catchy chorus is “Betty Wrong” not catchy in a way that gets you singing along or stuck in your head all day but it’s got a certain level of harmony that just takes you with it a bit. The track was reworked on the subsequent tour to include extended saxophone solos by Bowie, and anything that gets more saxophone from Bowie is always a good thing in my book, truly his most under-appreciated talent.

“You Can’t Talk” could be considered a companion piece to their previous song “I Can’t Read”. Like “African Flight Night” from Lodger this track gets us just within arms reach of David Bowie rapping. This is a fast song that gives glimpses into something interesting, but I think it falls down in its attempts. A shame as there’s something here but they don’t quite manage to grab it.

“Stateside” is the first track which does not feature Bowie on lead vocals and instead they are provided by drummer Hunt Sales. The longest track on the record really does not earn its length. An uninspired blues rocker about the good ole US of A. Apparently on the Tin Machine tour for this album Bowie would use it as a chance to sneak off for a cigarette, maybe that’s why it’s so long?

“Shopping for Girls” is a bleak track inspired by the child sex trade in Thailand and has it’s origins in the reporter, and former Bowie press agent, Sara Terry’s expose titled Children of Darkness which profiled children such as Kham Suk, a thirteen year old “small child with a delicate face” whose own mother sold her to brothel at a rate of four dollars per client. The band found it difficult to write a rock song about a subject so sinister and wanted not to be too sensational or didactic but Bowie stating “The moment I got finger wagging about it, or moralistic, the whole thing just went to pieces and became embarrassing”. Bowie was inspired by Lou Reed's recent album New Year where the narrator of the songs stayed amoral and allowed the details to do the work as opposed to blatant moralising. I think it mostly works, and for it’s a highpoint of the record.

Here we watch Bowie wear his contemporary influences on his sleeve with “A Big Hurt” which was his attempt to write a Pixies song. A bombastic cock rocker you could take it as a spoof track on toxic masculinity. As the only song on the record solely written by Bowie he’s got nobody to blame but himself, with lines like “come on here woo-woo, kiss it for me” it’s not his finished achievement as a lyricist. 

The second and last song sung by drummer Hunt Sales is “Sorry” and it acts as an apology about the hurt caused by a drug abuser. Sales addiction issues were reportedly a key factor in the demise of the band the following year although Bowie never fully explained the reason but stated, “personal problems within the band became the reason for its demise. It’s not for me to talk about them, but it became physically impossible for us to carry on. And that was pretty sad really.” The confessional nature of this song implies that Sales was well-aware of the negative effects of whatever issues were plaguing him. Bowie collaborator Carlos Alomar said that Sales addiction issues had a really negative effect on Bowie who had already overcome his own addiction issues. He said: “It’s a terrible blow when you find that one of the band members is lying to you and, more importantly, lying to himself. David was depressed because of his inability to deal with that drug problem. You know, if you get ready to do a show and one of the members is totally out of it, it’s gonna affect you considerably.”

The album ends with “Goodbye Mr. Ed” which is one of its finest moments. It contrasts the fate of the Weckquaesgeek, the pre-colonial Native American occupants of southernmost Manhattan, with New York’s modern-day shopping malls and skyscrapers. “The ghost of Manhattan” cries as they fall from AT&T, victims of rampant commercialism and modern day ‘progress’. Bowie said of the song in 1991: “It is very much juxtaposing lines which really shouldn’t fit, free-association around the idea of ‘bye-bye, ’50s America.’ New York once belonged to the Manahattos – a tribe that used to have that bit of land before it became Manhattan. That was the first real, solid image I had… I thought, ‘That’s what this song’s about.” The track’s analyses of what once was and how things are destroyed and changed makes it a fitting conclusion the end point of a band like Tin Machine, a group that wanted to experiment and never put on any falsehoods about what they were trying to do. It’s not always perfect but at times it is poignant. 

Then just when you’ve expected it all to be over we get a short instrumental track “Hammerhead” that gives us the real final farewell to the band in a more typical fashion, a fast paced rock n roll thrash piece. There’s not too much to analyse but you know what? They never wanted you to analyse any of it.

When Tin Machine II was released, it mostly fell on deaf ears, people were not interested, and it has remained mostly out of print for the last 30-plus years. Contemporary reviews were mixed and reappraisals tend to view it as pretty mediocre with some shining moments. Bowie biographer Nicolas Pegg described the Hunt Sales sung tracks as “most frighteningly bad songs ever to find their way into the Bowie canon” and it’s true they feel like they should not be on this Bowie project, like they’re part of something else. 

After the release of this album the band would tour it and in 1992 their final release was the live record Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby. Bowie was ready to go back to being a solo artist and said that he felt like he knew what he wanted to do next, that he had gotten his sense of creativity back, and he would continue to work with guitarist Reeves Gabrels throughout the entire 1990s. Some people might dismiss Tin Machine as an inessential and skippable portion of Bowie's career and while it's true that the band is rarely spoken about and left out of the conversation amongst casual Bowie fans, those who are really into him will recognise what an important project this was for him and that there’s plenty of great music over their two studios albums to get into, assuming you are also willing to put up with some not so great music.

Tin Machine II ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ [5/10]