Of all the things that Bowie had done, he had never really been a part of a band or a group. Since he missed the cut-off to join the Traveling Wilburys, he put together his own group, featuring two of the sons of comedian Soupy Sales as his rhythm section. He grew out a beard and dressed everyone in identical suits and tried to blend into the group. Of course, no one was really familiar with anyone else in the band, and much like Wings was just seen as an extension of McCartney’s solo career, people didn’t take Tin Machine seriously as a democratic egalitarian band of equal musicians. The fact the Bow sang and co-wrote all the songs on the first album didn’t help. (And only let one guy have one song on the second album, creatively titled II).
Still it was reinvigorating for Bowie to at play at going back to square one and starting from scratch. This was just a few years before grunge hit big and a lot of critics had a hard time categorizing this music — it often got mislabeled as Bowie’s attempt at heavy metal.
The other controversy surrounded the second album, which featured four full nude statues on the cover. This was so scandalous in 1990, that Bowie was forced to issue an alternative cover with the offending body parts broken off. For some reason that was considered better.
The other annoying thing about II is that it is the only Bowie album that is out-of-print and unavailable on Spotify or any other streaming services. Luckily, it can be found on YouTube and other less legitimate music providers, but it was especially disappointing when putting together this playlist. Tin Machine only had the two studio albums (a live album was released later) – and they music this “band” produced neither fits with the “Phil Collins years” of the previous playlist nor the electronica/jungle/house/EDM experiments of next week’s list. But only having one album to draw from wasn’t really giving me a chance to curate an appropriate mix for this week’s blog.
Oh well… If you have the files on your computer, enjoy! If not – go seek them out. Even if I like the first Tin Machine record more than the second, you really need to hear both. It is a pivotal and often overlooked period of Bowie’s career.