Book Review: On Track… David Bowie 1983-2016 by Don Klees

Disclosure: The author gave me a review copy of the book in exchange for my honest opinion.

As you can tell from my cat’s name, I’m a big David Bowie fan. Who isn’t? He was a musician who had eras before Taylor Swift had her Eras tour. Throughout my time on Tumblr and the wider classic rock community online I’ve seen so much art that shows how much David Bowie had evolved from humble beginnings in the 60s to his glam rock, blue-eyed soul, and ambient/experimental sounds in the 70s to his more commercial 80s years and his continuing journey as an artist and innovator beyond that. Obviously, my favourite Bowie era is the 70s, yes everything about the decade: Ziggy Stardust? Brilliant! Aladdin Sane? Love it! Young Americans? *Swoon* The Berlin Years? Chef’s kiss!

This will be a hot take, but I’m a classic rock historian whose interest is the peak years of each musician. I tend to tune out when I lose interest and I’m sure you’ve noticed that in my writing.  As much as I love the classics, I like hearing something fresh and different. When it comes to 80s music, at first it took me time to love it because of how different it is from the 60s and 70s, but it truly is a great decade for music when you look at the fresh faces and genres. I’m a big fan of new wave, synth pop, post punk, and gothic rock. Admittedly, I don’t know much about David Bowie’s later work, but that’s an opportunity for an education and learning and so I was really happy to receive a review copy of this book. It’s a track by track overview of David Bowie’s discography from 1983-2016, from Let’s Dance to Blackstar. It’s part of a series called On Track… a journey through an artist’s discography: every track, every album. Ideal for the completionists and superfans. The author himself says in the intro that his 80s output doesn’t get as much attention because of the genius that came before it, it’s a tough act to follow, but he for sure ended on a strong note with Blackstar, released on his 69th birthday. Critic Eleanor Levy said it so well when she reviewed Bowie’s 1984 album Tonight: 

“The trouble with being David Bowie is that so many people expect so much, Bowie set himself up (and was set) as such a towering figure that when a down comes, it’s bound to be painful – if not for him, then the people who’ve loved his various public selves.”

That whole idea of a celebrity’s pedestal being built higher and higher as they have that meteoric rise to fame and keep one-upping themselves with their own genius only to fall when they inevitably can’t meet the high standards they’ve set for themselves and that downfall can be a real blow the more critically acclaimed they are. Still, even among David Bowie’s “trainwreckords” (a term stolen from the brilliant Todd in the Shadows), there’s some genius and I love the bookends of brilliance concept in this book and that sort of story arc and the track by track approach, that’s one I like taking when I write about rock and roll.

In the 80s, the rock and roll dinosaurs of the 60s and 70s were well-established and were part of that rock and roll establishment with the big bucks and name recognition. Their names alone sell tickets and records and they have bigger budgets so they can get the best talent to play on their records and collaborate with other big names. David Bowie is no exception to this. In 1983 when he released his 15th album Let’s Dance, he worked with producer Nile Rodgers of Chic, but he also took chances working with a pre-fame Stevie Ray Vaughan for the first time and played no instruments on the album, a first for Bowie. It was a major success because of the title track, the danceable “Modern Love”, and his cover of his friend and collaborator Iggy Pop’s “China Girl”. It was not the only cover on the album, with him recording a cover of Metro’s “Criminal World”, but he’s no stranger to covers because he had a whole album of them in the 70s, Pin-Ups. David Bowie was critical of this era because of its low creativity and it being poppy and conventional, calling it his Phil Collins years. And I can understand that comparison. Phil Collins released some bangers in the 80s like “Easy Lover”, “Sussudio”, and “In The Air Tonight”, great pop, but a departure from his proggy work with Genesis in the 70s. 

Let’s Dance was pretty good, but its follow-up was a flop in comparison and not as inspired as its predecessors. Once again he covered some songs, three more Iggy Pop compositions “Tonight” (this time as a duet with Tina Turner) and “Neighbourhood Threat” from Lust For Life  and “Don’t Look Down” from New Values, The Beach Boys classic “God Only Knows”, and a Leiber and Stoller composition “I Keep Forgettin’”. The album has a lot of ska-influenced songs and I can see where Bowie took inspiration because ska was huge in the early 80s, 2-Tone and I’m writing this from where that sound all began, Coventry. He really liked working with Iggy Pop and it shows in this album. This album had the least David Bowie-penned songs, as the record label put a lot of pressure on him to record a follow-up after touring Let’s Dance to capitalise on the wave of success He said he couldn’t write while on tour and didn’t want to release an album full of uninspired songs. Much like the critics, I agree that the strongest songs on Tonight are his originals “Loving the Alien” and “Blue Jean”.

He wasn’t happy with how the album had turned out so he took a two and a half year break until releasing his next album, but he still kept very busy and active in the music industry, working on side projects like soundtracks and charity projects. One of the most memorable things Bowie did in the 80s was starring in Labyrinth and recording the soundtrack for it. The other was his cover of Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street” that he recorded with Mick Jagger as a charity single. The Tumblr classic rock fandom made a meme of the camp music video and cover. He also collaborated with jazz fusion guitarist Pat Metheny on the song “This Isn’t America”. Not only was he in Labyrinth, he was also in the Julien Temple film Absolute Beginners. Fellow classic rocker Ray Davies appears in the film as well. This wasn’t his first time working with Temple, as he had directed the short film Jazzin’ For Blue Jean for “Blue Jean”.

In 1987, David Bowie released Never Let Me Down and Klees makes the point that classifying this as a Phil Collins-type album is too simplistic and dismissive, even though this was the last Bowie album with a US top 40 hit single, with “Day-In Day-Out” being in the top 20 and “Time Will Crawl” and “Never Let Me Down” making the top 40. This was also the last Bowie album with an Iggy Pop cover, “Bang Bang”. For this album he reunited with childhood friend Peter Frampton (his father Owen was his art teacher) to collaborate on the album. The Glass Spider Tour was his biggest, most ambitious tour yet with it setting the world record for largest touring set. Frampton also joined him on tour, as well as Toni Basil. One thing to keep in mind when reading his opinions on his own work is that David Bowie was really hard on himself. While it was the album he wanted to make, he was disappointed with the instrumentation and a remastered version with new instrumentation was released posthumously in 2018. One of the things that stayed from the original was Peter Frampton’s sitar work on “Zeroes”, which takes inspiration from the 60s. Unfortunately, this is considered Bowie’s weakest album, with him requesting the omission of the track “Too Dizzy”, written with Turkish multi-instrumentalist Erdal Kizilçay.

Two years later he released the album Tin Machine with a group he formed of the same name with Reeves Gabrels and brothers Tony Fox Sales and Hunt Sales. He wanted to take a democratic team approach and incorporate some newer influences like Sonic Youth and he was back to writing or co-writing almost all of the songs from the album. Some references to older music can be seen with some Doors-esque sounds on “Heaven’s in Here” and the “Wild Thing” like guitar and references to the Velvet Underground in “Crack City”. Once again, more mixed reviews for Bowie’s new material.

The early 90s were a time of change for Bowie, marrying the Somali-born model Iman in 1992 and changing record labels. Even if his 90s output wasn’t seen as strong, as an artist he always looked towards the future and championed new rock subgenres, being an early fan of grunge. Tin Machine disbanded after a second album and David Bowie moved onto a new era of musical experimentation with Black Tie White Noise. No drama, just the project had dissolved. In the 90s, Bowie worked with people he had worked with in the past with Nile Rodgers co-producing Black Tie White Noise (1993) and Berlin-era collaborator Brian Eno co-producing Outside (1995). On the former album, he recorded an English language cover of an Arabic song – “Don’t Let Me Down & Down”, this was Iman’s influence, as she loved listening to Mauritanian musician Tahra Mint Hembara. He also collaborated with a trumpet player named Lester Bowie, yes, that’s his real last name, and he covered a Scott Walker song “Nite Flights”.

He decided not to tour Black Tie White Noise because he wanted to spend time with Iman and they had only recently got married, so he released a soundtrack album in 1993 Buddha of Suburbia, for a TV adaptation of the Hanif Kureishi novel of the same name. While it was largely ignored by critics, it has been appreciated retrospectively. After the release of Outside, David Bowie went on his first tour in 5 years and made his first stage appearance in 3 years, his last one for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992. He famously had Nine Inch Nails open for him, and Morrissey opened for 9 shows on the European leg of his tour before dropping out just before the Aberdeen show. The idea of Outside was inspired by outsider music. While the singles from the album weren’t a hit in the US, the Pet Shop Boys remix of “Hallo Spaceboy” reached the top 20 in their native UK.  This collaboration with Eno has retrospectively been assessed as some of his finest work. It his his longest studio album at 75 minutes. Even if it’s not an accessible album or one for everyone, gotta respect David Bowie for his experimentation.

Earthling from 1997 has an iconic album cover and some of the songs on it were previewed on the Outside tour. David Bowie was one to keep his ear to the ground and he wasn’t stuck in the past so he’d often bring new singles with him from the record store to rehearsals for Earthling to get a bit of inspiration. The recording of the album was spontaneous and fun. Unlike its predecessor, it was band-driven. I particularly got a kick out of this David Bowie quote about his song “I’m Afraid of Americans”, “The face of America that we have to put up with is the McDonald’s/Disney/Coke face, this really homogenous, bland cultural invasion that sweeps over us.” Just a very intelligent quote and oh how things have stayed the same over time. David Bowie, truly a genius.

David Bowie was always one to look to the future and he embraced the internet and yes meme culture too. He established BowieNet in 1998 and it was active until 2012. He was also the first major artist to debut a new single on the internet, releasing his album hours… via BowieNet before it came out on CD. He also was an early fan of Placebo, who opened for him on the Earthling tour after Morrissey had dropped out. They hadn’t even released their first album yet. They covered T. Rex’s “20th Century Boy” with Bowie at the 1999 Brit Awards.

In the 2000s he reunited with producer Tony Visconti and had some late career successes with Heathen and Reality. Some of the lyrics from Heathen were changed after 9/11. A lot of the songs had very personal and philosophical lyrics. Because of health problems, David Bowie wouldn’t release another album for a decade, The Next Day. He had to abruptly stop his Reality tour because he had a blocked artery, requiring an angioplasty. Still, he kept busy with other projects and appeared in SpongeBob and played Nikola Tesla in The Prestige.I remember seeing people in the classic rock fandom get excited about it on Tumblr back in the day. It was recorded in secret and it came as a surprise to people, like a gift. People thought he had retired. This penultimate album and his very last album released in his lifetime Blackstar are considered among his finest albums and are definitely worth the listen. Like if you’re gonna listen to just two albums talked about in this book, listen to those. What’s especially unconventional about The Next Day is that David Bowie chose not to do interviews. 

As you may already know, Blackstar was the last album released in Bowie’s lifetime and he died two days after its release. The popular narrative is that it was his parting gift and there were hints of his death in the lyrics. According to Tony Visconti, David Bowie didn’t treat it like it would be his last album, that’s just how it happened to be. Visconti wrote in Mojo that Bowie was continuing to write songs and was looking forward to recording another album. He was very involved in the album and he was very energetic even though he was battling cancer, an incredibly strong person. It was a major success, topping the charts in the US, a first for him, and it was critically acclaimed and considered one of the best albums of 2016.

If you’re a big David Bowie fan, this is a great book to add to your collection. If you’re more of a casual fan and only really like his older material from the 70s, then I’m not sure if you’ll like this book, unless you’re open to listening to his newer material. There’s a lot great information and analysis in this book and it’s opened my eyes and my mind to David Bowie’s later material in his catalogue. The book comes out on 1 April.

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