Tin Machine II


Tin Machine II is the second and final studio album by Anglo-American rock group Tin Machine, released by Victory Music in 1991. Supported by 3 singles, the album peaked at number 23 in the UK, though it only made it to number 126 in the US.
The band's label, Victory Music, went bankrupt after the album's release, leading to it being mostly unavailable for purchase until 2020, when it was given its first major reissue on both vinyl and CD.
After supporting the album with the It's My Life Tour, Tin Machine dissolved and frontman, singer and songwriter David Bowie resumed his solo career alongside guitarist Reeves Gabrels, a partnership that would continue through the end of the decade.

Recording

The band reconvened following their 1989 tour, recording most of the album in Sydney. The band played an impromptu show at a small Sydney venue on 4 November 1989, which prompted a rebuke from the local musician's union before taking a rest while David Bowie conducted his solo Sound+Vision Tour and filmed The Linguini Incident.
In describing this album, guitarist Reeves Gabrels said "this album is as aggressive as the first one, but the songs are more melodic. Last time, we were screaming at the world. This time, I think, they're all love songs in a strange kind of way", and he joked that his personal playing style was something his friends called "modal chromaticism, which is 'any note you want as long as you end on a right note.'"
Gabrels later stated that at the time he was deeply into Nine Inch Nails' album Pretty Hate Machine and was looking for an industrial edge to his own guitar work for the album. Ultimately, he found a "shard of guitar noise" that he liked and used it on the album track "Shopping for Girls," a song about child prostitution in Thailand. Bowie said of the track:
"If There Is Something" was originally recorded during the sessions for the first Tin Machine album but deemed unsatisfactory, so it was shelved until this album.
The track "Goodbye Mr. Ed" was started as a jam the band used to tune up one day. Tony Hunt recalled "We all came back from lunch and David had written a whole sheet of lyrics for it, and then he put the vocal on later with the melody." Bowie described the meaning of the song saying, it "is very much juxtaposing lines which really shouldn't fit, free-association around the idea of 'bye-bye, '50s America.' New York once belonged to the Manahattos — a tribe that used to have that bit of land before it became Manhattan. That was the first real, solid image I had... I thought, 'That's what this song's about.'
The group signed to Victory Music and added three further tracks in Los Angeles, with Hugh Padgham overseeing the song "One Shot". Gabrels later said the band was pressured by Victory Music's owner Phil Carson to re-record "One Shot" with Padgham because "radio would play the song if they saw Hugh’s name", but in essence the original and released version of the song were "nearly identical." Gabrels said "the only difference is the hi-hat pattern. And I think the guitar solo is better on the Hugh version." Hunt Sales took lead vocals on two tracks: "Stateside" and "Sorry".
The song "Betty Wrong" is featured in the 1990 film The Crossing.

Artwork

The album's cover was created by Edward Bell, who had previously worked with Bowie in making artwork for Scary Monsters . In a manner similar to pop art, it consists of a photo of the Kroisos Kouros repeated fourfold. The original concept had each one overlaid with torn pieces of photos of each member to represent them. The photo that would have represented Bowie was used to emblazon the CD label.

Censorship

For the American release of the album, the cover was airbrushed to remove the genitalia of the Kouroi statues. "Even Canada has the original cover," Bowie said, "Only in America …" Bowie floated the idea of allowing American album-buyers to send away to the record company for the genitalia that were struck from their version of the cover, but the label balked. He said: "then could paste them back on. But the label freaked out at the idea. Sending genitals through the mail is a serious offense."

Release and reviews

Less successful than the band's debut album, Tin Machine II peaked at No. 23 in the UK and No. 126 in the USA. It received generally poor reviews on release, although it achieved success on the Modern Rock chart in the USA, where "Baby Universal" reached No. 21, and "One Shot" became an even bigger hit, reaching No. 3. Q magazine, in a review that stated on the cover the question "Are Tin Machine Crap?", felt that this album did not "quite match up to their wonderfully overwrought but sadly under bought debut", while praising such individual tracks such as "If There Was Something", "You Belong in Rock 'n' Roll" and "Shopping for Girls". There were positive reviews, with one reviewer finding the album "a return to raw form" and called it "the best music Bowie's released since 1980s Scary Monsters", while another found the album "well-conceived and well-executed", only lamenting that it had perhaps been released before radio listeners were ready to hear it. Yet another critic praised Gabrels' guitar work as "two parts Robert Fripp, one part Eddie Van Halen and one part speeding ambulance" in a review that also praised the album. In 2010 and again in 2015, Uncut magazine placed the album on their list of 50 Great Lost Albums, calling the album "extraordinary".
In the late 1990's, some critics have suggested that the album was "unjustly" harshly reviewed at the time of its release.
In 2020, the Bowie estate announced that the album would be re-released for the first time since its original release in 1991, via reissue label Music on Vinyl, on both vinyl and CD, with the reissue reaching store shelves on July 17 of that year. However, Gabrels immediately stated after the initial announcement that neither he nor producer Tim Palmer knew anything about the re-release.

Live performances

The band supported the album with a seven-month tour called the "It's My Life Tour", which started in late 1991 and ran through early 1992. Tracks from this and the first Tin Machine album were released on .

Track listing

"Hammerhead" is an edit from the longer vocal version that was issued as the B-side for some releases of the "You Belong in Rock 'n' Roll" and "One Shot" singles.

Personnel

Tin Machine – producers, mixing
;production
Album
Chart Position