Oh, boy. How else can I start off this post, or if you like, look you see, episode? There's no element of surprise, if you have looked at the title - for some reason I've selected 1987's Never Let Me Down to do. Well, if I am going to do them all, then I kind of have to do it at some stage. So, in the month that this record "celebrates" its 31st birthday, here it is.
For some - many, actually - this record is the nadir of David Bowie's career. There have been (sorry, were) a few wonky moments here and there, but generally this is seen as the low. Which it kind of was in every sense except financial. In later years Bowie may have lamented and regretted some decisions with the record, but he most decidedly did not grumble at the way in which it improved his bank balance.
As an aside, with the above I am always reminded of Michael Caine. Once a brave journalist asked him how he felt about the universally panned, box office failure of a film that was Jaws 4 The Revenge, in which he starred. His response to that was along the lines of "I've not seen the finished film, but I believe it was quite poor. I have, however seen the house that my fee for the film bought, and I can assure you it is quite lovely".
So, anyway, Never Let Me Down. Is the album really as bad as the legend of it states? Yes and no. One review, I cannot recall which, went as far as saying something like "good lord, even the fonts are all rubbish", so bad they found it. And yet I know of more than one person - OK, two - who not only like it, but have said it is their favourite Bowie album. In order to find out, then, I played the record - a number of times - for the first time in, probably, 27 or 28 years.
Now that we know there shall be no more, one really does wish to grab every single Bowie recording ever, embrace it, cherish it, love it, say it is great. To do this with Never Let Me Down takes an acolyte level I do not have, apparently. Whereas the record was nowhere near as bad as I had pictured in my mind, it is a bit of a flat, perhaps insipid affair - a kind of record which feels like the artist said "this will do", despite putting more hours into it than his other 80s releases.
Perhaps the best known track, if any are well known, is the first on the album and the first single, Day-In Day-Out. And on that note, one of my dearest friends has a theory. If the first track on an album happens to be the first single released from it, you know the record is rubbish. The main example of this which comes to mind is Pop by U2, but have fun finding others. Like, for instance, Never Let Me Down.
Actually, Day-In Day Out is a pretty decent pop song. Average, colour by numbers maybe, but decent. Yet also mistimed. Lyrically it's all the plight of a homeless woman in America. The audiences of 1987 did not want such; they wanted vibrancy and colour. After a few years of living with nuclear destruction, the Soviet Empire was crumbling, Uncle Ronnie had won. We wanted to celebrate freedom. Also, David Bowie sitting in his mansion in Switzerland writing a song sympathetic to the plight of a homeless woman in America was a bit like that one time Phil Collins showed his sympathy for the plight of starving kids in Africa by encouraging them to watch him fly on Concorde.
What's the one song Bowie loved from this album? The second song, Time Will Crawl. He loved it so much that when he curated that iSelect set what came free with the Mail on Sunday in 2008, he not only included it, but sent it off to the studio to have the drum machine replaced with real drums to see if that helped it find the audience he wanted.
Much of the song deals with Bowie's obsession with time, seen or rather heard in songs all across his career and of course culminating in Blackstar. in this one he references something called "the 21st Century", a thing that in 1987 we supposed would come along eventually but it seemed too, over, very very far away to consider. As I think I mentioned in the Outside episode, it is not like we were really all that aware of the dawning of a new millennium in 1995, let alone cared for it. But Bowie pressed on with his concerns and ideas.
To show I am not going to do this record track by track, let's skip to four, the titular song, or if you will Never Let Me Down. Actually this is a most splendid, decent, late 80s "Power Ballad" thing. It's quite lovely and beautiful, really. Right up until the point you learn..... *** SPOILER ALERT *** this is a song he wrote about his personal assistant, or if you prefer PA. Hmn. Rock stars should be writing songs about wives, girlfriends, the wives and girlfriends of other rock stars, drug dealers, etc. Doing a song about your PA? Not even Phil Collins strayed into that area.
Mostly, I am not going to look at the other songs. Not in detail. Yes, trivia fans, and I know I skipped the usual random trivia at the start, Mickey Rourke does indeed appear on one song, "rapping" no less. But you have to have his parts pointed out to you.
Indeed yes, I did see the interviews with select members of the Rolling Stones. in full titl Ro££ing $tone$ mode, promoting their new tour. Another tour? I had no idea Ronnie Wood had another divorce coming up. So, Charlie "Charles" Watts cannot understand why people were so upset about Bowie dying as Chas doesn't believe Bowie was "some sort of genius". Sure, you are in the Stones, you can say what you like. But it's quite strange that you would invite people to vehemently disagree with you. Who knows, perhaps it's a case of jealousy making one nasty, or simply that Mr Watts had only ever heard Never Let Me Down.
Overall, side one of the record is OK, side two a bit not so much. The whole thing seems to have been mixed down, so it sounds all dull and dour. Unless that's a freak fluke of my tape and CD copy. It's a confusing mishmash of styles, all with Peter Frampton (the Peter Frampton) throwing guitar solos at them. Strangely, barely a year later (I think), Fine Young Cannibals came along and gave a perfectly functional, working album that was a mismash of styles in the form of the superb The Raw And The Cooked. I can't but help wonder if Roland and the boys heard Never Let Me Down, thought there was something to the structure, and something they could do better.
As an aside, later in 1987 Depeche Mode released a song called Never Let Me Down Again. It's widely believed the song is all drug references. Knowing Dave, Martin and co are all amongst the biggest of Bowie fans to walk this land, I am not sure that it isn't a plea to their hero never to release a record like Never Let Me Down again.
Where is it on Never Let Me Down that the wheels come off? The nadir of the nadir, so to speak? Frustratingly, it is Glass Spider. The second half of the song is brilliant. Alas, the first half is some mumbling about a, well, glass spider. Spiders From Mars it is not.
Of course there was a point to it. The fantasy tale of a Glass Spider was the basis for a theatrical, stage production like tour Bowie wished to do. And, whatever Bowie wanted to do in the late 80s, he did. He was a celebrity with little equal, by that point. After the success of Live Aid and Dancing In The Street, and of course Labyrinth (yes, will do the soundtrack at some point), he was more likely to be pictured mingling with Diana, Fergie and society's elite than he was in a recording studio.
I went right ahead and did something that I never ever thought I would do. Yes, I did so mostly knowing that to do this blog post / random bowie episode properly, I would have to. Having long since ditched the VHS and vowing not to replace it, I purchased the DVD of the Glass Spider Tour, for about £5. maybe it was closer to £6, but it is done now.
Again, this might be clutching at wanting to love all that he did, but having watched it again it all seemed nowhere near as bad as I recalled. Sure, as with Serious Moonlight, the old classics he does don't fare well at all, but the new, pop stuff sounds all as it should. But still, man, the red suit and red shoes, the hair, the stage performers that without video screens no one at the gig could see, and the bloody great big massive glass spider.
The best parts of Glass Spider Tour? Well, the one Australian lady who is front and centre, staring at David, singing every single word of every single song. Also, David. He looks comfortable, relaxed and like he is enjoying himself. What a lovely, tear to the eye sight that is, now we know what we know.
Sadly the above is not the best image of her, but still. I would like to think that each of us, as we listen to Bowie, are personified by the Australian girl in the decidedly Australian crowd in Australia on the Glass Spider Tour DVD. She is in love, she is in awe, she is happy, she can scarcely believe she is in the presence of the music of this most wonderful man. Or, maybe that's just me.
Indeed, accusations flew at Bowie about him being a "sell out". This was unprecedented at the time - he got Pepsi to sponsor the tour. Funny thing is, the tour made a profit. Back then, you see, tours were considered a viable loss financially because they boosted record sales. Now, not so much. So thank Bowie for showing all the musicians after 1987 how they could put on a spectacular show and actually make money from doing a tour.
Was this, Never Let Me Down and Glass Spider Tour, really the low point in the career of David Bowie? To be honest, yes. It may have sold well, but the Glass Spider images soon made him a figure of ridicule. Many took the whole thing as a sign that, finally, he had run dry of creative juices. The coming of Tin Machine, broken up by a lucrative SoundAndVision greatest hits tour, did not diminish that view. Few saw the 1993 revival, in the form of Black Tie White Noise and The Buddha Of Suburbia, with some help from Kurt Cobain, coming.
So is Never Let Me Down, the 17th studio album by David Bowie as per the commonly agreed method of counting them, worth getting? Tough one, that. Day-In Day-Out, Time Will Crawl and, with reservations on the provenance, Never Let Me Down say yes, since it is rare indeed for any of them to feature on compilations or other such "best of" sets. If you can find it cheap, then yes for them three songs, or for them and if you really like Peter Frampton solos. Should you also be a big, big fan of Mickey Rourke doing incoherent mumbled raps, well then so much the better.
The Glass Spider Tour DVD? Erm, yes if you can find it cheap. As in, south of £10, I think. Should there be nothing else, there preserved is as they appeared on the record live versions of Blue Jean and Loving The Alien off of Tonight.
Overall, Bowie's only criticism of the record - that he became complacent, that he allowed others to influence the style and sound in the hope that they knew how to keep him connected to his new, massive audience - is spot on. Several promising, good if not great songs lurk on the record; they just didn't come out right at all.
Well, then, that's another episode or edition done with, and very nearly the Bowie of the 80s. Actually, that's all the solo albums proper from that decade. I shall, however, try to round up the other releases from that decade, maybe bundling them up with Labyrinth. For Tin Machine, you can, if you so wish, have a read of this article what I did when I got fed up of journalists saying the band was rubbish.
My thanks, as ever, for your time taken to read this.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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