by Paul Trynka
The project was a collaboration with dance troupe La La La Human Steps; Reeves came up with an arrangement for ‘Look Back in Anger’, with an extended, dark, clipped instrumental passage: ‘Because we’d only really talked about art before, when we did start working together all our reference points for sound were painterly or architectural. David was saying stuff like, “We should do something where the guitars are like flying buttresses and cathedrals.”’
The first outward clue that Pepsi-sponsored, pre-planned Bowie had been laid aside in favour of art-house, improvised Bowie came in what was an obscure but, for fans, legendary performance at London’s Dominion Theatre in July 1988. The nine-minute-long performance with the Quebec dance company was part of a benefit for the London ICA arts venue; Bowie learned his dance steps, in which he acted mainly as a foil to the lithe, muscular Louise Lecavalier, in two days. On the night, there was a genuine sense of danger and eroticism that had long been missing from his music, as Lecavalier leapt over him, or cradled him on her knees like a doll, while Gabrels, Armstrong and Erdal Kizilcay produced their twisted, gothic, drawn-out version of the old Lodger song. The show was a convincing reminder of David’s talent for snatching something meaningful out of random strands.
Two weeks later, Gabrels went over to Lausanne for a weekend’s visit. He ended up staying a month. ‘Every day we’d drive down to Mountain Studios in Montreux and just work on stuff. Then go back and have a meal. Then watch Fawlty Towers and go to sleep.’
In those two weeks during July 1988, the pair’s discussion would lay the groundwork for David Bowie’s next decade. The singer was open, intelligent enough to realise his predicament, and honest enough to acknowledge it. He told Gabrels that, in the wake of his huge deal with EMI, he’d felt obliged to deliver hits – ‘and it was kind of killing him’, says Gabrels. Together, they talked and talked, searching for the inspirations that turned David on to music in the first place. In that quest, to find that old sense of excitement, there came the plan for what would become the Tin Machine band project. ‘If there was a plan, it was that David just wanted to make the music that he wanted to make,’ says Gabrels. ‘One cool thing was that we were listening to all the same stuff: Led Zeppelin bootlegs, Cream bootlegs, Hendrix bootlegs, Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, Coltrane, the Pixies, Sonic Youth, Glen Branca, Stravinsky, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and Muddy Waters. Put all that in a blender and you got Tin Machine.’
The pair’s discussions started a matter of days before a chance meeting that summer, when David was launching a video of the Glass Spider tour. Iggy’s ex-bassist Tony Sales saw David, walked up ‘and surprised him. And a few weeks later we were in Switzerland doing Tin Machine.’
Today, Tony Sales cuts the same tall, cadaverously handsome figure that fans of Lust for Life and Tin Machine remember; he is calm and well groomed, with the reasoned air of someone who has gone through hell, and then recovery, which is exactly what happened after the Sales brothers split with Iggy. The way David Bowie had parted from most of his bands seems like a masterclass in sensitivity compared to how Iggy sacked the brothers who had underpinned his best solo album. According to Hunt Sales, Iggy delivered their marching orders with the words, ‘You’re like heroin – and I don’t need you.’ Soon afterwards, the brothers put together a twelve-piece soul band in LA, but on his way home after yet another crazed show, Tony ended up in Cedars Sinai hospital after crashing his car. ‘They found me dead with a stick shift in my chest. I was in a coma for two and a half months. I almost died. And it ruined our Sales brothers thing.’ During Tony’s months in hospital, Iggy was conspicuous by his absence. David was the only celebrity friend who came to see him, asking, ‘When can we get you on the road?’
The bassist’s description of David as simply ‘a friend’ is at odds with the aloof, selfish figure remembered by predecessors like Trevor Bolder, yet his account is not unique. The standard history of the formation of Tin Machine is a Bowie-centred one, which involves him using them to detonate a controlled explosion, demolishing the memory of his late eighties hubris. Yet according to Sales, the urge to hang with his friends, and help them, was just as powerful a motivation. Tony and his drummer brother, Hunt, arrived at Montreux Casino, hanging out and playing for a week along with David, Reeves and producer Tim Palmer, before the tiny group decided they needed a second guitarist. Kevin Armstrong – then, like Tony Sales, attempting to rebuild his life, having turned into a groupie-shaggin’, drug-sniffin’ rock-monster during his last tour with Iggy Pop – answered the call and did a double-take as he entered the huge room. The most significant clue to the psychological make-up of the band was laid out in front of him, in the form of a line of amplifiers – for Reeves, Tony, Armstrong and David – all facing a huge podium in the middle of the room. On top of the podium, which was scaled by means of a ladder, was Hunt Sales’ drumkit, with its monstrous twenty-four-inch bass drum. With this kit, the feisty, funny, crazed drummer could beat anyone into submission, without any electronic assistance: ‘He is the loudest drummer I have ever worked with in my life,’ says Kevin Armstrong. ‘I almost went deaf within the first couple of days. The power and the volume was simply super human.’ Producer Tim Palmer had carefully placed microphones around the studio to capture this massive sound, and on Armstrong’s first day, they wrote and recorded ‘Heaven’s in Here’.
Hunt Sales was the kind of person who, as Armstrong put its, ‘consumes his own body weight in dangerous substances every day’. Everyone around him ‘loved his freedom and his naughtiness’. Tony, in contrast, was now a born-again evangelist for the cause of teetotalism: if David was standing nearby with a glass of wine in his hand, he would administer a reproving lecture on the dangers of alcohol. Tony restrained himself, however, in the case of his brother, figuring such arguments would end in violence. An amazing musician, like his brother, Tony also had to contend with a consequence of his car crash: memory lapses which meant that at crucial points he’d sometimes forget chord sequences, which the others had to shout in his ear.
Back in Berlin, when David had recorded with the Sales brothers and Iggy, the cultural leitmotif had been expressionism, Fritz Lang and Das Neue Sachlichkeit. In Montreux, eleven years later, the theme was Soupy Sales: the foul-mouthed, sexist, undoubted comedy genius, who was of course the inspiration for The Simpsons’ Krusty the Clown, the kids’ entertainer with a filthy mind. During the Mountain recording sessions, the Sales sons would call their father on an international line and route the phone call through the studio monitors, while David, Hunt, Tony, Kevin and Reeves would fall over laughing to monstrously amplified jokes, such as:
What do 50,000 battered wives have in common?
They don’t fuckin’ listen!
More than anyone, Bowie deferred to Reeves; he praised his experimentation, his ‘stunt’ guitar, and he also loved his virtuosity, encouraging him to explore more extreme effects and sounds. Yet even as Bowie’s lieutenant, there was little Gabrels could do to pull his rhythm section into line. When the Sales brothers joined, David decided this should be a proper band, run as a democracy. In reality, Gabrels thought, it was more like a shouting match.
The band’s initial jam sessions at Montreux blended seamlessly into a recording project, with ‘Heaven’s in Here’ recorded on the first day, then became semi-formalised with a move to Compass Point – a recording studio in the Bahamas, where David stayed in Robert Palmer’s house near the beach. The sessions went on and on; not aimless, or desperate, just jams, with dozens of tracks reportedly recorded. Sean Lennon popped in during the school holiday with Joey, who was in the process of dropping out of Gordonstoun. Despite his schooling problems, Joey was a quiet, unspoilt kid, a fan of The Smiths – David claimed to be a fan, too, but Joey seemed unconvinced. It was hilarious for the band to watch their exchanges, to see a man they thought of as the coolest dad in the world trying to impress his son. Sean, too, was earnest, thoughtful, the opposite of a showbiz brat; it was in tribute
to him that the band recorded their own version of John’s ‘Working Class Hero’.
The little community hanging around the beach was augmented by David’s new girlfriend, Melissa Hurley, a dancer from the Glass Spider tour. The Sales brothers, rock ‘n’ rollers to their core, rarely talked to Melissa. Kevin Armstrong liked her: ‘She was a genuinely kind, sweet person.’ Just twenty two-years old, with a voluptuous, almost Italian figure and a mass of wavy dark brown hair, she was caring, not at all pushy. She also had a classic 1980s fashion sense which sat poorly with David’s refined cool; she bought him hats or brightly coloured scarves which he would wear for a couple of days before managing to lose them. He, in turn, as a world citizen, and something of an art teacher manqué, loved showing her new locations, appreciating her delight; together, they seemed relaxed, almost child-like, and there was little surprise when, in May 1989, Melissa’s parents announced that the couple had become engaged.
David’s indulgence of his new girlfriend was charming; especially at the more ludicrous moments, such as when Melissa persuaded him to wear a thong, which he wore a couple of times on the beach, affecting indifference to his bandmates’ sniggers. Another comic touch was the presence of hoary old British rockers Status Quo, working in the adjacent studio, always ready to give tuition in pool and table football. The unspoilt, carefree air owed something to the gossip that Coco, often a cause of tension between David and his musicians, had found love and was living with a lawyer in Los Angeles.
For one band member, though, the setting was not a tropical paradise. A week or two into the recordings, David walked over to Kevin Armstrong’s beach hut and told him that Tin Machine had been conceived as a four-piece – they’d like to keep Armstrong on, but as a background musician. For the guitarist, the news was ‘totally crushing’. Yet David’s man-management was admittedly better than in the old days; he was honest and open about Armstrong’s demotion, telling him they’d work together again after Tin Machine – which they did.
The Compass Point studio was in the most perfect location, with white sand and sparkling azure sea just moments away, and beautiful spartan beach huts for the musicians, but the studio’s glory days had passed with the death in a car crash of manager and engineer Alex Sadkin, in 1987, and there were frequent power-cuts and technical problems. A few days into their stay there was a tropical rainstorm: the sky went black, with huge gobbets of rain beating on the tiny gaggle of buildings. In this gothic deluge, they recorded ‘I Can’t Read’, a song of stark beauty, its throbbing bass and chaotic guitar reminiscent of UK band Joy Division – who had, of course, based their sound on Iggy’s The Idiot, and in turn would influence emerging bands like Jane’s Addiction. The song was one of several Tin Machine gems destined to be overlooked in the noise and chaos surrounding the band. Kevin Armstrong believes that was part of the plan: ‘I thought some of the best work didn’t make it to the first record. I think David was deliberately trying to go for a fucked-up sound. If it was too safe or polite, he’d dump it.’ Some of the missing songs, like ‘Now’, based on the La La La Human Steps intro, would show up years later, in ‘Now’s’ case as the title track of the Outside album. The exclusion of anything that sounded remotely conventional was designed to show anyone, however cloth-eared, that the David Bowie who made Never Let Me Down was history.
The public debut of Tin Machine was cooked up around a table at Compass Point: chatting, hanging out, they decided it would be good to play live. Later that night they walked up to the band playing a small bar in Nassau and asked if they could use their gear; forty or fifty stunned American tourists goggled at the spectacle, mouthing at each other, ‘Is that who I think it is?’ as the band played a short set featuring ‘Heaven’s in Here’. ‘It was a mess, but it was a huge buzz,’ says Armstrong, ‘just to see the reaction of the crowd.’ David loved the vibe, the raw excitement of what they all called ‘the guerilla gig’; together, they decided that was how the band would proceed: a small gang, one for all, all for one.
This could never be a truly equal gang, of course. When the band finally started their club tour in New York, on 14 June, 1989, it was David Bowie who handed each of them $1000 to buy a Prada suit for the show. And when the reviews for the Tin Machine album appeared around its release on 22 May, 1989, it was naturally treated as another record by David Bowie, rather than the debut by a new outfit. The critical reaction was generally positive – Paul du Noyer of Q magazine called the album ‘a more accessible sort of record than we’re used to’ – while fans were ecstatic at the prospect of seeing David Bowie play a club tour. They queued for two days for some of the European dates, at small venues like Amsterdam Paradiso and Kilburn’s National Ballroom. David was buoyed up, revelling in the energy of the crowd and the sheer freedom. But there was tension, too; he was always nervous of fans. Kevin Armstrong had toured with Iggy in similar-sized venues, and noticed he had a talent for calming down any fans who were deranged or high; he could simply touch their shoulder, like a Vulcan death-grip, and they’d go all limp. David had never really worked in those circumstances; by the time he’d started attracting real crowds in his Ziggy days, he had his own security crew. Accosted by fans, he’d be polite, pleasant; if they were being too persistent he’d simply blank them, but he was always wary, never quite as relaxed amid the mayhem as Iggy.
The shows themselves were, ‘crazed, and huge fun’, says Armstong; ‘a blast’, according to Tony Sales. But most proper bands gel as they play more shows. With Tin Machine, says Armstrong, ‘there was no gelling. Musically, it never really gelled because it was simply a battle. Hunt and Tony were the solidest part, then Reeves is utter chaos – although Reeves and Hunt did develop a rapport in the the end. But you never knew what was gonna happen – it was always on the edge. Then I was shouting the chords to Tony most nights, because his short-term memory is shot. You could hardly play the same song in the same way twice. It certainly wasn’t comfortable for me.’
According to Iggy, David didn’t get as good results out of his old rhythm section either: ‘I have to say, when they were with me, they swung more.’ And indeed, alongside the band bonhomie, there was a dull, dogmatic element to Tin Machine shows, demonstrated by songs like their plodding cover of ‘Working Class Hero’. It was this worthiness, and the over-avoidance of the ‘conventional’ songs lamented by Kevin Armstrong, which meant the initially warm reception for Tin Machine – which hit number three in the UK, number twenty-eight in the US – soon petered out. The process was hastened by the release of lumpen singles like ‘Under the God’, backed with a workmanlike cover of Dylan’s ‘Maggie’s Farm’. Democracy has its drawbacks. As Gabrels pointedly observes, ‘Sometimes a benevolent dictatorshop can be a good thing.’
For David, though, there was a unique buzz about the band; he loved the Sales brothers’ vibe, and Hunt’s special craziness. Gabrels did, too, at first: ‘They were like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis,’ he says. ‘A handful. Then during Tin Machine they suddenly became like Cain and Abel. They made for a lot of extra tension, and entertainment – if you find tension entertaining.’ One night in New York, Hunt had his manifesto tattoo’d on his back: in huge letters it read, ‘It’s My Life’. But that wasn’t the complete manifesto – he’d planned to have the words ‘so fuck off’ inscribed underneath, but told his bandmates that the heavy Gothic lettering took so much work that he’d reached his pain threshold after the first three words.
The inescapable predicament of Tin Machine, of course, is that their democratic vision was a Utopia. Bowie would always be blamed for Gabrels’ or the Sales brothers’ artistic mistakes; equally, their ideas and inventions would be credited to him, too. EMI, meanwhile, had paid a huge advance for the David Bowie™ brand, not Tin Machine – which would soon cause financial problems. In the meantime, the man at the centre of these contradictions simply enjoyed the experience for what it was. ‘I don’t think David was frustrated at any point,’ says Armstrong. ‘Everyone was aware that he could ju
st whip this magic carpet away but while it was there you can’t avoid letting the Sales brothers do their thing, because they are very powerful people.’
David’s relaxed attitude about Tin Machine’s internal conflicts was understandable, given he always had Brand Bowie to fall back on. Even as the band booked their tiny club gigs in the spring of 1989, Isolar and Bill Zysblat, now Bowie’s business manager, were pencilling in stadiums across the world for a full year later, while David was also preparing for the re-release of his RCA albums.
In 1989, most record companies had hoovered up maximum profits for minimal effort from fans who were switching from vinyl to CD. The Beatles and Stones’ CD reissues were both a notorious mess; Bowie’s re-mastering of his album catalogue, in comparison, was first-rate. He selected CD specialists Rykodisc to master the albums and release them in Europe, while EMI licensed them in America. The new editions were a masterclass in CD releases, incorporating rarities and superb packaging, while a Sound + Vision boxset made up a kind of alternative greatest hits, comprising outtakes or alternate versions. If there was any contradiction in the fact that one of the world’s most forward-thinking artists was one of the first to re-market his own history, it was overlooked, given that he did it so much better than his peers. The election of Bill Clinton as American president in January 1993 would soon mark the accession of the baby boomers to power. This generation – Bowie fans among them – had more disposable income than any of their predecessors. Experts like David and Bill Zysblat – who would soon lead the way in promoting stadium tours with his company RZO, maximising their financial returns – were there to help them spend it.