Defend the indefensible: Bowie's Never Let Me Down

You're a crack-smoker!

"Heaven's In Here," "Tin Machine" and "Under the God" all take a giant, runny dump all over Never Let Me Down.

There is no way it's better than Let's Dance. LD might be commercial rubbish or a come down from the experimental phase, but at least the pop songs are classic pop songs. NLMD is embarassing. Except for Time Will Crawl which I love.

I've said this before elsewhere but I'm positive that when this record came out it got a lot of hype as Bowie's return to experimentalism, blah blah blah (this happens with every Bowie album now), and even was well received when it came out. Am I wrong? ON the other hand, Tin Machine got slammed by critics and it's one of his best records of the past twenty years. Oh well.

This is untrue.

Anyway, I truly do love Never Let Me Down. I listen to it fairly often and I have boughten it three times so far. (once on CD; lost it; got it on record, then CD again.) Saying I like it is one thing but defending it is much more difficult. So, I'll just say why I like it. Bowie's vocal performances: good examples on "'87 and Cry" and "Glass Spider" (the whoa oo oo oo) He get's really emotional and has some of his best 80s style yells. Thermelodies are as melodious as ever especially on "Shining Star (Makin' My Love)." Some of the songs have a really good party feel e.g. "Day-In Day-Out", "87 and Cry", and "Time Will Crawl." I honestly think people don't really give it a chance and really listen to it before they dismiss it (It took me a while to actually like it). I bet it's the really dated production (mostly in the snare drum: sound and mix volume) that turns people off from it right away. Maybe I have some speical ability to like the so-called badness or maybe it really isn't as bad as people like to claim (or joke)

Worst Bowie Albums:
1. Never let me down (worst cover as well)
2. Tin Machine II
3. Tin Machine
4. The Outside/Earthling/Hours/Heathen continuum
5. Black Tie White Noise

As stated by Velvet Goldmine, Bowie died in 1984.

1. Low
2. Outside
3. Hunky Dory
4. Heroes
5. Lodger
6. E a r t h l i n g
7. Tin Machine I

Worst Bowie Albums:
1. ...hours
2. Never Let me Down
3. Tonight

I don't think Black Tie/White Noise is anywhere NEAR Bowie's worst album. It has the sublime Jump They Say on it for starters (and a good version of Night Flights too).

I saw the Glass Spider tour at Giants Stadium, btw.

I'm really happy with this typo.

whory/hoary donkey

(I don't need no Tin Machine to do that)

A terrific post on the Glass Spider tour:

http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/i-wanna-be-your-dog/#comments

Indeed, and his whole take on the album song for song is just witheringly perfect -- he argues for it being better than Tonight but song for song is able to show how his best impulses were either strangled at birth, compromised or at best misunderstood.

and he's right! Having spent half an hour listening to Glass Spider renditions of unexpected deep catalog favorites ("Sons of the Silent Age" wiht Frampton singing the "Baby, baby..." part like he thinks it's "Show Me The Way"), I think he's right about the tour too: song for song those live versions ain't bad either.

Having never seen the tour or the video from same, I was honestly surprised to learn about those choices (not latest because "Sons" is one of my all time favorites from him).

Of course now I wonder what would have happened if he had just gone for it and done a crazy tour on that scale based around Labyrinth the previous year.

he does "All The Madmen" and "Up The Hill Backwards"!

Thirty years!

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/inside-david-bowies-disappointing-never-let-me-down-lp-w479033

Ngh. I don't really think I can bring myself to listen to this record again. Or Tonight. Or hours...

iirc i like this record more than tonight or hours

i wanted to find something redeemable in hours when i went through his whole discography last year but woof

I agree. I remember Alfred saying once that the album had no production, and god yeah is the overall sound of the record really shitty. What makes hours... even more inexplicable is that the two records at either side are his most underrated post-Let's Dance and pre-Blackstar work!

Despite his ambitions, Bowie was ultimately unhappy with the finished product... sales soon stalled and reviews were lukewarm. Looking back, Bowie considered the response "a bitter disappointment."

Was he unhappy that the record is not very good, or that the response to it wasn't very good? Is guess it's possible the answer is both.

To guarantee that no one ever takes me seriously, let me say that I looooove "Shining Star"--it's both utterly ridiculous and ridiculously catchy. It's up there with "Kung Fu Fighting" and "Emotional Rescue" as my favorite indefensibly stupid songs.

The title track is really good but it's got a crap chorus. "Time Will Crawl" and "Zeroes" also very good.

Erdal Kızılçay, otm:

Even though he has yet to hear the new version, Alomar approves of the idea. “I take this to mean that the innovation of Bowie is still there,” he says. “If anything, this will force you to reflect on the fact that things aren’t always what you perceive them to be. Let me prove it to you by keeping the same vocal and changing everything else up. Now do you like the song?”

But Kızılçay, who just learned of this new mix days ago, has an extremely different take on it. He despised the 2008 redo of “Time Will Crawl” (“Rubbish!“) and is so angry about not getting paid for the recent release of a “Let’s Dance” demo that he’s contemplating a lawsuit. “It’s OK to do new versions of the songs, but they have to at least tell me about it,” he says. “On [Never Let Me Down’s] ‘Glass Spider,’ it’s my string arrangements on the synths. If they repeat what I did without crediting me, I’ll sue them. If they don’t put my name on ‘Time Will Crawl,’ I’ll sue them again.”

He’s attempting to hash out these issues by reaching out to Bowie’s management firm in New York, but so far hasn’t had any luck. “I have written them four times and they never got back to me,” he says. “It’s very difficult here in Switzerland, since I have to find a music lawyer in New York. But I’m going to try. This is not right.”

I 100 percent do not agree with the purpose of these re-recordings.

Yeah it's...strange. To say the least.

He still sings badly, and the flourishes are the point.

curious about this box set moreso than the others, but initial reports are that the mastering job suuuuuuuuucks

Love the NLMD remake. Very glad it exists

Finding it hard to understand why people are objecting to this remake. He talked about remaking it as early as 1988 and was clearly bothered by it for years. It was one of his dying wishes to have it rerecorded posthumously, to the extent personally curating the musicians and producer to be involved. Regardless what opinions are of the original or 2018 version, this is what he wanted. With these circumstances, I don't understand why anyone would think it should have been left alone.

who cares what he wants, though? Artists are often wrong.

Righty-ho then

Gotta say:

Ironic Album Title..

Or indeed, ironic thread title.

Had a think about who cares about Bowie wishes and could only come up with his estate, producer, musicians and millions of fans

Whether you think the re-recordings were a good idea or not, I think the result is a triumph considering all the ways in which this could have gone wrong. "Time Will Crawl 2018" is spectacular. I also like how it still sounds like a record that could have been produced in 1987, mitigating the historical revisionism.

long as it's not the only version in circulation (like those dreadful Star Wars remixes) I reckon no big deal for fans of the original (or, more likely, people interested in what the album sounded like)

I also like how it still sounds like a record that could have been produced in 1987, mitigating the historical revisionism.

You're not wrong.

But this record needs the bad solos, Micky Rourke, synth patches, and "Too Dizzy"

I know it's been pulled since 1995, but, really, "Too Dizzy" when "God Only Knows," "Tumble and Twirl," and "Bang Bang" exist?

"But this record needs the bad solos, Micky Rourke, synth patches, and "Too Dizzy""

NOOOO

I think this remake is ok. It fell short of my expectations. Some big improvements, some minor improvements, some things are still crappy. Big revelation for me was 87 and Cry which now sounds like a Tin Machine song (yes I like Tin Machine).

Day in Day Out keeps the 'money/honey' bit which still fucking annoys me. wish they'd edited 'honey' out, it's so fucking lazy.

It's hard to polish this turd but this was an admirable attempt. The redo of this album makes the album as a whole superior to Tonight, certainly.

i'd be down for a non-Reeves version of Hours too but since he cowrote the whole thing that seems pretty unlikely

there’s def a legit alternate version of hours that could be pieced together already

i'm not even sure some of the songs are really strong enough on hours to make doing that worth it. I like boring adult-alternative Thursday's Child and...that's about it.

That album reminds me a lot of ...however you call it, Prince's first non-Prince album, the Symbol album. Good in theory, not very interesting to listen to.

hours... is really the only album I out-and-out dislike from his run from Outside to Blackstar. I find it a bit harsh on Love Symbol to be compared with hours..., though. Love Symbol is in a different league entirely.

To begin with washing the taste of hours out of my mouth, we'd have to redesign the awful sleeve and Bowie's haircut and flip-flops

i grew to like most of hours recently. idk. it’s certainly not the ideal presentation of that material but some of the songs are good if you stare hard enough through the ozone

Is it love or is it what?
Who's this guy I'm gonna blow away, hey
What kind of love is he giving you?

good christ the first post on this thread is some nonsense

as is the second

I love how Bowie dismisses this record ("I was barely involved, I gave it away") when in contemporaneous interviews like this he's very proud of demoing every track and being involved playing guitar and keyboards with the studio band. See: 4:15.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhaRvqI0nHk

Yes, the pathos around the record is that, unlike on Tonight, he was really trying, and crashed so hard. This is the only Bowie record where I enjoy zero songs (except Pin-Ups, which was an obvious throwaway).

I may try the re-recorded album on the Loving the Alien package, though it's hilariously petty how, in 9 hours and 54 minutes of material, they wouldn't find a place for "Too Dizzy". WE REMEMBER

probably said above but this was the first of the 'bowie back to what he does best' press-on-release narratives that were then repeated for almost every single album after

I have a probably unpopular thesis that “Young Americans” is a precedent to the more concerted and effective sell-out that would be “Let’s Dance”

I dunno -- I thought that when I bought Changesbowie a long time ago?

"Young Americans" isn't a sell-out, though, unless I read your claim wrong.

That is kinda my claim… more of an attempt at it than an actual sell-out

lol watching that clip again I see Bowie stressing how the songs are "not too dissimilar" from the demos he recorded himself.

wow ... this album really is an example for me of things that sound very much "of its time" ... I was in my early teens and bought it when it came out on cassette. I had never associated "Too Dizzy" with theme music for tv sitcoms before now. But it totally sounds like 1980s tv sitcom theme music.

As in I just went back and listened to that song because it was mentioned upthread and I had lol forgotten about it

The use of “Time Will Crawl” in Leos Carax’s Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (released as The Lovers on the Bridge in Anglophone countries) never fails to stun me. He also used “Modern Love” to incredible effect in his 1986 film Mauvais Sang

"Time Will Crawl" played loudly and prominently in Luca Guadagnino's excellent Challengers in a party sequence after "Hot in Herre," the most wtf segue in movie history.

I was wondering yesterday if there is a thread of filthy rich out-of-touch late 80s boomer rockers TELLING IT LIKE IT IS about life on the streets (and/or amongst the povvos)

The question was raised by listening to Neil Young's Crime in the City - which is probably not the most egregious example - but the first supporting example I thought of was Day In Day Out... tbh I was probably thinking of the clip more than the lyrics, but the lyrics definitely fit

In Bowie's case: filthy rich out-of-touch late 80s tax exile boomer rockers.

The notorious mean streets of Lausanne...

Or the mean streets of Madrid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYQ0Xd0nybQ

"Glass Spider" has one of the best basslines of any Bowie song imo

Also, to help me with a personal project*, does anyone know for sure - maybe it's in a biography I haven't yet read - why the Day-In Day-Out VHS got an 18 certificate? I know the BBFC were very strict back then and explained nothing, and my initial bets were on that car scene in the (abysmal) DIDO video, but one blog volunteers the enigmatic nosebleed in Loving the Alien instead and now I'm thrown. There's stronger things in lower certificate films/videos from the time than either and another mystery nosebleed turns up in a PG-rated Beloved vid from a few years later.

* I'm trying to watch every BBFC-certified music VHS from the 80s and determine why they're, usually archaically, certified the way they are. The Zodiac Mindwarp 18 doesn't really make much sense either, unless you factor in certain lyrics which I don't believe they ever did until the 00s.

The wiki entry goes into the details and it fits what I remember from some Bowie book.

Controversy and recognition

The music video was banned by some TV stations, even after edits removed the female protagonist's heavily implied rape, swapped in an alternate version of a scene where the couple's child spells out "Mom", "Food" and "Fuck" in building blocks (words which represented the child's cycle of dependency; the alternate version had the child spell out the meaningless words "Mom", "Look" and "Luck"),[4] and removed a closing scene of a young man urinating on Ronald Reagan's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[21]
Concerning the clip's ban, Bowie confessed, "I think it's ludicrous. [The censors] got caught up in the usual yellow press kind of excitement because of what it looked like instead of what it said."[22] During the press tour for the Glass Spider Tour, he was asked about the controversy and responded, "We asked the [Los Angeles] police to work with us and they did very happily. We wanted to indicate how some of the houses for the homeless are removed, so we asked them to bring along the kind of contraption they use [...] it's kind of like a tank with a big battering ram on the end of it. And on the end of the battering ram they've made a little joke. As it goes through the windows it goes 'Have a nice day.' And I pointed out that it would be in the video and they said they were only too pleased to keep it on, so they kept it on. Is that controversial? I don't know."[23] The video was nominated for a 1987 MTV Video Music award in the category "Best Male Video", but lost to Peter Gabriel's clip for "Sledgehammer" (1986).[24]

The nosebleed is on The Singles Collection VHS which received a PG rating, for what it's worth. Not sure what version of Day In Day Out is on there

Btw it's one one of these videos, can't remember which, where Jon Marsh discusses the infamous Beloved Happiness VHS 'bonus track' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=search

search for Jon Marsh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videos

OK it's the Boys On Film channel... I give up

I was under the impression the nosebleed got edited out of everything after 87? The mystery deepens!

Haven't seen any Jon Marsh interview about the Happiness VHS so I'll search for that shortly thanks. I did see an old Record Mirror that explained it originally got a PG (I assume for the Time After Time nosebleed, as inferred above) because the BBFC weren't aware of what Jon snuck on after the credits. So it exists in both PG and 18 versions, like Saturday Night Fever, except with exactly the same content both times.

From what I remember in the interview, JM makes it sound like he went along with the naughty scene and I don't think it was necessarily his idea

Nosebleed is 100% in the Singles Collection VHS from 1993

About 12:30 in btw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrU5xPXJi9I

so let's talk about "Beat of Your Drum."

swapped in an alternate version of a scene where the couple's child spells out "Mom", "Food" and "Fuck" in building blocks (words which represented the child's cycle of dependency; the alternate version had the child spell out the meaningless words "Mom", "Look" and "Luck"),[4]

Ha I was thinking that

after Glass Spider my favourite is New York's in Love

The first minute of Beat Of Your drum resembled some kind of 80s update of the Diamond Dogs album's drama. Then the dumbest chorus you've ever heard follows

'Never Let Me Down' is the worst Bowie album for me. There's not much in it though. It's worse than 'Tonight', but only because that album has 'Blue Jean'. It's worse than 'hours', because even though I don't like that album either it at least sounds like Bowie is trying to do something.

Basically I'm a Bowie rockist and don't much care about anything after Lodger aside from a handful of songs, but the mid-late 80s period is his worst.

'Never Let Me Down' is the worst Bowie album for me. There's not much in it though. It's worse than 'Tonight', but only because that album has 'Blue Jean'. It's worse than 'hours', because even though I don't like that album either it at least sounds like Bowie is trying to do something.

Quite the opposite imo. On NLMD he's trying, down to playing instruments and submitting finished demos. It does sound worse tho.

It's a bit amusing he always said he let other people make this album for him while he cruise controlled, when there's more original material here than on the two before it put together

NLMD vs Hours is tough but I would rather listen to the former. It’s at least bad in a cluttered, wacky way that is sort of amusing. Hours is just a slog with heinous guitar slop.

I thought the title track was pretty good. "Day-In Day-Out" and "Time Will Crawl" get mentioned in defense of it, and they're fine. I don't think I can sit through the entire album though, those three are about all I can mildly enjoy.

on a recent discog runthrough i found my way into both nlmd and hours. hours has some gorgeous stuff on it if you just resign yourself to how sleepy it is. tonight still the hardest bowie to get through

He said -- emphasized -- in 1987 that NLMB sounds pretty close to his own demos with Erdil Kizilcay, on which the two played every instrument; it's disingenuous on his part to say he wasn't "involved." Maybe he did go party while David Richards assembled the takes, but Bowie didn't have to be there if he let Alomar, Frampton, etc. professionally played his demo parts.

*play

Just realised "Shining Star (Makin' My Love)" would make a great Haircut 100 record

Anyone else see this? Just me ok