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12 Bowie Albums in 12 Months – Tonight

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Stan Deely on Tonight

1984. Having just come off the mega successful Lets Dance tour and now, undoubtedly, a global superstar, Bowie makes a prompt return to the studio. EMI want a speedy follow up to the 6 million selling Lets Dance album. However, Bowies bereft of new material. Recording sessions in Canada, with the Lets Dance touring band and new producer Derek Bramble flounder, with Bramble leaving to be replaced by engineer Hugh Padgham. As work progresses Bowie appears bored and uninterested and as sometime producer Tony Visconti has observed “He let others do his work”

The album when it is released sells well but is now generally regarded as one of his poorer efforts by both critics and fans. The nine tracks consist of two new Bowie songs, two Iggy Pop co-writes, one of these concocted in the studio, three Iggy covers and two 1960s covers.

My memory of the time of release is being underwhelmed and fearing the worst after hearing lead off single ‘Blue Jean’. This was confirmed on the couple of occasions I listened to a friend’s copy of the album. I remember feeling somewhat incredulous at how synthetic, bland and uninspired it all sounded and promptly lost almost all interest in the current and future works of Mr Bowie. After this I don’t think I listened to another contemporary Bowie album at the time of its release until The Next Day in 2013 and I suspect I am representative of many.

So I returned to this album with some trepidation, hence my shout out last month for some tips on how to approach listening and reviewing this album. I’m afraid, Afterword contributors, your replies did not fill me with confidence.

However, pop pickers, I have found a way to tolerate and even like this curious assortment of an album. The trick is … “PLAY IT QUIET” that’s right. Quiet. Played loud it can sound like a horrible, overproduced synthetic mess but a discreet dinner party volume allows one to enjoy what I would call the ‘tropical lounge’ sound. (Not to be confused with the dreaded ‘white reggae.’ category) My other tip for listening is that like Low and Heroes and to a lesser extent Scary Monsters, the two sides can be approached and listened to as two separate entities. The first side is quite laidback and understated whilst the second generally more upbeat and somewhat bonkers.

LOVING THE ALIEN
Generally regarded as the best song on the album. Is Bowie audacious or just foolhardy starting the album with the longest, most emotive track? If you’re going with my tropical lounge theory it works well. Imagine the Blue Nile covering ‘Ashes to Ashes’. The song incorporates sweeping Scott Walkerish orchestral runs, a Stevie Ray Vaughn style ‘tasteful’ blues guitar solo and even a breakdown that reminds me of 10CC’s ‘I’m Not in Love.’ The slow pace and long length allow the song to unfold in a gentle, uncluttered manner. Nice understated vocal. The lyrics are either prescient or conspiracy nonsense depending on one’s take on organised religion, religious conflict etc. Personally, I’m a bit confused by what he means by this ‘alien.’ Please enlighten me with your theories and opinions Afterworders.

DONT LOOK DOWN
It seems that in the early 80s the Police with their jazz influenced white reggae sound seemed to have a massive influence on 60’s survivors trying to stay relevant. Both Neil Young and Joni Mitchell released Police influenced albums and they seemed to be the band name to drop for old school musicians to show they still kept up an interest and liked in the ‘new’ music. Here we have David dipping his toes into this contested territory. The Iggy Pop original of this, one of the better songs on the New Values album, is a mid paced ballad and Bowies politer and less scuzzy approach can’t do too much harm. Its very like the Police’s Walking on the Moon, effortless, spacey not unpleasant. It’s a bit strange to have Bowie doing this sort of light poppy material but it’s fine by me. Pleasant enough filler and he sings it well.

GODS ONLY KNOWS
Judging from internet comments, a lot of critics and fans really dislike this and some feel it is the worst thing he ever recorded. I think it works okay in an early 80s semi ironic and somewhat synthetic sounding synthetic cover of a classic. It’s an indestructible tune and I have quite a high cheese/pop tolerance so I feel it acquits itself well enough. I enjoy the somewhat over the top vocal here but I imagine it may grate with others.

I read the other day that the Pitchfork website critics have voted Bryan Ferry’s These Foolish Things as the best covers album of all time with Pin Ups in second place. I knew the Ferry album well (owned by my older sisters) before I heard the originals of many of the tracks and, as an album, it really worked for me. When I did hear the originals I realised how mannered and uninspired Ferry’s covers could be. However, the Ferry album works well as an album, just don’t play his versions up against the originals, and the same works for Bowie’s God Only Knows. Compare it to the original and it’s a bit hokey but in the context of Tonight, I think he gets away with it.

TONIGHT
The original of this on the Lust for Life is a total belter, an overwrought wall of sound with Iggy doing a great vocal, singing to a dying lover. Bowie’s take dials it down considerably, missing out the intro which takes away the context and turns it into a polite love song. Once again he takes white reggae approach and manages to de-personify Tina Turner’s vocals by having her too low in the mix. Despite all this, it’s a hard tune to ruin and whilst pretty MOR, I think it works better than say, his take on China Girl.

The backing vocalists seem to be singing the melody from Aretha Franklins Spanish Harlem and thereby hangs a tale. Iggy is on record as saying that Bowie wrote many of the songs on Lust for Life by basing them on the structures of well known hit tunes which neither of them are naming. It seems to me that one can sing the melody of Tonight over Spanish Harlem and vice versa so here Bowie might be giving us a little clue to his ‘influences’

NEIGHBOURHOOD THREAT
Now, flipping the disc over, Bowie starts to take it up a gear and starts to rock or even ‘rock opera’ on this cover of one of the more aggressive albeit lesser tunes from Lust for Life. It features chorus-style call and response backing vocals and immediately brings to my mind the theatrical rock approach used on the Diamond Dogs and Glass Spider tours. I can see the backing vocalists running around Bowie with radio mikes and all that business and I was surprised when I checked that this song didn’t feature in the Glass Spider tour set list as I imagine it would have fitted right in. It’s not a bad tune but the treatment is starting to get a bit kitchen sink overproduced 80s. Whereas the monotone melody works well for an Iggy song, Bowie seems to have a need to do his trademark Bowie croon and it’s starting to sound a little over the top about nothing.

BLUE JEAN
The lead off single, released with great fanfare, a 22 minute video a la Thrillier directed by hotshot at the time director Julien Temple featuring Bowie ‘acting’ in two roles. I remember at the time thinking “This sounds like an okay to good album track but a bit worrying as the first single off the album.” It’s a well constructed, pleasant pop song and like Modern Love off the previous album it feels both 50’s and 80’s at the same time. Bowie says it was influenced by Eddie Cochran and the Troggs! He gives the vocals a bit of vim, pushing the envelope but staying just this this side of histrionic territory. It’s a good song but lacks the fairy dust/weirdness angle that many of his late 70’s/early 80’s singles had.

TUMBLE AND TWIRL
Written about a recent holiday Bowie took in Bali with Iggy Pop we are back in the “What I did on my holidays” travelogue songs a la Lodger. Very funky and tropical, Its ridiculously catchy with lyrics improvised by Bowie and Pop featuring all manner of weird lines and juxtapositions. I wonder if it would pass the Dave Amitri ‘hookmonster’ test. To me it sounds like Modern Romance and whilst the first side would be appropriate listening at a dinner party it seems to me, this song and the two that follow it, would most suit bouncing up and down on furniture with a hyperactive toddler singing along loudly. Whilst it does have some novelty value for being quirky and catchy it, feels overlong (and desperate?!) as it goes on for nearly 5 minutes.

I KEEP FORGETTING
They party continues with a Jive Bunny style drum intro into a marimba led, cult tune from 1962. Bowie said that he had wanted to record this since Pin Ups but it seems to cynical old me that it’s just the kind of retro tune that the cool kids in London clubland at the time, (especially at the Wag Crowd which Bowie frequented and filmed both Blue Jean videos at) were listening to at the time.

It’s perfectly fine, managing at the same time to be both exciting and a bit pedestrian but feels a bit pointless in the context of an album. It would have made an interesting B side or extra track on a 12 incher but feels out of place on an album.

DANCING WITH THE BIG BOYS
Apparently devised and improvised on the spot and finished in 30 minutes he’s saved the best/worst for last. This, with its big beat and stream of consciousness lyrics seems to want to resurrect the edgey vibe of Iggy’s Lust for Life but instead comes across as a bit of a mess. Soundwise it reminds me of the Art of Noise and their synthesizer updates/remakes of 60s detective film noir riffs but there isn’t really a song here, just a series horn riffs, deafening drum sound and shouty backing vocals. Nile Rodgers speaks of Bowie being a fan of big band jazz loving horn counterpoint lines and this song seems to consist of just the counterpoint with very little in the middle. In the one interview he gave to promote this album Bowie spoke about how on this song he came closest to the noise he had in his head for this album but that he hadn’t quite nailed it. Mind you pretty soon he would be disowning this album and this period calling it his ‘Phil Collins years’

CONCLUSION
Commentators at the time have called this a classic 1960’s style album meaning two hits along with filler and covers. Bowie commentator Charles Sharr Murray speaks of it being ‘a bunch of classy filler with no centre’ and Bowie himself said at the time ” I thought it’s a kind of violent effort at a kind of Pin Ups”

Personally, for me, I can enjoy side 1 but that bombast of side 2 means that it comes as a bit of a relief when the album ends.

What I would say in this album’s favour is at least he is not repeating himself giving us a diluted version of what has come before. Considering that he managed 10 – 12 awesome albums over the previous decade, then experimenting and trying out new territory, even if unsuccessful should be applauded.

Also his singing is top notch. I feel at some point further down the road he may have lapsed into and settled for a lazy ‘Bowie croon’ however here his vocals still manage to thrill.

That’s my take. And what about you, Afterworders, Bowie fans and/or haters. How do you rate this album? Is there anything I have missed or got wrong? Anything you wish to draw people’s attention to? Over to you …

4

Comments

  1. Your review is a hell of a lot more pleasurable than listening to the album. Unbelievably generous effort. It makes me want to go back and revisit it …. No it doesn’t, it’s an awful album, he was completely lost at this time.

    Struggling to think what Neil Young album was inspired by The Police around this time? Trans? Everybody’s Rockin? Old Ways? Hmmmm…..

  2. High cheese/pop tolerance! worth it for that phrase alone.
    This series is becoming a worthy successor to the prototype template of Mr Amitri.
    (Do I want to listen to the album? Pass on that. I have GOK and Blue Jean and one is dire and the other poor. (Can you work out which is which, boys and girls?)

  3. One of the very few records I ever took back to the shop. I wasn’t the only one, either.

    I thought Bowie made a pretty good singles act for the decade after Let’s Dance. The only Bowie I bought in 1984 was the non-album track This Is Not America.

  4. Like you, this was the last one I bought( until The Next Day) , thinking it just sounded like a poor imitation of David Bowie. It always reminds me (or would if I ever played it) of a lot of early 80s bands that were obviously Bowie influenced but not very interesting: Icehouse, Fiction Factory…stuff like that.

      • “A-wuz-a-wuz-a wuz” I don’t get the reference. Are you saying this is the point where Bowie started becoming a caricature and imitating himself. I get the feeling that vocally this happened but I can’t quite put my finger on when it started. Any ideas? comments?

        • Becoming a caricature is right. Worse, if you just look for example at the cover of the Time Will Crawl single: he’s just another pop star, like Taylor Dayne or Brother Beyond or whatever.

          This became the standard view of Bowie for most of the 80s and 90s – he never really expunged it until Glastonbury 2000 – a mediocre pop star who was, at best, a figure of fun:

        • I think the “wuz a wuz a wuz” Bowie impression came originally from comedians/podcasters Adam and Joe? It’s just a generic sounding “Bowie-ish word” – it’s actually really hilarious, and makes more sense hearing it than seeing it written down. Adam and Joe were both massive fans of Bowie, and were coming at it from a place of affection.

          If you google “adam and joe david bowie” you will probably get a few examples coming up.

  5. Loving the Alien is possibly my favourite Bowie song (it’s either that or Queen Bitch), but I much prefer the single mix. Even with my favourite song on it, Tonight is one of the weakest Bowie albums for me.

    • I totally agree. I love Loving the Alien (even though I’ve always found the production really weedy sounding). But the album as a whole is pretty unlistenable for me. Proven by the fact that I never listen to it.

  7. I quite like the album. Then again, I don’t really rate Let’s Dance.
    Make of that what you will.
    It may actually have been the first DB album I bought – before going backwards.
    Apart from Tin Machine, I didn’t buy another new DB album until Heathen

  9. Wasn’t everything in 1984 just horrible? This Bowie album, which I’ve never heard, sounds like the essence of ’84 to me. No doubt examples could be brought to prove me wrong, but I reckon there must be very few.

  10. The 80s were brilliant. Less so for legacy artists like Bowie, Macca, Young, Dylan, Stones etc who all struggled. Van Morrison had a very good decade though, Pete Townshend released some good solo albums, um …

  11. Bang on about Van there, Dai. Some of his finest work was done in the 80s, no matter what those who will have him eternally preserved in some 70s ‘classic era’ aspic say.

  12. Thanks for this and I’d concur it makes far superior reading than the album does listening. A truly abysmal LP that I bought at the time and listened to, hope fading with every track. The curse of him not quite nailing what he’d actually wanted to do with Dancing With Big Boys was that he soon enough did. And it was called Tim Machine. Albums wise I skipped all the way until Blackstar. I bought The Next Day but couldn’t tell you when I last I played it.

        • Bowie did some great covers, Wild is the Wind, a few decent ones on Pin Ups etc, but also many absolutely dreadful ones, a lot written by Lennon, WCH, Across the Universe, maybe Mother, as well as some on this album. God Only Knows is appalling and I Keep Forgettin’ is a mediocre attempt at a very poor song. Not sure what he was thinking.

          • Objection! Michael McDonald’s Keep Forgettin’ is great, and Roger Chapman’s version isn’t bad either (it’s on Chappo).

            WCH is a low point, but arguably worse is the version of Like a Rolling Stone on Mick Ronson’s Heaven and Hull. Ronno does his best but DB is stupidly over the top. Something about doing covers flipped him over into a kind of manic tastelessness.

  13. Thank you for your comments on the album so far. I did enjoy writing it and tried not to be too harsh – after all it’s David effing Bowie. So far, it seems, we have one person who likes the album (Rigid Digit) and some love for Loving the Alien as a song/single but generally it seems you were mystified, horrified or just plain turned off by the album. Is there anyone else out there with any positive comments.

    Interesting conment about 60’s/70’s legacy artists losing it in the 80’s which I, too, have been thinking about and intend to address in my review of ‘Never Let me Down’ next month.

    • I like it, while accepting that it is crap. I will listen to it voluntarily and enjoy it. But I’m nuts.

      If anybody’s hungry to see this album get a world-class leathering, from his blog on number one albums heeeeeeeeeeeere’s Marcello:

      https://nobilliards.blogspot.com/2014/05/david-bowie-tonight.html

      some choice quotes:

      The album is, without a doubt and by some stretch, the worst of the three hundred and one records to which Lena and I have listened so far [….]and it is arguable that Bowie’s career […] never satisfactorily recovered from the resultant trauma.[….] his “God Only Knows” goes beyond, or below, abysmal. I don’t know what was in his head when he thought he could do this song and I suspect neither did he [… it] nails what is so wretched about this record; lacking enough decent new material, and without the apparent will to make something out of the scraps that he did have, his recourse was to try falling back into the past. His “God Only Knows,” however, makes one wonder whether Bowie ever understood pop music, or whether he really believed that throwing out any old shit would maintain his popularity.

      On the plus side, it has the last good Bowie sleeve until Earthling. Buy it, take the record out and replace it with Toy to solve two problems at once.

      • Moose, thanks for posting this Takes a slightly more critical approach than me but I’m in agreement with a lot of it. Absolutely hilarious as well. I think I’ll be spending a lot of time on this site.

        • Just read this guy’s review of Lets Dance. Sample quote:

          “I never thought much of the original, Moroder-produced 1982 reading of “Cat People,” but it is like Diamanda Galas’ “Wild Women With With Steak Knives” compared with the pub rock re-recording essayed here.”

          I’m glad that Bowie didn’t have any more number 1 albums after this as I would probably be seriously influenced/intimidated by his angle.

          • Yeah, he doesn’t appear on Then Play Long again until the surprise chart-topper ChangesBowie in 1990. MC’s quite merciful with Black Tie White Noise, and did post a totally-out-of-chronology review of Blackstar in January 2016. I’ll be interested to see his take on The Next Day when he gets round to it in about seven years’ time. Basically he’s a Bowie fan who’s very bitter about the 80s records as he feels they’re a betrayal.

            He’s more scathing about this period than Chris O’Leary on Pushing Ahead of the Dame, but O’Leary’s “unsentimental” to say the least. You can read pages and pages of his Ashes to Ashes book being totally unaware that he likes David Bowie at all. He is, however, quite nice about Blue Jean and Loving the Alien.

            • Yes, I have dabbled in Leary but am trying to avoid him as I want to read him before I review the rest of the canon as I don’t want to be influenced too much. The writer of Them Play Long, Marcello is exactly the same age as me and we seem to have the same cultural reference points so I think I will get a lot from this site. Old school long style, opionated reviews, just my kind of thing.

              I, too, am a massive 70’s Bowie fan who is trying to understand where his use and head were at post 1980. Still I’ve got until the end of the year to get around to it.

              Loving your comments and insight on the way. I find your phrase , “I like it, while accepting that it is crap” refreshing, hilarious and even quietly revolutionary in these day of fixed social media opinions.

              • Thank you. Not just me though. There was a great thread on here a while back about records that people enjoy while knowing that they are rubbish. the CSN Moon Sausage album and the like.

                I don’t have that sniffy Pitchforky “you wouldn’t like it, you’re not good enough for it” attitude to the music I like: it’s usually “You wouldn’t like it because it’s fkin terrible”

              • JUST CORRECTING TWO TYPOS THAT DIDNT MAKE SENSE ABOVE
                Yes, I have dabbled in Leary but am trying to avoid reading him before I review the rest of the canon as I don’t want to be influenced too much. The writer of Them Play Long, Marcello is exactly the same age as me and we seem to have the same cultural reference points so I think I will get a lot from this site. Old school long style, opinionated reviews, just my kind of thing.

                I, too, am a massive 70’s Bowie fan who is trying to understand where his muse and head were at post 1980. Still I’ve got until the end of the year to get around to it.

                Loving your comments and insight on the way. I find your phrase , “I like it, while accepting that it is crap” refreshing, hilarious and even quietly revolutionary in these day of fixed social media opinions.

                • Missed one – it’s Then Play Long 😉

                  If you read to the chronological end of that blog it seems that housing problems have kicked the guts out of his desire to continue.

      • He paid very close attention to his reviews. Going for a bigger, brasher sound on Scary Monsters was partly a response to the (at best) muted response that Lodger got. Tonight got him the worst reviews of his career, and he refused to tour it and disowned it immediately.

        Somebody’s talk on the Let’s Dance thread of him having writer’s block in the 80s is interesting – I think he was so beat up by the Tonight fiasco that he semi-deliberately obfuscated doing another album for as long as he could* by doing soundtracks, films, Iggy, swanning about with Jagger etc. Anecdotally there was coke involved in the Absolute Beginners sessions, but as they also produced D*nc*ng *n th* Str**t the jury’s out on whether that was a bad thing or not.

        (* three years – not long in the great scheme of things, but pretty long for a guy who had turned in Low, Heroes and two Iggy albums within less than a year)

        • That was me. Absolute Beginners is a great song, as is Let’s Dance and Loving the Alien. Struggling to come up with too many more from a whole decade right now (leaving out Scary Monsters)

  14. Those who know me and my listening habits may have observed some bits in Stan’s review that would actually appeal to my 80s pop sensibilities. They may also not be surprised to hear that I haven’t knowingly heard a single tune from this album. I’m going to put this right tomorrow. I have a sneaky feeling I might enjoy it.

    • How could you possibly not have heard Blue Jean?

      Why, with you liking the dire 1980s and me hating the dire 1980s, do I end up hearing a whole load of the dire 1980s and you miss hearing a whole load of the dire 1980s?

      That doesn’t seem at all fair, and I’m genuinely quite bitter about it.

      • Firstly apologies to @deramdaze I had heard Blue Jean but it had completely disappeared from my memory all I kept getting from the title was Neil Diamond. The album itself is very odd. The eightiesness is very American and America was shit at the “80’s”. It’s probably why the British invasion was so total even down to A Flock Of Seagulls. This is more the Kenny Loggins, Michael Sembello, Flashdance 80s. Which was pretty dire. After a couple of listens the best I can come up with is that it’s a collection of songs that British 80’s acts would have turned down. Thompson Twins would have said no thanks to Loving The Alien but happily lended their Glockenspiel. Aswad would have passed at Don’t Look Down. God Only Knows appears an attempt to copy David Sylvians Second That Emotion. Maxi Priest might have been tempted by Tonight but stuck with Wild World. Go West would have just about resisted Neighbourhood Threat. Duran Duran would have laughed in the face of Blue Jean. Kajagoogoo overlooked Tumble and Twirl and stuck with Ooh To Be A as the follow up to Too Shy although Nick Beggs loved the bassline. JoBoxers wanted I Keep Forgettin’ but decided against it on as it was too rockabilly. Finally Blue Zoo rejected Dancing With The Big Boys because the world had suffered enough.

        It’s ok but also an exercise in how to alienate your fan base in one easy lesson. Finally I don’t get The Police thing apart from the reggae vibe. The Police were great, great musicians and Stewart Copeland’s drumming uniquely brilliant. This doesn’t get close for me even as a pastiche.

        • Great stuff, Dave. I lived the eighties and haven’t heard of some of those acts. 😃

          Bowie had already alienated his fan base with Let’s Dance. His target was a global audience. I think he may well have made a better Tonight if he had talked to his accountant first. He’d just spent twelve months raking it in. He might have chilled a little and spent a bit of time writing songs.

        • Bowie hired Padgham because Synchronicity was huge. It’s been forgotten that at the end of 1983 it was duking it out in the charts with Thriller.

          HP had a bit of a mare helping the Police with their enquiries, but doing Tonight was probably not much better for the reasons mentioned above. The blame for its failure should not rest with him.

          In other news: people who don’t like The Police don’t like The Police. Respectfully, they can bollocks. P(ol)eace and love.

  16. I was a teenager when Tonight came out and Let’s Dance was the only Bowie music I’d previously heard. I had Tonight on cassette and probably the notes on the inlay were too small to read, or I didn’t bother, because I wasn’t aware at the time that any of the songs were cover versions – even God Only Knows! So I loved that track at the time and only revised my opinion a few years later when I heard the Beach Boys version. Let’s Dance and Tonight were my gateway to Bowie – I pretty much worked backwards from there. Tonight wouldn’t be in my list of top Bowie albums today but I still have a nostalgic fondness for it.

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