Tonight (David Bowie album)

David Bowie released his 15th studio album Let's Dance in April 1983,[2] and was a major commercial success, propelling Bowie to worldwide megastardom.[3] He supported the album through the Serious Moonlight Tour, which ran from May to December 1983.[4] Although the tour was hugely successful, Bowie later found the tour to be a mixed blessing, realising that he no longer knew his audience.[5] Due to the stress of the Serious Moonlight tour, Bowie found himself at a creative stalemate; he would later admit that touring always left him devoid of new ideas.[6] At the conclusion of the tour, Bowie went on holiday in Bali and Java with his friend and singer Iggy Pop. Biographer Nicholas Pegg writes that until the success of Bowie's recording of "China Girl", Pop's fortunes had been dwindling since 1979 and he was forced to tour consistently.[7] After holidaying together, Bowie was eager to work with Pop on his next record.[8] Although Bowie felt he was ill-prepared to record a new album, pressure from the label to release a follow-up led him into the studio in the spring of 1984 unprepared.[6]

The co-producer of Let's Dance, Nile Rodgers, wasn't invited back to produce the new record. Although he was surprised, Rodgers attributed this decision as Bowie's way of proving he could make hits without a "celebrated hit-maker".[10][11] Bowie instead chose Derek Bramble, a former bass guitarist for the band Heatwave and more recently a producer for David Grant of the band Linx.[10] The engineer of Let's Dance, Bob Clearmountain, was asked to return but was unavailable; he suggested Hugh Padgham, who as a producer had worked with XTC, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, and more recently with the Police.[12] Padgham later admitted to having mixed feelings about working solely as an engineer, but accepted strictly as a way to work with Bowie. For the studio, Padgham suggested Le Studio in Morin-Heights, Canada, where he had recently completed work with the Police.[12][13]

Recording for the new album officially began in May 1984, less than five months after the end of the Serious Moonlight tour.[12] As with Let's Dance, Bowie prepared for the album by recording some demos beforehand, this time showing up with eight of the nine songs that would appear on the album. This surprised collaborator Carlos Alomar, who said "it was the first time in the eleven years that I've been with the damn man that he's brought in anything."[14] Along with Alomar, the majority of the personnel from Let's Dance and the tour returned for the new record, alongside newcomers Mark Pender, Curtis King and Guy St Onge. Pegg writes that Onge's contributions on marimba provide the album with "its most distinctive instrumental identity". The saxophone section, keeping inline with the tour's brochure, was dubbed "the Borneo Horns".[13] Like Let's Dance, but unlike most previous Bowie albums, Bowie played no instruments on the record, and he delegated almost all responsibility for the music played to his musicians, only occasionally offering critical input.[14] He confessed at the time: "I very much left everybody else to it. I just came in with the songs and the ideas and how they should be played and then watched them put it all together. It was great!"[13]

Iggy Pop spent a good deal of time in the studio during the sessions, stating "I worked extensively on that album. There's a lot more work there than is reflected in just the simple co-writing credit for two songs and some of the old stuff."[14] Discussing the collaboration, Bowie said: "We worked very much the way we did on Lust for Life and The Idiot. I often gave him a few anchor images that I wanted him to play off and he would take them away and start free-associating and I would then put that together in a way I could sing."[13] Their collaborations resulted in "Tumble and Twirl" and "Dancing with the Big Boys",[8] the latter of which was written and recorded in eight hours as they egged each other on. In what was described as an "exhilarating rush", Bowie and Pop "went in [to the studio] with a few bottles of beer and would virtually bellow out anything that came into their heads," said Padgham. "And I just recorded it all."[14] According to Padgham, the two wrote many songs that didn't make the final record. He described these tracks as "more left-field" and "less poppy".[8]

The sessions were troublesome. Padgham later told biographer David Buckley that Bramble had a habit of asking for "unnecessary retakes". After a vocal take, Bramble would request another, while he and Bowie insisted one was enough; Padgham believed that Bramble wasn't "used to anyone being able to do a vocal in one take". Alomar would later say: "Bramble was a really nice guy, but he didn't know jack-shit about producing."[15] Padgham later revealed in the BBS Radio 2 documentary Golden Years that there was a "falling out" with Bramble towards the end of the sessions, leading to his departure and Padgham taking over as producer.[16] Padgham hated many of the songs, specifically "Blue Jean" and the title track, finding them "too poppy", preferring the "more left-field" compositions that were left off the final album.[17] He later felt regret that he "didn't have the balls" to finish the other songs, telling Buckley: "Who am I to say to Mr. David Bowie that his songs suck?"[18]

Commentators have characterised Tonight as pop,[19] blue-eyed soul, dance[20] and rock.[21] The record's sound is similar to Let's Dance and the Serious Moonlight tour; Bowie purposefully made it this way because he felt that the new fans he had accumulated would expect to hear the same thing on the new album that they'd heard before.[14] Out of the nine songs on the album, Bowie was the sole writer for only two, "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean"; two, "Tumble and Twirl" and "Dancing with the Big Boys", were co-written by Bowie and Iggy Pop, and the remaining five are cover versions, three originally by Pop: "Don't Look Down", "Tonight" and "Neighborhood Threat".[13][18] One of the covers was the Beach Boys' 1966 song "God Only Knows", which, according to Pegg, was shortlisted for Bowie's 1973 covers album Pin Ups. Bowie explained: "I think that [Tonight] gave me a chance, like Pin Ups did a few years ago, to do some covers that I always wanted to do."[13] The final cover is the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller-penned "I Keep Forgettin'", originally made famous by Chuck Jackson.[18][22]

Some of the demo tracks were not yet named, but they were numbered, called simply "1," "2" and "3." "1" would turn into the "irreligious" album track "Loving the Alien". Bowie described "Loving the Alien" as a very personal bit of writing that he did not feel fitted in with the rest of the album because it is such a dark song amidst lighter fare. He said, ""Alien" came about because of my feeling that so much history is wrong – as is being rediscovered all the time – and that we base so much on the wrong knowledge that we've gleaned."[23]

"Neighborhood Threat" stands out as a track Bowie wished he had not done, with him later calling it "disastrous". "That's one I wish I'd never touched, or at least touched it differently. It went totally wrong. It sounded so tight and compromised, and it was such a gas doing it. It was the wrong band to do it with – wonderful band, but it wasn't quite right for that song."[9]

"Tumble and Twirl", co-written with Pop, recounts the pair's exploits while vacationing in the Indonesian islands Bali and Java after Bowie's previous tour had ended.[23][14]

For "Tonight", the title track and the other reggae-style track on the album, Bowie eliminated Pop's original spoken word introduction, calling it an "idiosyncratic thing" of Pop's that "seemed not part of my vocabulary. ... I guess [removing the spoken introduction] changed the whole sentiment around. It still has that same barren feeling, but it's out of that specific area that I'm not at home in."[23] Pop approved of Bowie's changes. For the vocals to the song, Bowie and Tina Turner sang face-to-face, although Bowie went back and re-recorded the first verse after deciding to sing his part in a higher octave.[14]

"Dancing with the Big Boys" is about the "little guy" being crushed by "oppressive corporate structures." The lyrics were taken from a backlog of unused lyrics; the line "this dot marks your location" was a reference to a "lengthy irritating stay" at a New York hotel (Bowie had been looking at the hotel room's fire escape map), and "Your family is a football team" was a reference to the immigrant families working in New York; "the whole family [has] to work together for survival."[14] The track elicited this from Bowie:

There's a particular sound I'm after that I haven't really got yet; I'll either crack it on the next album or retire from it. I think I got quite close to it on "Dancing with the Big Boys." ... I got very musical over the last couple of years – trying to write musically and develop things the way people used to write in the Fifties. I stayed away from experimentation. Now, I think I should be a bit more adventurous. And in "Big Boys," Iggy and I broke away from all that for one track, and it came nearer to the sound I was looking for than anything else.[23]

Three singles were released from the album: "Tonight", "Blue Jean" and "Loving the Alien". "Blue Jean" in turn spawned several videos, including an "elaborate" 20-minute-long collaboration with Julien Temple which was described as more of a "minifilm" than a video, and represented Bowie's interest in making actual movies.[23]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[20]
Christgau's Record Guide	C[24]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[25]
MusicHound Rock	1/5[26]
Pitchfork	4.3/10[27]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[28]

Despite some positive reviews of the album,[29] other reviewers criticised it for lacking creativity.[23] Padgham, who co-produced the album, also said that it was less innovative than other Bowie albums.[14]

An article for Melody Maker later dismissed Tonight as "rotten".[30] AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called it "one of the weakest albums Bowie ever recorded" and wrote that "none of the material equals the songs on Let's Dance", although he made an exception for "Blue Jean".[20] The New Rolling Stone Album Guide described Tonight as "an expensive quickie padded with lame covers".[31] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian stated in a retrospective of Bowie's career in 2016: "Let’s Dance... had its moments ... Tonight, however, did not".[32]

Bowie would later distance himself from the album, acknowledging that it was not one of his stronger efforts.[33] In 1989 when working with Tin Machine, he mused "There's stuff on [the album] that I could really kick myself about. When I listen to those demos it's, 'How did it turn out like that?' You should hear "Loving the Alien" on demo. It's wonderful on demo. I promise you! (laughs). But on the album, it's ... not as wonderful."[34]

Despite the general consensus on the album, Stylus Magazine reviewed the album in 2005 as part of its "On Second Thought" section and concluded that Tonight, although not a great album, is still a good one: "it’s a much better album than you think it is, or may have been led to believe. Bowie’s made some subpar records, but this isn't one of them—and frankly, even its failures aren't boring, because, well, it’s an '80s Bowie album, from a decade in which he was wildly inconsistent, but also never dull."[35] In 2016, Yo Zushi of the New Statesman also defended the album, writing "no album that begins with the seven-minute masterpiece 'Loving the Alien' and contains the rocking 'Blue Jean' should have received the drubbing it got". He also argued "the TV-special-style cover of the Beach Boys' 'God Only Knows' is as stirring, in its cold, almost Brechtian way, as Station to Station's 'Wild Is the Wind' – it's like watching Elvis in [Las] Vegas through a sheet of ice."[36]

Bowie did not tour for the Tonight album, though tracks from this album were performed on later tours. "Loving the Alien" was performed live during Bowie's 1987 Glass Spider Tour and 2003–2004 A Reality Tour. "Blue Jean" was performed live during the Glass Spider Tour, 1990 Sound+Vision Tour, and A Reality Tour. Bowie also performed "Dancing with the Big Boys" during the 1987 Glass Spider Tour, and thought he might perform "Don't Look Down" during that tour as well, but that song never made it to the rehearsal stage.[37]

Adapted from the Tonight liner notes.[42]

• Tonight at Discogs (list of releases)