Tin Machine (album)
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| Studio album by Tin Machine | ||||
| Released | 22 May 1989 | |||
| Recorded | August 1988; November–December 1988; Mountain Studios, Montreux Switzerland, and Compass Point Studios, Nassau |
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| Genre | Rock, hard rock, art rock,noise rock | |||
| Length | 56:49 | |||
| Label | EMI | |||
| Producer | Tin Machine, Tim Palmer | |||
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| Singles from Tin Machine | ||||
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| Original Vinyl Album Cover | ||||
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| Original Cassette Album Cover | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Los Angeles Times | favourable |
| Rolling Stone |  |
| Robert Christgau | B− |
| The New York Times | mixed |
| Trouser Press | generally favourable |
Tin Machine is the debut album by Anglo-American hard rock band Tin Machine. It was originally released in May 1989, on the label EMI. The band was the latest venture of David Bowie, inspired by sessions with guitarist Reeves Gabrels. Drummer Hunt Sales and bassist Tony Fox Sales formed the rest of the band, with "fifth member" Kevin Armstrong providing rhythm guitar and Hammond organ.
The project was intended as a back-to-basics album by Bowie, with a hard rock sound and simple production, as opposed to his past two solo albums. Unlike previous Bowie bands (such as the Spiders from Mars), Tin Machine acted as a democratic unit.
The band prepared some demos in LA before moving to Mountain Studios in Switzerland and then on to Montreal and then finally to Nassau. 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." Bowie also claimed his own cocaine-addled past in the 1970s as an inspiration for the track. The songs on the album tend to stick to topics such as drugs and urban decay. All songs were a group effort, and the band recorded 35 songs in just six weeks.
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. They followed up by recording a cover of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" (one of Bowie's favorite Lennon songs) and Roxy Music's "If There Is Something", though the latter wouldn't appear until the second Tin Machine album in 1991.
The tracks on the album were recorded raw and live with no overdubs to capture the energy of the band. 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." 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." There were no demos made for the album; Gabrels said "Basically the album is the demo."
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