the background file

the background file

so, how did it all begin? I'm tin machine!

(bowie's tour-shirt '92)

'...Like most goods bands, they are, superficially at least, a fairly ill-assorted bunch.
The Sales brothers (neon-blond, seriously tattooed drummer Hunt, black-quiffed bassist Tony) are every casting director's dream of a rock rhythm section: hard-bitten rock'n'roll roughnecks with a musical punch that would wind Tyson, veterans of Iggy Pop's band and ex-Pistol Steve Jone's ill-fated Chequered Pas. "I ran into David three and a half years ago at a Glass Spider Tour wrap party in Los Angeles, "Tony recalls, "and he said, Hey, wanna get a band together?
I got this guitar player who's fantastic. We hung out in Los Angeles for a week and then went to Switzerland to start the album (tin machine), where we first meet Reeves...".

Reeves Gabrels arrived in Tin Machine by a fairly circuitous route; his wife, an award-winning investigative journalist, passed Bowie a tape of Gabrel's avant-grunge guitar work while moon-lightning as a PR on the Glass Spider tour; Bowie snapped Gabrels up at the end of the tour and wrote a few songs with him; the following year they also performed as a duo at the ICA in London, playing a revamped 'Look Back In Anger' to accompany a dance piece by Edward Locke's company La La La Human Steps as part of a benefit to raise funds to rebuild the ICA's roof. The Bowie called in the Sales Brothers. Assembling in Montreux to record at the casino (yes indeedy, the Smoke-On-The-Water one), the Saleses put the amiable, professorial Gabrels through hell.

"Their attitude, "chuckles Gabrels, "was kind of, He's David Bowie, we're the Sales brothers, who the fuck are you?" Every time Gabrels was due to play, a Sales would hit the talkback button and make a demand which directly contradicted whatever the previous one had been. They would ask him to play like Buddy Guy, or like Jimmy Page; finally, Gabrels went Krakatoa. In rather more emphatic language than is his custom, he informed the assembled company that he would his part his way, and then - and only then - would he entertain suggestions. He got a standing ovation, and Tin Machine was in business.

According to Bowie, "it was just inspired guesswork that there'd be chemistry between these four people. I just knew that I enjoyed working with each and every one of them, and that was priority for me, having had some fairly unenjoyable experiences in the '80s working with others. It wasn't their fault as such, it was just artistically unfulfilling. It happened a couple of times too often to go on working like that. I get on well with everybody in this band, I enjoy the music, that they play, and my presumption was that they like some of the music that I do."

So - as one-quarter of a fully-fledged but currently non-mega band - where does that leave David Bowie, housewife superstar? The answer would appear to be: happier and more relaxed than in several years. Neat and lean in his chinos, hair moderate in both length and tint, and sporting a maaajor tan which would entitle him to rename himself as The Thin Orange Duke if he so desired, Bowie strums his Takamine 12-string or his stubby silver Steinberger, writes and rewrites innumerable lists, and does his best to exhaust the world's stock of Marlboros. He certainly doesn't look like a man who wishes he was back with a cast of thousands and a lampshade on his head, dazzling the stadiums under computerised lights.

We were originally gonna be called The Four Divorcés, or Alimony Inc," claims Tony Sales. "...but I remarried and blew it," interposes Gabrels. Bowie looks up from his latest list, mock-wincing. "Just becasue you've remarried does that mean you're no longer a divorcé?" he enquires. "I have a two-inch scar between my shoulder-blades," Gabrels continues, "from having a pair of pinking shears thrown at me as I was leaving from a gig. The gig was great!"

So did Bowie, after his decidedly mixed '80s experiences, decide that he wanted to be in a band rather than continue as a free-standing cultural icon? "No, I didn't think it would really come to this. I never thought I'd sink so low!

This is the first band I've been in - as opposed to led or directed - since the Konrads (in 1963!). I thought we'd just get on musically, but the fact that it evolved very quickly into a band format was just great, and that it's become what it's become is just wonderful, but it wasn't a preconceived idea." Let alone the "calculated commercial move" postulated by one UK magazine.

Tin Machine's music is Rock with a very large R. Did Bowie feel a need for that big, grungy noise after the more elaborate constuctions of previous years? Bowie sighs and puts down his pencil.

"You must realise that it was a question of personalities more than anything else," he replies.
"Working with Reeves on the thing for La La La, we used synthesizers and drum machines to supplement for bass and drums to create this thunderous, nihilistic sound and it really just occurred to us that there were guys who actually played like that - that we didn't need machines to make that sound. So I phoned up Hunt and Tony, they were over within a couple of weeks, and that was how we started working together, not really knowing whar we were going to do when we did get together. All we knew was that it was either going to work or it wasn't."
"We didn't know what it was going to be either," insists Tony Sales, "but we figured that it just had to be hipper than what was going on."

Bowie: "It was a really wonderful synchronicity that we were all around and available in the same couple of months. If there'd been even a couple of week's delay on any of us meeting. it probably wouldn't have come together. It just seemed to say, Why don't you guys ...?"
"It was kind of like the way bands form on a local level," opines Gabrels, "where people meet in a coffe bar or in a club. Except that it was New York, London, LA ... we met in a world cafe."

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