Never Let Me Down (1987): Bowie's Creative Low Point
The Glass Spider Tour, critical failure, and the album Bowie himself later considered his worst — plus its later reappraisal.
Bowie's Creative Low Point
Never Let Me Down is the seventeenth studio album by David Bowie, released on 27 April 1987. It is widely regarded as the nadir of Bowie's studio career — a judgement shared by Bowie himself, who in later interviews described the album as his worst and expressed particular dissatisfaction with its overproduced arrangements. Coming after the commercially successful but critically divisive Tonight (1984), the album represented the culmination of a creative decline that had begun after the peak of Let's Dance (1983).
Despite its poor critical reputation, Never Let Me Down contains material that, beneath layers of dated production, reveals genuine songwriting quality. This potential was partially realised three decades later when Bowie's longtime producer Tony Visconti oversaw a complete re-recording of the album, released in 2018, which stripped away the original production excesses and revealed the songs in a more favourable light.
Recording and Production
The album was recorded at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, and the Power Station in New York during late 1986 and early 1987. Bowie co-produced with David Richards, the engineer who had worked on Queen's recordings at Mountain Studios. The production employed the heavily layered, reverb-drenched sound that characterised mainstream rock production in the mid-1980s, complete with gated drums, horn sections, and synthesiser pads that buried the songs under a dense wall of period-typical sonic ornamentation.
The session musicians included guitarist Carlos Alomar and Peter Frampton, the latter contributing guitar work that Bowie later praised as one of the album's few successful elements. The rhythm section and keyboard arrangements, however, reflected the glossy, overwrought production aesthetic that Bowie would subsequently identify as the album's fundamental problem.
Musical Content and Singles
The album produced three singles. “Day-In Day-Out” addressed homelessness and urban deprivation, though its social commentary was undermined by the polished production and a controversial music video. “Time Will Crawl” — which Bowie later identified as the album's strongest track — was inspired by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 and addressed environmental anxiety with genuine urgency. The title track, “Never Let Me Down,” was a heartfelt dedication to Bowie's personal assistant Coco Schwab.
Other notable tracks include “Zeroes,” a nostalgic reflection on the 1960s counterculture, and “'87 and Cry,” a politically engaged commentary on the state of the world. Several songs demonstrate sophisticated melodic writing that suggests Bowie's compositional abilities remained intact even as the production choices obscured their quality. The album's lyrical concerns — social justice, environmental crisis, personal loyalty — were more substantive than those of Tonight, indicating a genuine, if imperfectly executed, artistic ambition.
The Glass Spider Tour
The album was supported by the Glass Spider Tour, a massive arena production that ran from May to November 1987. The tour featured an enormous glass spider set piece, elaborate choreography, aerial wire work, and theatrical staging that recalled the spectacle of the Diamond Dogs Tourbut lacked its conceptual coherence. Critics found the production overwrought and the choreography at odds with the rawness that had characterised Bowie's best live performances.
The Glass Spider Tour is generally considered the least successful major tour of Bowie's career, though it drew large audiences and was commercially viable. Its critical failure, combined with the negative reception of the album itself, prompted a period of genuine artistic soul-searching for Bowie. The experience of being perceived as a bloated arena-rock showman was deeply uncomfortable for an artist who had built his reputation on innovation and risk-taking.
Critical Reception and Bowie's Own Assessment
Reviews upon release were predominantly negative. Critics accused the album of representing the final abandonment of the artistic daring that had defined Bowie's 1970s output, replacing experimentation with formulaic, radio-friendly production. The album reached number six in the United Kingdom and number thirty-four in the United States — respectable figures that nevertheless represented a significant decline from the commercial heights of Let's Dance.
Bowie's own retrospective assessment was unsparing. In a 2003 interview, he described the album as embarrassing and attributed its failures to a loss of creative direction during the mid-1980s. The experience of making Never Let Me Down and touring it became the catalyst for the formation of Tin Machine, Bowie's attempt to strip away the trappings of solo superstardom and reconnect with raw, guitar-driven rock in a democratic band format.
The 2018 Reappraisal
In 2018, Tony Visconti oversaw a complete re-recording of Never Let Me Down for the Loving the Alien (1983–1988)box set. The new version stripped away the original production and re-recorded the instrumental tracks with a smaller, more organic band, revealing the underlying quality of several compositions. “Time Will Crawl” and “Zeroes” emerged as particularly strong songs when freed from the heavy-handed 1980s production that had weighed down the originals. The re-recording served as a posthumous vindication of Bowie's instinct that the album contained worthy material trapped beneath an unsuitable sonic surface.