Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

dull, dogmatic element to Tin Machine shows,
demonstrated by songs like their plodding cover of
‘Working Class Hero’. It was this worthiness, and the
over-avoidance of the ‘conventional’ songs lamented
by Kevin Armstrong, which meant the initially warm
reception for Tin Machine – which hit number three
in the UK, number twenty-eight in the US – soon
petered out. The process was hastened by the
release of lumpen singles like ‘Under the God’,
backed with a workmanlike cover of Dylan’s
‘Maggie’s Farm’. Democracy has its drawbacks. As
Gabrels pointedly observes, ‘Sometimes a
benevolent dictatorshop can be a good thing.’
For David, though, there was a unique buzz about
the band; he loved the Sales brothers’ vibe, and
Hunt’s special craziness. Gabrels did, too, at first:
‘They were like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis,’ he
says. ‘A handful. Then during Tin Machine they
suddenly became like Cain and Abel. They made for
a lot of extra tension, and entertainment – if you find
tension entertaining.’ One night in New York, Hunt
had his manifesto tattoo’d on his back: in huge
letters it read, ‘It’s My Life’. But that wasn’t the
complete manifesto – he’d planned to have the
words ‘so fuck off’ inscribed underneath, but told his
bandmates that the heavy Gothic lettering took so
much work that he’d reached his pain threshold after
the first three words.
The inescapable predicament of Tin Machine, of
course, is that their democratic vision was a Utopia.
Bowie would always be blamed for Gabrels’ or the
Sales brothers’ artistic mistakes; equally, their ideas