David Bowie: Let's Dance - 1983
"He knows what he's doing in the studio and he doesn't mess around " - Stevie Ray Vaughan
After a few years in the comparative “wilderness”, David Bowie was back, all sun tanned, bleached-blond, besuited and healthy-looking with his most commercially successful album in a long time.
Hiring Chic-meister Nile Rodgers to produce and play on the album was a master-stroke, it has to be said. It has never been an album that has particularly done it for me, though, although it does betray hidden depths.
Also featuring blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, the music is a mixture of rubber-band bass-driven disco funk, searing lead bluesy guitar and punchy horn backing. A fusion like that had not really been heard before. Despite its commercial old “side one” a good way of appreciating this album is to listen to the “other tracks”.
Incidentally, before going on to the songs, it is worth hearing what Vaughan said of working with Bowie on the album -
"....David Bowie is real easy to work with. He knows what he's doing in the studio and he doesn't mess around. He comes right in and goes to work. Most of the time, David did the vocals and then I played my parts. A lot of the time, he just wanted me to cut loose. He'd give his opinion on the stuff he liked and the stuff that needed work. Almost everything was cut in one or two takes. I think there was only one thing that needed three takes...."
Taking Vaughan's words into account leads one to appreciate the album more. If it was laid down in so ad hoc a fashion, it is pretty impressive.
Out of interest, Bowie plays no instruments on this album, for the first time in ages. This is another piece of evidence to support the case that this incarnation of Bowie considers himself a "pop star" vocalist first and foremost. He would come to question this, though, as I detail later on.
Let's catch the paperboy.....
A powerful and catchy drum intro followed by a spoken part from Bowie launches us into Modern Love, one of the man's finest pop chart hits. Forget its perplexing call and response lyrics about "God and Man" and "get me to the church on time", it is still a barnstorming song and was performed to great effect at Live Aid in 1985. This was a poppy Bowie, the like of which we hadn't seen for the best part of ten years.
China Girl was notorious for its accompanying video Bowie rolling around in the surf with a Chinese beauty, this cover of an Iggy Pop song is introduced by Nile Rodgers' Chinese-sounding guitar intro. In the middle of the song, Bowie confronts his thin white duke era flirtation with fascism - "I wander into town, just like some sacred cow, visions of swastikas in my head, plans for everyone, it's in the white of my eyes.". This displays a refreshing honesty on Bowie's part. His "just you shu' you' mout'" Chinese accent part is a bit dodgy, however, or probably will be perceived so these days.
Anyway, the beautifully seductive Without You, with its initial smoky vocal and soaring falsetto chorus is a much-underrated Bowie classic. It has, somewhat unfairly, been overshadowed by the three biggies. There is a case for it being the album's best track. The more listens you give it, the more you may like it. Another good one is Ricochet, a staccato serving of reggae-tinged funk and sumptuous horns that harks back to his seventies work, to a certain extent. It is recognisably "Bowie", although its brassy sound was a precursor to the sound that would feature on the following year's Tonight album.
Criminal World is a lively song that features some wonderful guitar and white soul vocals. It has an energetic appeal that has rarely been acknowledged. It was a cover of a track by little-known US group The Metros but its makeover makes it sound like a Bowie original. It features a nice throbby bass line too, something that was often comparatively lacking in these 1983 recordings.
Cat People (Putting Out Fire) has a heavier, harder rock appeal about it, with Stevie Ray Vaughan contributing some searing guitar licks. Bowie's vocal on the build-up verses is haughtily sonorous in a Lodger sort of way. The production is typically eighties-tinny, however, which detracts from the song to an extent but it ends with a nice bit of rock funk to redeem things.
A funky number, Shake It seems to recycle the Let’s Dance synth hook and chorus in many ways, and due to that seems to be a bit of a “treading water” throwaway. I still really like it, though, re-hash or not. Great bass line and a killer Bowie vocal on there along with some hints of Fame in places. It is the album's most 'dance' oriented track and an upbeat note upon which to end.
Bowie later said that the success of the album caused him to hit a creative low point in his career which lasted the next few years -
"...I remember looking out over these waves of people (who were coming to hear this record played live) and think "I wonder how many Velvet Underground albums these people have in their record collections?". I suddenly felt very apart from my audience and it was depressing, because I didn't know what they wanted...".
This is a very telling quote indeed. I rarely listen to this album, particularly the first three tracks, maybe I, as part of his audience, felt apart from Bowie for the first time since 1972? I certainly didn’t want Bowie to be a slave to what the masses wanted. I was never really happy with the suit and tie, blonde haired, sun tanned look. Bowie looked like he had stepped out of the office of a Californian real estate company. Surely this was the worst of all his “images”?
After his follow-up albums - Tonight in 1984 and 1987’s Never Let Me Down - were critically dismissed (in some ways, unfairly, in my opinion), Bowie formed the grunge-precursor band Tin Machine in an effort to regain his artistic vision.
The 2018 remaster is largely excellent - full, balanced and bassy, although some of the harsher traits of eighties production will always remain. That said, it has allowed me to revisit the album with new ears, particularly the non-single tracks, listening to them in a new light, hearing nuances I didn't know existed.
