Turning
30 years old today is David Bowie’s 18th studio album, Black Tie White
Noise, which was released on April 5th, 1993. After a six year gap
since his last solo album, Bowie was back working with Let’s Dance
collaborator, Nile Rogers, though their pairing this time around may
have been more forced and less creatively satisfying for both artists.
After
the career topping success of the Let’s Dance album in 1983, Bowie’s
output seemed to be trending in the wrong direction, creatively, for the
remainder of that decade. Tonight (1984) only had moments as a decent
enough follow-up and 1987’s Never Let Me Down slipped even further,
struggling to live up to its title. Bowie then moved on to forming Tin
Machine with Robert Fripp and producing two albums which were met with
mixed responses from fans and critics alike. When it came time to set
that band aside and return to solo work, it would seem that there was
some pressure to reconnect with Nile and see if they could recapture
some of the magic that gave their previous work so much success. Though
the reports at the time of production indicated a collaboration that
was mutually satisfying, subsequent comments from both artists painted a
different picture. Rogers dismissed the album as a lost opportunity,
with him wanting to continue on a path contiguous with the Let’s Dance
sound and feel, while Bowie was wanting to experiment and explore more
avant-garde edges. Ultimately, it seems the two were working at cross
purposes and the results may have suffered somewhat from that lack of
cohesion.
Thematically, Bowie was heavily influenced by his
recent marriage to supermodel, Iman, and by the LA riots they witnessed
first hand while they were in the city for their honeymoon. Bowie
commented that the entire experience felt like a prison riot, where so
many innocent prisoners were demanding fair treatment by a city which
had turned into a virtual prison. This set his mind into concepts of
racial relations and trying to bridge cultural and social gaps between
people. His marriage set an example of what was possible when people
could love freely and without the learned biases of racial
disparagement. The title Bowie described thusly:
“White noise
itself is something that I first encountered on the synthesizer many
years ago. There's black noise and white noise. I thought that much of
what is said and done by the whites is white noise. 'Black ties' is
because, for me, musically, the one thing that really turned me on to
wanting to be a musician, wanting to write, was black music, American
black music. I found it all very exciting – the feeling of aggression
that came through the arrangements.”
With its UK release, despite
the creative conflicts which may have been at odds behind the scenes,
it still managed to hit the number one spot on the charts, but it would
be the last Bowie LP to do so until the release of The Next Day in 2013.
In the US, it managed to climb up to #39, but its promotion was
hobbled by the US label, Savage Records, filing for bankruptcy soon
after it was released. Bowie had a three album deal with the label, but
they ended up suing him, claiming financial losses on their investment
in BTWN. However, their case was dismissed and the label was dissolved,
leaving the album in a kind of limbo in the US with few available
copies until it was reissued later in the decade. Critically, many felt
that it was a worthy successor to and continuation of what Bowie had
achieved with Scary Monsters. In light of the disappointment registered
with his work prior to this, it certainly felt like a revival of
Bowie’s status. Still, retrospectively, some consider the album to have
been overpraised at the time and that it didn’t hold up well in ensuing
years.
Bowie did not tour to support the album, instead producing a film to accompany it.
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