Tin Machine (album)

The band prepared some demos in LA before moving to Mountain Studios[4] in Switzerland and then on to Montreal and then finally to Nassau.[5] The band did not have much luck recording in Nassau, finding it hard to record in the midst of the "coke and poverty and crack," which partly inspired the album track "Crack City."[5] Bowie also claimed his own cocaine-addled past in the 1970s as an inspiration for the track.[6] The songs on the album tended to stick to topics such as drugs and urban decay.[7] All songs were a group effort, and the band recorded 35 songs in just six weeks.[2][4][5] In 2017, Gabrels said that the album "could have been a double album" given the amount of material recorded (but not released) by the band during this period.[8]

The first song the band wrote and recorded was "Heaven's in Here", which they wrote from scratch and recorded in their first 30 hours together.[3] They followed up by recording a cover of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" (one of Bowie's favorite Lennon songs)[9] and Roxy Music's "If There Is Something", though the latter wouldn't appear until the second Tin Machine album in 1991.[3]

The tracks on the album were recorded raw and live with no overdubs to capture the energy of the band.[7][10] The band urged Bowie to avoid re-writing his lyrics: "They were there all the time saying, 'Don't wimp out,' sing like you wrote it. Stand by 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."[9] 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."[4] There were no demos made for the album; Gabrels said "Basically the album is the demo."[3]

Bowie enjoyed making the album, saying "I'm so up on this I want to go and start recording the next album tomorrow."[9] Stylistically, he felt that the album was a continuation from Scary Monsters: "It's almost dismissive of the last three albums I've done. Getting back on course, you could say."[9]

Gabrels would later describe the songs on the album as the band "screaming at the world",[11] and Tony Sales, bassist for the band, described the band's approach to the music they created by saying:

We were so sick of turning on the radio and hearing disco and dance music and drum machines; all that stuff, which I think in the business they call "crap." We were just thinking about doing a project that would put an end to rock 'n' roll.[2]

As the band finished the album, Bowie was sure the band would continue. He said, "There'll be another two albums at least. Oh, yes, this will go for a while. While we're all enjoying playing with each other so much, why not?"[9]

Instead of making music videos for each single from the album, Tin Machine chose to release a single 13-minute long megamix video for the album, "created in opposition to expectation."[12] The video was directed by Julien Temple, who had previously worked with Bowie on videos and releases such as Jazzin' for Blue Jean (1984), "Absolute Beginners (1986), and "Day-In Day-Out" (1987). Gabrels recalled that the band "used K-Tel Records' late night advertising [informercials] as our template"[12] for the video. "We had certain vignettes in our head, like us playing in a venue, then we wanted to add elements that were a little more vaudevillian, such as the monkey unplugging the band, which I think was a Hunt idea."[12] The video was recorded at The Ritz in New York.[12] The video was only released as part of a "very limited promotional box set", and never commercially, until its 30th anniversary in 2019.[13]

The band played an unannounced live show in Nassau while recording the album, and then made a live appearance at the International Rock Awards Show on 31 May 1989.[9][14] Two weeks later, the band embarked on their 12-show Tin Machine Tour, wrapping up in early July. 8 songs performed in Paris on 25 June 1989 were released digitally in August 2019, to coincide with the album's 30th anniversary. The digital release was mastered by Tim Palmer.[15]

Tracks from this and the second Tin Machine album were recorded live during the 1991-1992 It's My Life Tour and released on Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby (1992).

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[16]
Los Angeles Times	favourable[17]
Rolling Stone	[18]
Robert Christgau	B−[19]
The New York Times	mixed[20]
Trouser Press	generally favourable[21]

At the time of release, Tin Machine met with some success, winning generally positive reviews and reaching No. 3 in the UK Albums Chart. Short-term sales of the album were estimated to have been between 200,000[22] and 1,000,000 copies within a few years.[23] By the end of 2012 the entire catalogue of Tin Machine albums had sold an estimated 2 million copies.[24]

Spin magazine called the album "noise rock without the noise. Aggressive, direct, brutal and stylishly plain, it combines the energy of the rock avant-garde with traditional R&B rhythmic punch",[2] summing up the album by calling it "incendiary fun" and noting that "the buoyant Sales brothers and Gabrels certainly equal and frequently surpass Bowie."[7] Rolling Stone magazine praised the album's "cynical, indignant and acidic" approach to music as an "all-too-welcome feast of aggro-guitar flamboyance and bass-drum body checking", noting that at times it sounds like Sonic Youth meets Station to Station.[18] A review by the McClatchy Company called the band "a lean, mean rock 'n' roll machine", that showed that "Bowie's back", going on to say that this is his most invigorating album since 1980's Scary Monsters.[10]

When asked in an interview what the main criticism of the record would be, Bowie conceded that the album might be "not accessible" to fans. "I guess it's not as obviously melodic as one would think it would probably be [for a Bowie album]."[9]

The CD and cassette releases of the album contain the tracks "Run" and "Sacrifice Yourself", which were excluded from the LP release.[9][18] All releases since follow the former's sequencing.

LP version — side one (tracks 1–6 as above)

The 1999 reissue of Tin Machine incorporates the album into Bowie's solo back-catalogue; the spine and disc credits the artist as David Bowie, with "Tin Machine" as the album's title.

Tin Machine – producers, mixing

• David Bowie – lead vocals, rhythm guitar
• Reeves Gabrels – lead guitar
• Tony Sales – bass guitar, backing vocals
• Hunt Sales – drums, backing vocals
• Kevin Armstrong – Hammond organ (B-3) on "Pretty Thing", rhythm guitar

Production

• Tim Palmer – producer, mixing
• Justin Shirley-Smith - engineer
• David Richards - additional engineering
• Roger Gorman (Reiner Design) - art direction & design
• Masayoshi Sukita - photography
• thanks: Mike Talanca, Michael White and Janice Rothman

• Tin Machine - Nine Track Compilation (Official Video) on YouTube
• Tin Machine at Discogs (list of releases)