The Folly of King David: Reworking Bowie's Never Let Me Down

Never Let Me Down has the reputation of being the worst of all David Bowie albums. No one has a good word for it. When the Loving The Alien boxset covering most of Bowie's 80s output came out in 2018, many fans used their reviews to again point out their disgust for the album, giving it one-star reviews, "only because I couldn't give zero" type stuff. This is an unnecessarily harsh reaction to an album that is certainly a disppointment, but not the out-and-out career-killing disaster many of its detractors see it as. Misguided, yes. Overwrought, yes. But the absolute bottom of the barrel? C'mon man.

To be fair, it's pretty easy to mock the endeavor. The wannabe clever cover art. Bowie's hair cut. The cast of thousands. And, uh, Mickey Rourke. Nothing says mid-80s excess like inviting the Rourkester to mumble some lines in what is very generously and euphemistically credited as a "mid song rap". Bowie, always easily swayed by public opinion gave up his support for the album quickly, lamenting his production choices and - as he had with Tonight - vowing that some of these songs were better than the release form has let on. Only some years later he mused about maybe wanting to re-record some of Never Let Me Down's songs. Alas, it was one of the many projects he wanted to do that he never got around to in his lifetime. But it probably gave ample justification to the Bowie estate to commisson a new reworked version of the album for that 2018 box set release. Never Let Me Down (2018) reworks the album from the ground up, mainly keeping Bowie's lead vocals and select instruments or instrumental passages. But some of the backing tracks, worked up by old Bowie allies like guitar squealer Reeves Gabrels (who notedly wasn't yet part of Bowie's crew in 1987) are almost a hundred percent new. Which means that the official reworking of Never Let Me Down is an odd record, a record lost in time, where vintage Bowie vocals and topics collide with a decidedly modern production.

Sometimes, the mix is successful and the song finally sounds like Bowie probably envisioned it: "Glass Spider" now truly sounds like an art song, while some of the rockers like "New York's in Love" and "Bang Bang", thanks in no small part to Gabrels' involvement, now do indeed sound like blueprints for the unfortunate Tin Machine project that was about to follow. The songs might still suck, but at least they're now rocking more convincingly. Other tracks are not as as succesful: "Time Will Crawl", for my money one of Bowie's best songs of the 80s gets completely neutered in its new arrangement. The album also proceeds in a pretty obvious manner: Almost every song gets a new arty, instrumental opening, before the 'real song' kicks in. It's a fun discovery to hear these songs with a new coat of paint, but I'd still say that about half of the songs profit fom the new treatment (with some still sort of sucking, mind you), a quarter stay about the same and the final quarter are actively worse. Besides, for a total stinker like "Shining Star (Makin' My Love)" it doesn't matter that Mickey Rourke is now replaced by Laurie Anderson, it still shows that you can only polish a turd so much, it'll stay a turd, albeit much shinier. 

Bowie's understanding of what was wrong with Never Let Me Down was mainly concentrated on the sound of it, but there were a couple of other words coincidentally starting with the letter s that help understand its failures and possible redemption. S like sensibilities, for example. Bowie all of a sudden doing political commentary and contemplating the fate of the downtrodden and poor was a shock to his old audience, so used to abstract imagery and elaborate metaphors. This was of course also an unfortunate preview of what was in store during the Tin Machine years. With the lyrics, like Bowie's vocals, staying the same nothing can be done about that, though in all fairness I think the criticisms of that kind are fairly overblown. Maybe because I'm easily amused by Bowie referencing Top Gun. 

Bowie thought that Never Let Me Down's main failures were sound and sensibility, whereas I would argue they were selection and sequencing. Bowie picked the wrong songs and then sequenced them in the absolute worst manner imaginable. The two b-sides hailing from the sessions, "Girls" (a number he had given to Tina Turner a year prior) and "Julie" are infinitely better than half of what ended on the album. "Julie" might be one of the most straightforward pop songs Bowie ever recorded, but it has a memorable melody and could have even been a hit, something that can't be said for some of the crap that ended up on the album. Not only did Bowie make the mistake of including stuff like "Too Dizzy", the aforementioned "Shining Star" and the decidedly limp cover of comrade Iggy Pop's "Bang Bang", he also decided to put them all together into the side two from hell. After a relatively promising first side, where all the better-to-good songs hang out, the flip side has one disaster after another and is - in its original form - pretty hard to stomach. Insipid, both musically and lyrically, it does indeed come dangerously close to being the dumpster fire Bowie diehards think of when having nightmares about Never Let Me Down. 

But there is eminently salvagable stuff on this album. I won't stand here and proclaim my reworked version of Never Let Me Down as some sort of lost classic or great album. It's not, because the original ingredients weren't made for it to be. But it's a fun album, if you can get behind the general idea of 80s pop Bowie, and it's a good listen to my ears. The first rule was: no access to anything that isn't vintage. Never Let Me Down is about as 80s an album as you can get, and instead of akwardly trying to camouflage that, like the 2018 reworking did, just embrace it, people. Secondly: throw out the crap and replace it by something better. Bowie himself started the process, deleting the lightweight and rapidly obnoxious "Too Dizzy" from all CD editions of the album. We throw the three songs mentioned above plus "New York's In Love " on the trash pile and add in the also aforementioned "Girls" and "Julie". The a capella dub mix of "Never Let Me Down" serves as the source of a new intro and outro to the album, cementing the title song as the anchor around which the other tracks got arranged around. Some other minor surgery: I never liked the 'fake live' opening of "Zeroes", totally at odds with the song's plastic sound, so I created a new opening out of the "Time Will Crawl" guitar riff. And I couldn't decide which version of "Day In Day Out" I preferred, so I didn't choose, instead creating a hybrid mix of the more percussion-oriented Groucho Mix and the original version. 

Now, this might not sway people who never forgave him for Let's Dance or Tonight, but if you can get down with the Pop Bowie of the 80s, then throw this on, throw your ol' shoulderpadded sequin jacket on and let your mullet flop like never before...c'mon folks, never let me down...