THE KINKS @ 60

Celebrating its 60th anniversary today is the eponymous debut LP by The Kinks, which was released on October 2nd, 1964. While not fully indicative of the latent talents of the band, in particular the songwriting prowess of leader, Ray Davies, it is at least the home of the band's first chart topping single, You Really Got Me, a song that would become the blueprint for garage rock, hard rock, heavy metal and punk rock in years to come.

The band were founded by brothers Ray and Dave Davies in 1963, coming together in London around the same time as others of the looming "British Invasion", rubbing shoulder to shoulder with bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. The group had signed to Pye Records, who were initially frustrated by the band's failure to connect with its first couple of singles. Both their cover of Little Richards' Long Tall Sally and its follow-up, the Davies' original, You Still Want Me, were pretty much ignored by DJs and record buyers, despite significant promotion.

After those two strikes, the label gave them one more opportunity to hit a home run, and they did so with You Really Got Me. Another Ray Davies original, the hit version almost never materialized. After recording a preliminary version, Ray Davies insisted on modifying the arrangement to something slower and more raw. The label refused to stump up the cash for the studio time, however, but Davies persisted until session producer, Shel Talmy, broke the stalemate by underwriting the additional session himself. The song was inspired by The Kingsmen's version of Louie Louie, and was taken to another level by the innovative mutilation of a guitar amp. Dave Davies took a pocket knife and put a slice into the speaker cone of his amp, causing it to have a distinct buzzing distortion. It was a sound that instantly gave the record an idiosyncratic edge, sounding unlike any other guitarist out there. The single, released in August of 1964, became a top ten hit in both the US and UK. It's gone on to be widely considered the root for many of the heavier branches of rock 'n' roll that grew from its inspiration. That fuzzy distortion became intrinsic to the hard rock and metal sounds that would proliferate in the following decades.

The rest of the album, however, wasn't so blessed with as much distinction. As was the standard of the time, being a new group meant that the record company expected them to record mostly covers, rather than original material. This is a situation all of the British Invasion bands went through with their first recording efforts, which is why many of those debut albums don't properly capture the true essence of a lot of those bands, and this is certainly the case with The Kinks. Their debut LP offers only a bare glimpse into the greatness that the band would deliver once they were allowed to shine in their own light.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE @ 50

 

With its theatrical premiere on October 1st, 1974, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre turns 50 years old today, marking half a century of setting the standard for "slasher" horror. It's a film that derives its authenticity from the fact that a lot of the misery and grotesquely unsettling horror was achieved through the use of real blood, bone and guts in a hot, humid Texas environment that was an ordeal in which to film, capturing the nausea of the experience in the celluloid itself.

The film's promotion said that it was based on a "true story", but while the inspiration for some elements was derived from the notorious serial killer, Ed Gein, who committed his crimes in Wisconsin in the 1950s, the bulk of the story is predominantly fictional, with the assertion of being a "true story", in reality, functioning as a commentary on the manipulation of the press of the era. Media and political "spin" routinely covered up the truth of what was happening in and around the major events of the time, promoting often entirely false narratives. It was also a response to the callous detachment of mainstream journalism as it reported the horrors of the day. Thus, framing the film as "true" was a wink at the audience to consider the source and never take anything at face value.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was Tobe Hooper's third feature film, for which he was writer, director, composer, editor and cinematographer. For the production, he was working with a very tight budget of $140,000 ($700,000 adjusted for inflation). With the principal expenses focused on equipment rentals, the cast and crew were required to work 16 hour days, seven days a week, in order to maximize equipment usage. The entire film was shot in Texas, utilizing mostly unknown local talent for the cast.

Filming conditions were brutal during the shoot, with temperatures routinely topping 100°F, and no AC for any of the interior scenes. With practical effects utilizing actual animal carcasses for props and set dressings, in varying states of decay, including smearing real blood on the walls, plus the inability to launder costumes and masks, especially those used by Leatherface, for fear of losing continuity, the experience on set must have been exceptionally putrid! It was an experience that made many of the cast and crew "hate" Hooper by the end of the production, requiring years for some to fully forgive the trauma of being on that set.

Conceptually, the film is notable for introducing the trope of using power tools for murder weapons, with Hooper having conceived of the chainsaw angle while waiting in a long line at a hardware store one day, musing on what might be an effective way to "thin the queue". The set and setting for the story had been lingering in Hooper's mind for a few years before, dealing with the ideas of isolation, the woods, and darkness. As previously mentioned, notorious serial killer, Ed Gein was a key inspiration for the main characters, and Gein would be a recurring reference point in the genre in subsequent years, with films like Silence of the Lambs also tapping into that history.

Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface, in order to better represent his character, spent time in the classrooms of learning disabled children as a way to get into the mindset of someone who is not able to communicate properly with other people. On set, Hooper would coach him to ensure that he would be consistent in his use of gibberish, though Hooper would make sure Hansen understood the literal intent of what he was trying to say. This attention to detail helped to lend the character a humanizing depth, something that actually made him all the more horrifying by grounding him in a sense of plausibility.

While Hooper had actually refrained from using an excessive amount of gore, in the hopes of landing the film a PG rating, the film board still slapped it with an R, but that didn't seem to hurt the box-office returns, which given the modest investment, were ultimately spectacular. Though it was certainly a commercial hit, it also encountered significant backlash in some markets, with certain countries banning the film, outright. Critics were also split on its merits, with some finding its brutality simply too hard to tolerate, questioning the ethics of the producers, while others were impressed with the acting and the films technical execution.

The film became the next in line to redefine the horror genre, following Night of the Living Dead, as an astute social commentary smuggled in under the guise of low-brow exploitative entertainment. Its rendering of a perverse backwoods family resonates even today, maybe especially today, in the era of "MAGA". It shows this backwoods family living in a state of grotesquely diminished and distorted ethics and values, morphed into some kind of monstrous assault on morality. In the context of the film, they're discards from a capitalistic post-industrial manufacturing wasteland. They worked at a slaughterhouse, in an impersonal industrialized factory dedicated to the process of dehumanizing both the product and the people who worked there. In a similar way, the MAGA crowd are equally disenfranchised and dissociated from normal perceptions of right and wrong. In that sense, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an unsettling prediction of the decline of middle American values and ethics. Others have even interpreted it as a pro-vegetarian salvo, with its grizzly depiction of slaughter and meat being considered some of the best promotional material for vegetarianism around. Some have criticized the films abuse of women, with studies actually using the film as a test of male empathy. Whatever your interpretation, it's clear the movie has a depth of meaning that can be perceived from a variety of angles.

Ultimately, it has remained as a landmark in the genre of horror film making, establishing a number of different tropes in terms of how violence can be depicted and interpreted on screen. Personally, I consider it one of the essential films in the genre from that era, along with George Romero's previously mentioned Night of the Living Dead, and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead. I think those three films have a distinct hold on the reigns when it comes to pushing boundaries and setting standards in the domain of blood & guts film making.

THE MONKEES - PRESENT @ 55

 

Marking its 55th anniversary today is the eighth and penultimate original studio LP by the Monkees to be released during their initial incarnation, with "Present" being released on October 1st, 1969.

The full title of the album is "The Monkees Present Micky, David, Michael", an indicator of the underlying concept that had been developed at the album's inception. The original idea was that each member of the band would be given a full side of an LP to do, essentially, whatever they wanted, with the final product being something of a four-way split solo collection in a double LP package.

While the guys had come together into a rather serviceable garage band when recording their 1967 Headquarters album, which was something of a celebration of their freedom after the palace revolt that ousted musical director, Don Kirshner, their subsequent efforts had seen them fragment into increasingly independent and isolated creative silos, with each member working on their own material, often with entirely different musicians and producers. After the cancellation of their series and the failure of their feature film, HEAD, record sales were slumping, and the group's label had little interest in overseeing their work, which created a situation that actually allowed them a tremendous amount of creative freedom. With those conditions at hand, it made sense to continue to work independently and give each member equal real estate to express their musical ideas.

However, by the time production of the album began, Peter Tork had departed, taking his leave immediately after completing filming of their bizarre, misguided 33 1⁄3 Revolutions per Monkee TV special, which aired on NBC on April 14, 1969. Production ended on the special on December 20th, which is when Tork bought out his contract, siting exhaustion. He was given a gold watch to commemorate his retirement from the band. This left the group as a trio, so the double LP format didn't balance out anymore, and the decision was made to pair down the tracks to a single LP release.

Excluding the soundtrack to HEAD, the group's previous two album's had been something of a mishmash of new recordings and material pulled from the band's vast archive of older, unreleased recordings, including material from the Kirshner days. This frugality somewhat obscured the fact that Peter's presence was already lacking in the studio, even before officially leaving the band. It also helped the band keep a bit of a presence on the charts, with songs from their commercial peak still popping up on their albums. But "Present" was composed of entirely fresh recordings from the three remaining members, with only Nesmith's "Listen to the Band" having prior exposure from being performed on the 33 1⁄3 TV special. In effect, the band were at last performing without a net, and relying on their current abilities and resources to make their artistic statements.

What resulted from their efforts, while nowhere near the infectious pop confections of their past, was still an interesting and mature collection of songs. Their popularity and cohesion as a band may have been on the wane, but individually, they were creating some compelling music. Dolenz's song, Mommy and Daddy, especially in its original lyrical form, was a hard hitting political and social commentary, questioning how we're supposed to bring up our children in a world full of strife and violence. While it was severely muted on the final LP version, the original lyrics were eventually released for the deluxe edition of the album, revealing their true vitriol at the state of world affairs, referencing the Vietnam war and the Kennedy assassination in the guise of a playful pop ditty. And Nesmith's aforementioned Listen to the Band, would go on to become something of a secondary theme song for the group in later years, as aficionados matured and reassessments of their work smothered the ridicule and replaced it with admiration, with subsequent generations continually rediscovering the vastness of their canon of work and its inherent quality.

Upon the album's release, it was heavily promoted by their label, and saw the group returning to TV as guest on a number of variety shows, like those of Glen Campbell and Johnny Cash, and the group even briefly took up residence in a spot on Hollywood Squares, where the trio got cozy in their single cell. They also went on tour, backed by Sam & The Goodtimers — a seven-piece R&B outfit. Perhaps it was a bit of an odd combination, but those concerts were notable for the innovative used of multimedia technologies, incorporating large screen projections of clips from their show, an approach that would be revived when the group reunited in the 2Ks to tour. But despite the promotion and exposure, the ship had sailed on their popularity, and immediately after completing the tour, Mike Nesmith departed to form his First National Band. Micky and Davy soldiered on through one more LP, Changes, in 1970 before finally pulling the plug on the entire project.

Of course, we all know that's not where this story ends, as the group went through one revival and reunion after another, decade after decade, as new generations of fans repeatedly rediscovered their TV series and music. Though "Presents" may have seemed someone of a sad fading of glory at the time of its release, in retrospect, it has managed to take its place as a valued chapter in the band's musical history.

THE BEATLES - ABBEY ROAD @ 55

 

Released on September 26th, 1969, the "sort of" penultimate Beatles LP, Abbey Road, turns 55 years old today. The confusion of its chronology comes from the fact that it was recorded after the Get Back/Let It Be sessions, but released before Let It Be. As such, it represents the last time the Beatles, as a group, were in a recording studio together at the same time.

The background for Abbey Road is inextricably linked with the Get Back sessions that preceded its recording. The Get Back project had rather spun off the rails to a large degree, with its plans for a return to the bands roots, documented in excruciating detail in a planned documentary film and capped off with an elaborate live performance, undermined as the group's internal relationships continued to fragment and their grandiose plans only culminated with a bizarre, albeit infamous, roof-top live performance atop the EMI recording studios (later renamed Abbey Road).

Following the rooftop gig, what would be the last ever live performance by the band, Paul McCartney suggested a regrouping effort to producer George Martin, who agreed to the concept with the provision that he be given full producer authority over the sessions like during the group's earlier albums. The fragmentation of the group had set in during the so-called "White Album" sessions, a situation that the Get Back project had meant to address, but which had only fermented more. Abbey Road was sort of a last-ditch effort to try to restore a sense of unity in the band, but even with the best of intentions, some antagonisms were simply too deeply rooted to extricate.

Lennon's insistence on including Yoko Ono in the sessions was one such ongoing source of conflict and consternation in the band. This even extended to the point where, after Lennon and Ono were in a car crash, resulting in an injury to Ono, Lennon had a hospital bed installed in the studio to accommodate her recovery and allow her to continue to observe the band's activities. Harrison's relationship with the group was also continuing to strain as he attempted to assert a greater influence on the album's content. But it wasn't all gritting teeth and exasperation in the studio. For the most part, the mood was actually mostly cordial and pleasant much of the time, though the underlying stresses would simply never entirely abate.

Despite the percolating tensions, the group's creativity was bolstered by the use of some cutting edge technology, principally in the form of an eight track recording system with a solid state mixing console, both of which helped the group to achieve a far more expansive sound, with the freedom to explore even more complex overdubbing. The other notable bit of kit was the MOOG modular synth system that Harrison had purchased the previous year and used for his sophomore solo release, Electronic Sound. While the instrument had been used for little more than noodling effects on that album, by the time it was incorporated into the Abbey Road sessions, Harrison's prowess with it was sufficient that it became integrated as proper musical accompaniment and not merely for exotic sound effects.

For the album's cover, McCartney had conceived of the idea of a photo of the band crossing the street outside the EMI studios building at Abbey Road, which would also give the album its title. Apple Records creative director John Kosh designed the album cover. It is the only original UK Beatles album sleeve to show neither the artist name nor the album title on its front, which was Kosh's idea, despite EMI saying the record would not sell without this information. He later explained that "we didn't need to write the band's name on the cover. They were the most famous band in the world". The iconic image has since gone on to become one of the most recognized, replicated and imitated group photos to ever be created. Scores of fans have tried to recreated the photo, and in 2011, a webcam was installed at the crossing. The cover also helped stoke the "Paul is dead" conspiracy, with McCartney appearing in the photo as out of step with the others in the band, holding his cigarette in the wrong hand, and the only one barefoot, leading to speculation that these were somehow symbolic of the person in the photo being an imposter.

The album was released with virtually no promotional campaign, amid internal disintegration, with Lennon already having announced his intention to leave and Paul about to make a public statement of his departure, thus formalizing the band's dissolution. But promotion wasn't much required as the album immediately shot to the top of the charts, where it lingered for quite some time. The group machinery continued to hang on long enough for a reassessment of the Get Back material, which was put in the hands of Phil Spector to get it finished while the group disintegrated.

While the sales for the album were brisk, critical response was mixed, with some finding the use of the electronics gimmicky and the songwriting inauthentic. Regardless of this initial ambivalence, retrospectively, the album has become considered perhaps the band's most lauded and appreciated release. While it may not have had the conceptual and cultural impact of Sgt. Pepper, in the long run, aficionados of the band repeatedly cite the LP as their crowning achievement. Whether that's the case is a matter of preference in the end.

JOHN LENNON - WALLS AND BRIDGES @ 50

 

Celebrating its golden jubilee at 50 years old is John Lennon's fifth solo studio album, Walls and Bridges, which was released on September 26th, 1974. While the album came along at the tail end of Lennon's notorious "lost weekend" era, its a remarkably coherent release, containing one of his most successful solo singles, Whatever Gets You Through the Night.

Back in June of 1973, Yoko Ono had suggested a separation between her and John, as an attempt to try to create some space between them and allow for a reassessment of their marriage. Lennon, with Yoko's encouragement, left NYC to set up camp in LA, taking along personal assistant and paramour, May Pang. Once in LA, Lennon briefly became involved in the now legendary LA party club, The Hollywood Vampires, an outfit that started as a softball team, but quickly mutated into a cadre of professional boozers haunting the LA strip, which included as its core members: ex-Monkee Micky Dolenz, Alice Cooper and Harry Nilsson. Lennon also got the chance to reconnect with firstborn son, Julian while in LA.

The initial plan was to record an album of classic vintage rock 'n' roll covers, with Phil Spectre producing. While the booze flowed and the tapes rolled, material was recorded, but the album went into limbo after Lennon and Pang returned to NYC and Spectre disappeared for a time with the recordings. The "Rock 'N' Roll" album would eventually get released in 1975, but in the meantime, Lennon returned to the east coast with a batch of new songs and a desire to get back into the studio to record something fresh.

Lennon began rehearsing his new material with studio musicians at Record Plant East in New York City in June 1974, which included Jim Keltner on drums, Klaus Voormann on bass guitar, Jesse Ed Davis on guitar and Arthur Jenkins on percussion. Once sessions began, a number of notable guests popped in, including Elton John, who helped out on Whatever Gets You Through the Night. Harry Nilsson contributed to Old Dirt Road, and son Julian played drums on the album closer, Ya Ya. Despite Lennon's debauchery in LA, the NYC sessions were noted as being surprisingly professional, with Lennon being organized and prepared throughout, though the core musicians were mostly responsible for working out their own arrangements as the recordings progressed.

The album proved to be exceptionally popular with fans, though critics were divided at the time, albeit the majority of reviews were some of the most positive for Lennon since the release of Imagine in 1971. Thought it might have seemed like Lennon was revitalizing his career, Walls and Bridges would turn out to be his penultimate collection of original music. The Rock 'N' Roll covers album would get finished and released in 1975, and then Lennon would take a five year career hiatus as he reconnected with Yoko Ono with the birth of their only child, Sean. Lennon's desire to be a present father for Sean trumped any career aspirations at that time. Sadly, as Lennon and Ono were on the path to reasserting their creative presence with the split Double Fantasy album, Lennon's career and life would come to a tragic end that fateful day in NYC outside his Manhattan apartment building.

THE RESIDENTS - ESKIMO @45

 

Marking its 45th anniversary today is the sixth studio LP from those mysterious masked music makers, The Residents, with their epic masterpiece, Eskimo, being released on September 26th, 1979. It's an album that would indelibly define the iconography of the group, while demonstrating their conceptual depth to a degree never previously achieved, and rarely match afterwards.

The background of Eskimo's genesis is shrouded by a combination of deliberate misinformation, myth and hearsay, with only fragments of the story seeming to have any firm basis in actual historical fact. Even the concept itself, while superficially intended to function as anthropological documentation, is in reality only conjecture based on cultural ignorance and stereotyping. This is a deliberate commentary on how British & European cultural imperialism has chosen to misrepresent indigenous peoples over the centuries. The album's themes and stories are all built on either popular misconceptions of Inuit culture and life, or outright fabrications, informed by consumerist archetypes and slogans. In that sense, the project is a deft commentary on how aboriginal culture has been distorted and appropriated by colonialist interlopers.

According to the group's internal mythologizing, the initial idea for the album came into consideration sometime in 1976, shortly after completing Third Reich 'N Roll, when the group's mysterious mentor, the enigmatic N. Senada. He had reappeared after going missing for a year, vanishing in the middle of the ill-fated Vileness Fats film project. He had apparently gone to the far north, returning with recordings of Arctic wind and a jar of air, and an inspiration for capturing the culture of the native peoples in song and stories. Given the group's penchant for fictionalizing their existence and history, trying to decipher the true instigation of the idea might be a little difficult. I can't be sure N. Senada even existed as a real person. Yet it is at least reasonable to accept that the idea for the album does, in fact, date to the period suggested.

What also seems to be believable, albeit with the specifics still being in question, is that the project became a beast for the group to tackle. It has been said that one critical reason for it taking 3 years to manifest is the fact that the technology for creating the album simply didn't exist at the time it was conceived, necessitating the group inventing instruments and techniques in order to achieve the desired results. Synthesizers were just beginning to become affordable for the average artist, and sampling was still a few years away from practical implementation. The conceptual complexity of the work, and its need to be a fully integrated and coherent expression, inevitably resulted in strained relationships within the collective, as various contributors held on to convictions that didn't always align with others. The brutal intricacy of it all put everyone involved into a state of high stress and exasperation as the project dragged on.

It's no wonder then that the group would have to let off some steam by indulging in some creativity unburdened by excessive conceptual constraints. Concurrent with the production of Eskimo, The Residents would release the Fingerprince LP (1977), and two EPs, which would quickly become combined into a single album known as Duck Stab / Buster and Glen (1978). Additionally, the Satisfaction single would see a reissue, spurred on by the success of DEVO's cover of the same song, and the Not Available album, recorded in 1974 immediately after Meet the Residents and intended to be an expression of the "theory of obscurity" by never being actually released, would be reluctantly issued as a stopgap while Eskimo's release kept getting delayed. According to the band's biographers, these latter releases caused conflicts between the band and their "management", the Cryptic Corporation, but given that those entities were, in reality, the same people, I can only assume what that means is that not everyone was in agreement with these titles coming to press when they did, further straining relationships within the group. There are even rumours of the "band" disappearing with the Eskimo master tapes in protest, requiring negotiations within the organization. Perhaps some faction did indeed take a powder with the masters, but all of this may simply be apocryphal fiction manufactured for the benefit of press and amusement of fans.

Despite all the struggles, the album did, finally, come together, as a single LP with six tracks, each accompanied by a narrative text relating the details of the tale being told by the music. Listeners were encouraged to read along with the music, a similar concept to what Michael Nesmith had done in 1974 with his concept album, The Prison, which was also a selection of songs that were accompanied by a book, with each chapter being integrated with a corresponding song.

Musically, what was presented was the most technically complex the group had ever constructed, with mostly electronic sounds emulating the cold, harsh environment of the Arctic while often unintelligible voices brought the stories to life, sometimes incorporating corporate giggle parodies, like the Coke-a-Cola song, into the tribal chanting. Taken as a whole, listening to the album was an entirely immersive experience.

For the cover graphics, the group debuted their brand new costumes, featuring the members in tuxedos with giant eyeball heads peaked by jaunty top hats. The effectiveness of the image was so utterly iconic and instantly recognizable that, virtually overnight, if became the default image for the group, a representation that would remain indelibly etched in the public mind for the rest of the band's career. Though they would subsequently evolve a wide variety of costumes, with entirely distinctive themes, they'd never be able to shake the association with those outfits.

Eskimo was my gateway into the world of The Residents. I'd seen the Ralph Records ads in various music magazines for a few years, but it was the striking look of that album, along with the crystal clear focus of its concept, that drew me to them, and I soon backtracked through their early catalogue thereafter, and followed the group closely through the Mole Trilogy. In my mind, Eskimo is something of a high watermark for the group, though they hit many highs before and after its release. Still, it remains the most emblematic of their albums. It certainly helped establish them as the masters of weirdness, securing them a dedicated fan-base among the alternative music fans of the post-punk era. They've done many concept albums throughout their career, but Eskimo will always stand in my mind as the most succinctly perfect of them all.

DAVID BOWIE - TONIGHT @ 40

 

Released on September 24th, 1984, David Bowie's sixteenth studio album, Tonight, turns 40 years old today. Coming on the heels of his career peak LP, Let's Dance, expectations were high for a repeat of that success, a situation which would ultimately be a constraint on Bowie's creativity, as the pressure to keep delivering chart toppers bared down on his sense of artistic integrity. It's a situation that, for an artist of constantly evolving influences and passions, can become something of a prison, which is exactly the kind of situation Bowie found himself in during the latter half of this decade. He'd been successful before, but hitting these heights with Let's Dance put him in the sights of a lot of expectations that were impossible to dismiss or ignore.

Production on the album commenced soon after the conclusion of the massively successful Serious Moonlight tour. Bowie and band set up camp at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, in Canada. The catapult into the stratosphere of superstardom, however, had come at a price in the form of Bowie feeling creatively bereft of ideas. It's not an uncommon situation for an artist, after a significant achievement, to find themselves at something of an impasse in terms of trying to come up with fresh inspirations. As a result, when it came to song writing, Bowie was simply not able to put up the goods when the time came, instead relying on close friend Iggy Pop to help bolster his efforts. Bowie wasn't even up for recording another album, initially proposing a live album following the tour, but his label were eager to keep the ball rolling from the momentum of the previous release. Leaning on Iggy made sense because Pop was struggling financially and the success of China Girl had given him a shot in the arm, so the duo were eager to work together more closely on the new album, solidifying their relationship while on a brief vacation together after the tour.

Production on the album would not, however, involve the return of Nile Rogers, who was the producer for Let's Dance. Instead, Bowie self-produced the album along with Derek Bramble. Bowie invited Bramble to Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, to record demos of his new material with a group of local Swiss musicians. The intent with the new album was to push further into the R&B, funk and reggae styles that had been explored on Let's Dance. According to biographer Chris O'Leary, musicians present at the Tonight sessions said the demos were "tremendous", describing them as "funky, raw, and full of promise". Once Bowie arrived at the studio in Canada, he came prepared with 8 of the album's 9 songs basically all worked out, something collaborator Carlos Alomar noted as surprising, given that he was used to Bowie coming to the studio with virtually nothing, in all the times he'd previously worked with him. It was an unusual case of being ahead of the game.

In terms of the writing, only two songs are credited to Bowie alone, with four tracks being Bowie/Pop compositions and the rest being covers of songs like Brian Wilson's God Only Knows, and one of Iggy's. Don't Look Down, from his New Values album. In a lot of ways, the album is like a return to the relationship Iggy and Bowie had while working on Pop's solo album come-backs in 1977, The Idiot and Lust for Life. Yet while the vibe may have echoed back to that classic Berlin era creative watershed, the results for Tonight were not nearly as satisfying.

Though the album was a commercial success, reaching number one in many key markets, critically it was met with a great deal of disdain, and remains considered one of Bowie's weakest albums. It was ultimately an album that Bowie was pushed into creating when he was not at all in a position to summon his full creative forces. He was depleted by the work on the previous album and a gruelling massive tour across the globe. It's entirely understandable that he'd need time to recharge, and regrettable that the industry would demand he keep producing new works when he was clearly in need of a respite. It's an album that would mark the turning point for Bowie as his career success hit its highest ebb. Not that he was out of the game after this, but he would certainly end up reevaluating his position after seeing his fortunes wane through the remainder of the decade.