S5 Ep1: Nicholas Pegg on Tonight (Part One)

Returning to albumtoalbum for a long-overdue reunion is renowned actor, occasional Dalek and author of The Complete David Bowie, Nicholas Pegg.

Nick's an old friend of the podcast and has tackled some of David Bowie's most acclaimed albums in previous episodes - as well as exploring entire eras (our 198More series of chats take an overview of Bowie's singles, soundtracks and various off-extramural activities 1981 - 1989). Now, he's back to tackle one of the most challenging artefacts in the Bowie oeuvre - the much-maligned 1984 album Tonight.

A rag-tag bag of semi-sentient cover versions, marimbas, an absolutely bracingly brilliant long-form promo video (very 1984) a couple of superb Bowie evergreens, some blue-and-brown-eyed reggae and uncharacteristically insipid production, Tonight might not be the worst album of 1984, but it fell short of what long time Bowie fans had come to expect. Clearly geared to what Bowie assumed were his new Let's Dance-era fans, the album was recorded almost straight after the massive Serious Moonlight tour, without the satisfying thwack that conceptual cohesion and creative conviction characterising Bowie's best work to date.

Here, Bowie opted to work with a young British producer, Derek Bramble, who had little awareness of Bowie's work. As Nick says in this episode, Bramble's lack of public profile might have appealed to Bowie, after the megawatt presence of Nile Rogers on Let's Dance. Fair enough. But then, getting happening, in-demand producer, most recently with The Police, Hugh Padgham on board, in the junior role of engineer, wasn't Bowie's brightest idea.

In this episode, we kick off by looking back at the lead-up to the album's recording (in Canada), a cast of characters including Derek Bramble, Hugh Padgham, Iggy Pop and Carlos Alomar and the album's first three tracks - Loving The Alien, Don't Look Down and the unforgettable cover version of the Beach Boys' God Only Knows. 

With thanks to Nicholas Pegg, and Leah Kardos for the background music. During the conversation, we have references from Chris O'Leary, Charles Shaar Murray and that Bowie resource par excellence, bowiebible.com