David Bowie
Loving The Alien (1983-1988)

I must say that I adore Bowie's EMI period output, not only because it catapults me back to the years of my adolescence (those blessed and beautiful '80s), but also because I believe that Bowie during that post-“Scary Monsters” period was extraordinary in totally changing his approach to music in order to achieve that enormous international popularity he rightfully deserved. Only to then find himself, as he himself admitted, with a heterogeneous audience that confused his catalog with that of Phil Collins, or Tina Turner (!?). Certainly, in the '80s the number of albums released was really few and not comparable to the great production of the previous decade. Beyond this obvious fact, it would be a serious mistake not to consider fundamental the creative process that developed starting from “Let’s Dance” onwards, not including the figure of Iggy Pop.

-Iggy Pop.

Bowie challenges the music market with punchy blows like a boxer (drawing inspiration from the cover photo of the Bang Bang single by Iggy from the album “Party” '81), and wins his commercial battle in '83 with “Let’s Dance” (also thanks to the beautiful version of China Girl), sharing the benefits of this enormous popularity precisely with the Iguana and, above all, with the Duke's next album: “Tonight” ('84) in the renewed partnership of Dancing With The Big Boys. However, Iggy Pop, not content, also wanted an album like “Let’s Dance”. But the EMI was also pushing for a second “Let’s Dance”, which the artist was delaying to deliver. In short, the years between 1986 and 1987 see a super-dazed Bowie crushed by expectations from all sides, thus striving, on the one hand, to provide an album of new songs to Iggy Pop: “Blah-Blah-Blah” (recorded in a month: in April-May '86), and on the other hand, to produce something very commercial, like “Never Let Me Down” (recorded in three months: September-November '86), in view of a spectacular and memorable tour like the Glass Spider Tour (1987-88). In NLMD there is the same underlying idea of “Blah-Blah-Blah”: to produce an immediate and blatantly commercial record. Meanwhile, Iggy Pop enjoys the sales of “Blah-Blah-Blah”, but in the end, does not consider that success to be his own merit and, moreover, does not consider the album to be his, on the contrary, he renounces it and severs ties with Bowie, who from an artistic perspective had become rather cumbersome in terms of presence in his career.

-Never Let Me Down 1987.

When NLMD was released, the result was initially underestimated, but soon became a reason for fierce controversy from the critics, as well as clashes and divisions, especially among old fans. Why didn't NLMD, despite the incredible tour (which finally saw Bowie in Italy), and the good sales response, even please Bowie himself in the end? Simply because there is no album in his catalog that has such an excessive and artificial sound. In the years following NLMD was not spared even from the author's wrath, who in 1994 decided to irrevocably remove Too Dizzy from the tracklist (a track written with Kizilcay) and from his discography, defined as "his worst song ever" (Not true! On the contrary, it is among the best of NLMD. It was even used as a promo. But the hint is clear: not a cent more to that Kizilcay!). Therefore, the songs contained in NLMD never represented a problem; on the contrary, they were excellent (and very catchy), but it was the production, largely entrusted to David Richards (former producer of Queen) and Bowie himself, in combining that radio-friendly sound à la Open Your Heart To Me by Madonna.

-Never Let Me Down 2018.

Is it possible to imagine an NLMD outside the baroque noise of '87? The idea gradually came about with the help of Mario J. McNulty in 2008 (already a producer and sound engineer for Philip Glass, hired by Bowie from 2003 to today), with a new version of Time Will Crawl for the iSelectBowie compilation (Cf. our review: https://www.debaser.it/david-bowie/iselectbowie/recensione). Bowie was so pleased with the result that he expressed in capital letters: “If only I could redo all of NLMD”. The idea began to take shape, but he didn't have time to carry out the project. So he worked with McNulty only for the guidelines on the new arrangements and on who should play in the new version of NLMD (Reeves Gabrels, Tim Lefebvre, Sterling Campbell, David Torn). This Bowie project today finally sees its realization as an unreleased album in the celebratory Box of the eighties, Loving The Alien (1983-88), for the Pharlaphone. Without this new version of NLMD, the Box would add absolutely nothing to what we already know! The work deserves the listening of every fan, especially for those who do not appreciate the '87 version, while for those (like me) who love that version, the work (after a few listens) will not disappoint. Day-In-Day-Out is the most successful (starting from minute 2.25, the track seems to dress in new light). You can certainly feel the Duke's absence. In the arrangements, McNulty's sometimes bizarre ideas prevail more (see some turns towards Hunky Dory -replacing the brass with strings as in Beat Of The Drum and in Zeroes- or the Nine Inch Nails style version of Glass Spider that does not at all sustain the pathos of the original); however, in the sequence Shining Star (Making My Love), New York In Love, 87' and Cry, Bang Bang, we should only consider the work conducted by Reeves Gabrels to be masterful. Yes, indeed, in this NLMD 2018 there is a bit of the hard and dark Bowie production, from Tin Machine to “Outside”, which sometimes clashes with the vital and energetic setting of the original context. On the other hand, we cannot demand the impossible for an album that already in '87 saw a Bowie out of his artistic control. What remains from listening to the new NLMD is not something we can place in ordinary time (2018), nor can it be memory (1987), or a fantasy of memories; here, as Gabrels rightly says, it plays with imagining a time that becomes alien for us, but from which his creative genius suddenly emerges, like a living stone that surprises and once again strikes the broken hearts of his devoted fans.