David Bowie “Black Tie, White Noise”
After two bad albums Bowie was on the ropes. His artistic rejuvenation strategy was clever. He would not come back as a solo artist, but as a humble member of a band called “Tin Machine” that everyone called Shit Machine behind his back. He went from the coolest guy on the planet to the guy no one would sit with in the middle school cafeteria.
But wait! He was still moving! Something in Shit Machine got the fires burning again and he returned to his solo career with 1993’s “Black Tie, White Noise”. Rolling Stone gave it four stars! The zeitgeist shouted, “He’s back!” And I really tried to like this record. I really did.
In the 90s Rhino re-released all the David Bowie albums, and I bought every single one of them, my teen mind marveling at this musical chameleon. They stretched the releases out so I had ample time to give every new mutation dead serious consideration. Maybe his song “The Signet Committee” on the almost completely terrible album “Space Oddity” meant something profound and I just didn’t get it. Maybe all the instrumentals from melancholy German airports on his Eno albums were better than the songs that slummed it and had lyrics. I just had to listen harder. You think I was naïve, but lots of people couldn’t tell either. You see on the outside, Bowie never cracked. From a fashion perspective, he was always cool. All looks worked until death -- mullet, magician, you name it. Has any living human navigated heroin chic to cocaine chic to sober chic so deftly?
All this led up to my purchasing of 1993’s” Black Tie White Noise.” I didn’t have the confidence in my own judgement to assess what a turd this album was. “Black Tie, White Noise” does not conform to 1993 mainstream recording trends, but it’s the kind of outsider album that sounds worse than whatever it was trying to avoid inside. I think this is called House Music, the kind that you rave to, but I’m not sure, because I never did that. There’s definitely a subculture being co-opted here somewhere. The title track pulses out a shiny Euro-funk to a 12/16 time signature that dares you to criticize it. The song is further insulated by its sign of the times lyrics:
Getting my facts from a Bennetton ad
I'm lookin' through African eyes
Lit by the glare of an L.A. fire
I've got a face, not just my race, Bang Bang, I've got you babe
The “you babe” here is Ethiopian super-model Iman who he had just married -- the only creature as beautiful as he was. I always thought the song was about neckties and bad TV reception, but I’ve done some research now and I guess the marriage opened him up to talking about his “tie” to black music (his pun, not mine) and his interest in black issues. Here’s another verse:
We reach out over race and hold each other's hands
Then die in the flames singing "we shall overcome"
Whoa! What's going on?
There'll be some blood no doubt about it
But we'll come through don't doubt it
I look into your eyes and I know you won't kill me
You won't kill me
You won't kill me
But I look into your eyes
And I wonder sometimes
The album was reported to have a very modern sound, but now that we’re almost 20 years past it, turns out the future did not sound like this. Bowie and “Let’s Dance” producer Nile Rogers were so committed to it not sounding like “Let’s Dance II” that they made it sound like dance beats for birds. Bowie plays a ton of sax on this record though he is open about not being able to play the instrument. If you put enough drumbeats behind it, and use it more like a screeching paintbrush, you just made trip-art-pop-jazz. But everybody was so happy with it, they put a picture of a saxophone on the back cover.
My vote for worst song of the album would be “Pallas Athena,” which, if I remember right, was one of three songs on the album he composed for his wedding. “Pallas Athena” is a brooding House beat with some chanting loops and a booming voice shouting “Gaaawd…is on top of it!” over and over again. I really would’ve liked an invite to this wedding. Was Iman digging this? In 1993, was this the song for Satanic animal sacrifice? Tip to future grooms: don’t make your wife listen to your dark art-rock experiments on your wedding. They don’t need to know everything about you.
The crux of this album is, not surprisingly, middle age. As a member of that demographic, I’ve gained a new depth of insight, like the master serial killer detective who starts to “become” the criminal. Looking down at my paunch and sweatpants, the transformation is complete. Middle-age is slower. It just is. Your metabolism changes. That doesn't mean you’re dead, but you’re not running around with your head cut off. It’s not about getting there, there, there. It’s about here. You have to reckon with permanence. As the poster child for impermanence, this puts Bowie in a pickle. As an artist approaches the end of their life, they often produce self-reflective work that looks back at old themes with new wisdom. But what does Aladdin-ziggyduke do at 40? According to legend, you’re supposed to put roots down in middle age. What does that sound like on a record? How do you do that without being all goopy and soft? That might explain why this wedding album can sound like music to be divorced by. It’s both sentimental and angular art rock.
The whole album stems from the same experimental “what’s this button do?” impulse that drove Bowie all his career. “You’ve Been Around,” an outtake from the second Tin Machine album (yikes), passes its vocals through a plug-in two clicks to the left of Mr. Roboto. It sounds dumb. Sixteen years earlier, Eno recorded the vocal track for “Heroes” through a microphone located two miles away in a WWII bunker and then patched it back to the studio through a ham radio. Or something like that. And it sounded incredible. It’s not the spirit of experimentation that’s at fault, it’s the inability to match what the song’s about with the innovation in how it’s made. Bowie’s cover of Cream’s “I Feel free,” a song about, well, feeling free, sounds more cramped and caged than the original to no discernible end. The single, “Jump they Say,” drawn from the recent suicide of Bowie’s schizophrenic half-brother, buries its tragedy under layers of beats, loops and sax screech. This song, more than others, is an interesting swirl of something. It is successful in getting across a feeling of agitation and paranoia, but you need to read the Wikipedia entry to claw through this song and really “get it,” and that’s not how music is supposed to work.
Toward the end of “Black Tie, White Noise” is an exception to the song/production mismatching that plagues the record. “Miracle Goodnight” wipes away the dark pulse of the euro-discotheque. Almost quaint, the song begins with a tiny looping Casio horn riff, then opens up the horizon into a big Philip Glass carousel, before popping back to its humble origins, successfully translating into music the giddiness of a long goodnight. It’s just an innovative and playful confection about a man making love to his wife. Is that so hard? Apparently, he handled that department just fine. Iman and Bowie remained married until his death.