The Tin Machine
So what do you do when you’ve done it all as a solo artist? Form a band was Bowie’s response. Trying to appear as a democratic and united group, Bowie’s input stiffled the band both creatively and critically. Bowie later said of the period: “I had to kick-start my engine again in music. There’d been a wobbly moment where I could quite easily have gone reclusive and just worked on visual stuff, paint and sculpt and all that. I had made a lot of money: I thought, well, I could just bugger off and do my Gauguin in Tahiti bit now. But then what do you do — re-emerge at 60 somewhere? So I look back on the Tin Machine years with great fondness. They charged me up. I can’t tell you how much.”
