Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

angular sharp-edged indie rock sound,’” says
Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. “The thing that I
didn’t buy into—this isn’t happening because you
guys play too well. And what is really interesting
about truly underground music is that the musicality
is really sort of primal and raw and new. Tin Machine
can’t reference this kind of music because they’re
too good as players. It’s okay to a degree but it was
putting on the airs that it was an indie rock band and
it was hardly that. I felt a little affronted by it.”
Gabrels himself observed, “Chops was a liability,”
what with their combined playing experience totaling
about seventy-five years. The dark suits in which they
appeared on the cover of the album could not have
helped them avoid this problem, as it tended to
make them look like a gang of clean-cut bankers.
Even more polarizing was the goatee that Bowie
grew for the first time in his career: a neatly trimmed
mustache and beard that threw many older fans
almost more than the startlingly bleak and unadorned
new sound. Bowie with facial hair?
In the continued interest of giving the Tinners a
measure of respect they have been denied for nigh
on two full decades, it should be noted that Tin
Machine took the Sunset Boulevard leather and
fringe and hair-spray and glitter out of rock ’n’ roll a
full two years before Nirvana broke as well. In 1989
and 1990 most rock stars took the stage in spandex
and fringed leather. Tin Machine, in the mirror at
least, was a by-product of three little stars and one
very big star fed up with the rock ’n’ roll scene.