Tin Machine II

The band reconvened following their 1989 tour, recording most of the album in Sydney.[2] 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[3] 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",[4] 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.'"[5]

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 (after recording track after track of guitar noise), he found a "shard of guitar noise" that he liked and used it on the album track "Shopping for Girls,"[6] a song about child prostitution in Thailand.[5] Said Bowie, "That song actually came out of an investigative magazine article that Reeves' wife wrote on child prostitution around the world. And one of the places she went to was Thailand. Reeves had the rather unsavory job of hiring the children and then getting them out of the brothels to Sara, who could then interview them. We were just talking about those experiences one night. And I've also been in Thailand and witnessed the same kind of thing. The actual approach of how to write the song was quite devastating. 'Cause it was so easy to slip into sensationalism. I tried all kinds of ways of approaching it … the moral point of view … and I just ended up doing it straight narrative. That seems to make it stronger than any other approach."[7]

"If There Is Something", a Roxy Music cover, was the second song that the band recorded, after "Heaven's in Here."[8] Said Bowie, "we were so exhausted that we didn't have it in us to write another song, so we used an old song to show how we as a band would approach someone else's material."[8] However, it was set aside after recording, and shelved until this album.[7] Bowie said "we pulled it out to see how it sounded. We really got off on it."[8]

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.'[5]

The group signed to Victory Music[9] and added three further tracks in Los Angeles, with Hugh Padgham (producer of Bowie's 1984 album Tonight) overseeing the song "One Shot".[10] 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."[11] Hunt Sales took lead vocals on two tracks: "Stateside" and "Sorry".[10]

The song "Betty Wrong" is featured in the 1990 film The Crossing.

The album's cover was created by Edward Bell, who had previously worked with Bowie in making artwork for Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). 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 (except for Gabrels', which featured a cutout of a Steinberger guitar).[12] The photo that would have represented Bowie was used to emblazon the CD label.

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[14]
Blender	[15]
Entertainment Weekly	C[16]
MusicHound	"woof!"[17]
The New York Times	favourable[18]
Q	[19]
Select	1/5[20]
Trouser Press	unfavourable[21]

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,[15][19] 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".[19] 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",[10] 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.[14] 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.[22] In 2010 and again in 2015, Uncut magazine placed the album on their list of 50 Great Lost Albums (their list of great albums not currently available for purchase), calling the album "extraordinary".[23][24]

In the late 1990s, some critics have suggested that the album was "unjustly" harshly reviewed at the time of its release.[25][26]

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,[27] 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.[28]

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 Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby (1992).

All tracks are written by David Bowie and Reeves Gabrels, except where noted.

"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.

Tin Machine – producers, mixing

• David Bowie – lead (1–7, 9, 10, 12) and backing (8, 11) vocals, rhythm guitar, piano, saxophone
• Reeves Gabrels – guitar, backing vocals, vibrators, organ
• Hunt Sales – drums, percussion, backing and lead (8, 11) vocals
• Tony Sales – bass, backing vocals

production

• Tim Palmer – producer, mixing, additional piano and percussion
• Kevin Armstrong – rhythm guitar on "If There Is Something", piano on "Shopping for Girls"
• Hugh Padgham - production, engineering and mixing on "One Shot"
• Guy Gray, Simon Vinestock, Justin Shirley-Smith, Eric Schilling, Ruggie Simkins, Chuck Ferry - engineering
• Reiner Design Consultants, Inc. - design
• Edward Bell - illustration
• Sally Hershberger - photography
• thanks: Isolar, the staff at Studios 301, Mesa Boogie, Steinberger, Takamine, Chandler, Ludwig, Vigier, Danny Ferrington, Jim Dunlop & DiMarzio
• special thanks, Phil, baby

Album

• Pegg, Nicholas, The Complete David Bowie, Reynolds & Hearn Ltd, 2004, ISBN 1-903111-73-0