Tin Machine is the debut studio album by the Anglo-American hard rock band Tin Machine, released on 22May 1989 through EMI America Records. The band consisted of the English singer-songwriter David Bowie, the American guitarist Reeves Gabrels and brothers Tony Fox and Hunt Sales on bass and drums, respectively, while Englishman Kevin Armstrong acted as an additional guitarist. The project was spearheaded by Bowie, who felt disconnected in his career by 1987 and looked to reinvent himself. After meeting Gabrels through his Glass Spider Tour, the two agreed to work together and would collaborate frequently for the next decade. Bowie hired the Sales brothers, neither of whom he had worked with since the 1970s, after a meeting in Los Angeles, while English producer Tim Palmer was hired to co-produce.
The album was recorded in August 1988 at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, and later at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, in the spring of 1989. The sessions were productive despite personality clashes among the members. The tracks were mostly recorded live in few takes, with Bowie improvising lyrics while standing at the microphone, resulting in a predominantly hard rock sound and lyrics discussing world issues and love. Tin Machine named themselves and the album after one of the tracks. Unlike Bowie's previous backing bands, Tin Machine acted as a democratic unit, which was reflected in promotional interviews.
Upon release, the album peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart, although sales declined quickly. It was accompanied by three singles and a 13-minute long music video containing performances of the tracks. Like its supporting concert tour, Tin Machine received mixed reviews and continues to receive similar assessments from Bowie's biographers, who mainly criticise the lyrics and lack of melodies. Nevertheless, some reviewers noted that the band were exploring grunge and alternative rock styles before those styles became popular. Tin Machine began recording a follow-up album in late 1989 before Bowie embarked on the solo Sound+Vision Tour. Bowie later rerecorded "I Can't Read" during the sessions for his 1997 album Earthling.
Background
By the end of 1987, David Bowie was at an artistic low point. Although he had garnered massive commercial success throughout the 1980s starting with Let's Dance (1983), he later said that the success of the album caused him to hit a creative low point in his career which lasted the next few years. After his follow-up albums Tonight (1984) and Never Let Me Down (1987) were critically dismissed, Bowie began to re-evaluate where he was at in his career; he would later dismiss this period as his "Phil Collins years". The Glass Spider Tour had torn away at him, as he found it hard to maintain the stadium rockstar lifestyle. While he considered retiring from music, Bowie decided to completely rejuvenate himself.
One of the first things he did was part ways with his longtime collaborator Carlos Alomar, who had acted as Bowie's bandleader. The biographer David Buckley calls his departure the end of Bowie's tenure as a "pop star". Towards the end of 1987, Bowie conducted some sessions in Los Angeles, California, with members of Bryan Adams' backing band and producer Bruce Fairbairn. The only tracks that came out of the sessions were a demo of "Pretty Pink Rose", an early version of "Lucy Can't Dance" and a cover of Bob Dylan's 1965 hit "Like a Rolling Stone", the last of which was given to Bowie's former Spiders from Mars guitarist Mick Ronson, whose version appeared on his posthumous album Heaven and Hull (1994). According to the biographer Nicholas Pegg, Bowie's style during the sessions was close to what he would explore for his next big project.
Development
Towards the end of the Glass Spider Tour in November 1987, the tour's American press officer Sarah Gabrels gave Bowie a demo tape containing recordings of her husband Reeves, whom Bowie had unknowingly met and befriended backstage during the American leg; he believed Gabrels was a painter. The demos showcased Gabrels' unique guitar sound, described by the biographer Marc Spitz as "improvisational and multi-note but simultaneously hard and bluesy". He recalled, "It happened really fast. David called me, I went over to Switzerland, and we had this music to do—in a weekend." The beginning of Bowie and Gabrels' collaboration sparked a new journey in Bowie's career. Although there would still be tours and media interviews, he aimed to scale down the expectations of the listening public in terms of his music. Gabrels stated, "He was at a crossroads. Either he became Rod Stewart and played Las Vegas, or he followed his heart." He told Bowie, "The only barrier between you doing what you want and you doing what you think you should do, is you."
One of the first projects Bowie and Gabrels collaborated on was a new version of Bowie's 1979 Lodger track "Look Back in Anger", which was created for a London theatre performance in July 1988. Afterwards, the two returned to Switzerland, where Bowie presented Gabrels with music that he was listening to at the time. These included hard rock acts such as Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Guy, avant-garde acts such as Sonic Youth, and one of Bowie's new favourites, the Pixies. From there, Bowie and Gabrels composed demos for a new project, which included "Bus Stop", "Baby Universal", "Pretty Pink Rose" and an early version of "Under the God".
During a launch party for a Glass Spider Tour video in Los Angeles, Bowie ran into the bassist Tony Fox Sales, whom he hadn't worked with since the recording of Iggy Pop's Lust for Life in 1977. The two reconnected, leading Tony to invite his brother, the drummer Hunt Sales, to a jam session with himself and Bowie. According to Gabrels, the Sales brothers were chosen as the rhythm section so they didn't have "checkbook musicians", specifically wanting former members of a band. Bowie insisted the four form a band, with each member providing equal input. Meanwhile, the positive reaction of the "Look Back in Anger" remix led Bowie to hire the producer Tim Palmer—at the recommendation of the Cult's Billy Duffy—for his next project. Palmer recalled that he was a big fan of Bowie, particularly "the classic albums, but not so much of the later material". He also enjoyed Bowie's working methods, including the encouragement of ideas from all parties involved. Nevertheless, Palmer told Buckley that when he signed on for the project, he assumed it would be "a David Bowie record, not a Tin Machine record". Spitz similarly states that Gabrels and the Sales brothers assumed they would be assisting Bowie in creating a follow-up for Never Let Me Down rather than forming a band.
Recording and production
Recording for the new project began at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, in August 1988. Bowie and Gabrels spent a week there, writing songs such as "Baby Can Dance", "Pretty Thing" and "Shopping for Girls", before the Sales brothers arrived. Palmer recalled that once they arrived, "all hell broke loose". The brothers had abrasive personalities and, according to the biographer Chris O'Leary, "made it clear they wouldn't be sidemen". Gabrels recalled that the first week of their arrival was the equivalent of "freshman hazing": "all they wanted to do was push me because David was placing a certain amount of trust in me, and I had never done a record that had been released internationally. [Their] attitude was like, 'Well, we all know who we are. Who's this guy?'" Gabrels and Palmer expressed doubts about the project initially. Palmer at first intended to make "the greatest-sounding Bowie album ever" and was disappointed at the different direction taken. Gabrels despised being in a band, calling them "nightmares", further believing bands didn't work as democratic units. Gabrels got fed up with the Sales' attitudes after the first week, choosing to do things his way without their input. Bowie similarly recalled a "strange period of feeling each other out" during the first week.
An addition in the sessions was the guitarist Kevin Armstrong, who had played with Bowie at Live Aid in 1985. In the studio, Hunt Sales arranged his drum set on a riser, which overpowered the room, leaving the guitarists unable to hear themselves play. Armstrong recalled, "He is the loudest drummer I have ever worked with ... I almost went deaf within the first couple of days." Meanwhile, Palmer set up various microphones around the studio in order to capture a live sound. The tracks on the album were recorded raw and live with few overdubs to capture the energy of the band. The other Tin Machine members urged Bowie to avoid re-writing his lyrics: "They were there all the time saying, 'Don't wimp out,' sing like you wrote it ... I have done and frequently do censor myself in terms of lyrics. I say one thing and then I think, 'Ah maybe I'll just take the edge off that a bit." He elaborated, "We wanted to come out of the box with energy, the energy we felt when we were writing and playing. There's very, very little over-dubbing on [the album]. For us [it] is our live sound." Bowie was also keen on improvising lyrics while standing at the microphone, which he previously did recording "Heroes" (1977). He primarily sang about the first topics that came to him. Gabrels told Buckley that Tin Machine was recorded digitally, which most people at the time figured could not have been done for the sound they were playing.
The first song Tin Machine recorded was "Heaven's in Here", which they wrote from scratch and recorded in their first 30 hours together. This was followed by a cover of Roxy Music's 1972 song "If There Is Something". Bowie stated: "We were so exhausted that we didn't have it in us to write another song, so we used an old song to show how we as a band would approach someone else's material;" the song would be left off the album and placed on the band's follow-up. Recording progressed quickly, with Tin Machine sometimes recording one song a day. Gabrels elaborated, "We recorded the songs, overdubbed, and sometimes even mixed them in the same day." After a break in recording, the sessions moved in the spring of 1989 to Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, which Palmer recalled as being a completely different environment than Switzerland. There, Bowie resided at Robert Palmer's house on the beach. John Lennon's son Sean visited the band during this time; this encounter inspired them to cover his father's 1970 song "Working Class Hero". Also present in the Bahamas was Bowie's new girlfriend Melissa Hurley, who was one of his backup dancers during the Glass Spider Tour. The band were shocked at the pervasive drug use throughout Nassau, which partly inspired "Crack City". Bowie also claimed his own cocaine-addled past in the mid-1970s served as an inspiration for the track. Tin Machine recorded the track and "I Can't Read" on the same night.