David Bowie - Lodger

On the surface, Lodger is the most accessible of the three Berlin-era records David Bowie made with Brian Eno, simply because there are no instrumentals and there are a handful of concise pop songs. Nevertheless, Lodger is still gnarled and twisted avant pop; what makes it different is how it incorporates such experimental tendencies into genuine songs, something that Low and Heroes purposely avoided. "D.J.," "Look Back in Anger," and "Boys Keep Swinging" have strong melodic hooks that are subverted and strengthened by the layered, dissonant productions, while the remainder of the record is divided between similarly effective avant pop and ambient instrumentals. Lodger has an edgier, more minimalistic bent than its two predecessors, which makes it more accessible for rock fans, as well as giving it a more immediate, emotional impact. It might not stretch the boundaries of rock like Low and Heroes, but it arguably utilizes those ideas in a more effective fashion. 

David Bowie - Heroes

"Heroes" is the second instalment of David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy. The trilogy and "Heroes" in particular, show all the signs of an artist growing up, shaking off the trappings of capitalist ego and success, and searching for a soul instead. It often sounds as if Bowie is conducting chaos, smashing objects together to discover scarily beautiful new shapes.

Even before David Bowie stepped foot in Berlin's grandiose Meistersaal concert hall, the room had soaked up its fair share of history. Since its opening in 1912, the wood-lined space had played host to chamber music recitals, Expressionist art galleries, and Nazi banquets, becoming a symbol of the German capital's artistic (and political) alliances across the 20th century. The halls checkered past, as well as its wide-open acoustics, certainly offered a rich backdrop for the recording of "Heroes" in the summer of 1977.

But by then, the Meistersaal was part of Hansa Studios, a facility that felt more like a relic than a destination. Thirty years after much of Berlin was bombed to rubble during World War II, the pillars that marked the studio's exterior were still ripped by bullet holes, its highest windows filled with bricks. Whereas it was once the epitome of the city's cultural vanguard, in '77, the locale was perhaps best known for its proximity to the Berlin Wall; the imposing, barbed-wire-laced structure that turned West Berlin into an island of capitalism amidst East Germany's communist regime during the Cold War. The Wall was erected to stop East Berliners from fleeing into the city's relatively prosperous other half and by the late '70s had been built up to include a no-man's land watched by armed guards in turrets who were ordered to shoot. This area was called the "death strip," for good reason; at least 100 would-be border crossers were killed during the Wall's stand, including an 18-year-old man who was shot dead amid a barrage of 91 bullets just months before Bowie began his work on "Heroes".

All of which is to say: West Berlin was a dangerous and spooky place to make an album in 1977. And that's exactly what Bowie wanted. After falling into hedonistic rock'n'roll clichés in mid-'70s Los Angeles; a place he later called "the most vile piss-pot in the world", he set his sights on Berlin as a spartan antidote. And though "Heroes" is the second part of his Berlin Trilogy, it's actually the only one of the three that he fully recorded in the city. "Every afternoon I'd sit down at that desk and see three Russian Red Guards looking at us with binoculars, with their Sten guns over their shoulders," the album's producer, Tony Visconti, once recalled. "Everything said we shouldn't be making a record here." All of the manic paranoia and jarring juxtapositions surrounding Hansa bled into the music, which often sounds as if Bowie is conducting chaos, smashing objects together to discover scarily beautiful new shapes.

The Berlin Trilogy, and "Heroes" in particular, show all the signs of an artist growing up, shaking off the trappings of capitalist ego and success, and searching for a soul instead. Of course, Bowie's ego was a magnificent thing at its height, but he also understood its insatiability; how it would kill him if he did not kill it. And even in his dressed-down "Heroes" garb; bomber jacket, tousled short hair, jeans; he couldn't escape his own magnetism; in fact, seeing how cool Bowie looked without all the makeup and costumes could make him seem even more untouchable. At 30, he was content with his art, happy to explore humankind's existential struggles while living in a divided, war-torn city. Berlin gave him perspective and compassion. It allowed him to be small. To let his guard down and his mind wander. To begin to come to terms with his own mortality. "We'll do anything in our power to stay alive. There's a feeling that the average lifespan should be longer than it is. I disagree," Bowie told Melody Maker in October '77. "I mean, we've never lived so long. Not so very long ago no one lived passed the age of 40. And we're still not happy with 70. What are we after exactly? There's just too much ego involved. And who wants to drag their old decaying frame around until they are 90, just to assert their ego? I don't, certainly."

By Ryan Dombal

 

David Bowie - Christiane F.

Yeah, soundtracks with nothing but original content is great and usually results in some of the most interesting and refreshing music in an artist's discography, but what about a soundtrack that also serves as a good compilation album? Because that's basically what Bowie's soundtrack for Christiane F. is, a compilation album. This soundtrack is basically just a greatest hits album of Bowie's late '70s work, including songs from Station To Station, Low, "Heroes", Lodger, and a live performance of the song Station To Station taken from his Stage live album. When you're looking at this album from the outside looking in, you may think that this is just a mess of songs with very little connection. Sure, most of the songs are from the Berlin trilogy and they came out around the same time, but aside from that these songs and their placement on the album looks so random that you would think that it wouldn't work at all. And yet, somehow, they managed to place them in a way that makes this such a cohesive listen. You find yourself not questioning why the English and German versions of Heroes were pieced together to make one six minute track. You don't find yourself questioning why a track from Lodger precedes a track from Low. They somehow managed to make what is virtually a greatest hits record that actually sounds like its own original album. While you will always have a much better experience listening to each individual album, most Bowie fans will certainly find some enjoyment out of this. I mean, this album does include songs from some of his most beloved projects ever. While it's still missing a ton of songs that helped make those albums so great, the songs that were chosen are excellent and make for one genuinely loveable album.

David Bowie – Low

The first album in David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy sees Bowie as a tragic figure. The album's first side is a beautiful futurist ruin, littered with holes left purposefully unfixed, while the blank, instrumental second side feels like a calculated attempt to kill the author.

Compared to its predecessors, David Bowie's 11th studio album is noticeably reserved. "I had no statement to make on Low," said Bowie, who could hardly write lyrics at all in the aftermath of his L.A. excesses, let alone fashion another extensive character study like Ziggy or the Thin White Duke. His lyrical gifts were already spread thin and thinner still when a completed third verse was cut from "Always Crashing in the Same Car," in which Bowie did his very best Bob Dylan impression. Bowie was hardly lucid in 1976, but you bet he knew exactly what he was doing with that verse. The Bowie of this era is a tragic figure: strung out and prone to spending days awake watching the same films on a loop. Yet Bowie's sense of purpose was at least somewhat intact. He applied exacting pressure on Iggy to make The Idiot as good as he knew it could be, and brought similar determination to Low, albeit the kind where having very few aims was its own liberating objective. Low's first side is a beautiful futurist ruin, littered with holes left purposefully unfixed. Tony Visconti heightens the decay and distils the lifespan of every sound, treating Dennis Davis' drums so that he was playing along to a withered echo of his last strike, like an explosion contained in a tin can. Even Bowie's voice sounds aged and distant. Eno's sharp electronics jostle against the bolshy funk rhythms and Carlos Alomar and Ricky Gardiner's guitars, giving the record a feverish euphoria that hits like too much pseudo-ephedrine and mangles linear time. These swaggering fragments, seldom breaking the three-minute mark, promise bombastic payoffs but then fade out instead. Low's first side feels like having the carpet ripped out from under you by three wizards who have plans to fly it elsewhere. The mostly instrumental second side is a tribute to the people of the Soviet Bloc —Poland on "Warszawa," and East Berlin on the remaining three songs—in which the elusive nature of side 1 subsides and Bowie's persona is subsumed into his and Eno's pulsating sequences. These were carefully calibrated attempts at killing the author: Eno set out a metronome pulse, and the pair selected a random beat on which to introduce a new musical complement to the central motif. It’s credit to their influence that these songs sound pedestrian, even a little ponderous by today’s standards, but the way they conjure lost worlds is still something to behold. It makes good on the album cover's subtle joke: a still from Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth where Bowie’s orange hair fades into the background; the word 'Low' atop a vanishing profile. Bowie's meticulously crafted existence had always offered fans a sense of possibility. By submitting his ego to Low, he was able to create a new one for himself.

David Bowie - Welcome To The Blackout (Live London '78)

David Bowie always moved in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform, and few machinations were weirder than this blast of greatness: a stunning live album taped 45 years ago but shelved for the subsequent four and a half decades. Welcome To The Blackout was recorded during two Earls Court shows in the summer of 1978 on Bowie’s Isolar II Tour, more usually known as the Low/“Heroes” Tour. After a limited-edition 3LP vinyl edition became Record Store Day’s best-selling item this April, we now have this 2CD release.

After nearly expiring from his Los Angeles cocaine madness, Bowie had fled to Berlin with Iggy Pop and was by ‘78 two-thirds of the way through his Low/”Heroes”/Lodger trilogy of albums with Brian Eno. Eno was also meant to helm the band on the Isolar II world tour but had to drop out on health grounds, leaving the rejigged band just two weeks to rehearse under the tutelage of Bowie’s sideman, Carlos Alomar. It didn’t show. On Welcome To The Blackout they sound slick, fierce and formidable. The tour set list naturally drew heavily on Low and “Heroes” and was thus elevated by the stark, bleak brilliance of both albums. After the portentous opening dirge of Warszawa, an extended, six-minute roust through “Heroes” is a thrill; rarefied New Wave pop before the term even existed.

Bowie is in superb voice throughout, an imperious benign musical dictator dry drawling his way through Be My Wife and the arid funk of Low’s Speed Of Life. The perennial cracked actor, he gives a masterful impersonation of jittery paranoia on a version of Breaking Glass that ends when you are willing it to go on. For all of his arty obliqueness, Bowie was always a canny crowd-pleaser, and his post-interval tour set list boasted an impeccable run of six tracks from The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars: Five Years, Soul Love, Star, Hang On To Yourself, Ziggy Stardust and Suffragette City. It all showcased a recovering genius on top of his game. The closing TVC15 and Rebel Rebel are pop sacred texts, and – best of all – Welcome To The Blackout is a live album that doesn’t sound like one: producer Tony Visconti ruthlessly excised all of the crowd noise from proceedings. Well worth the wait.

David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

After a 1977 performance that still ranks among the wildest, most manic musical performances to ever hit daytime TV, Iggy Pop chats with talk show host Dinah Shore, the top-charting female singer of the ‘40s, with his collaborator pal David Bowie by his side; jazz vet Rosemary Clooney flanks Shore. Their interview is mutually respectful and endearingly sincere even as the host tries to navigate Pop’s nihilistic answers. Aiming to steer the conversation in a positive direction, she asks her guest if he’s influenced anybody and the punk pioneer—much to everyone’s delight—nonchalantly replies, "I think I helped wipe out the '60s."

Great quote, but here’s the thing: Pop never sold enough to do that directly. Instead, it was Bowie, his most ambitious student, who revolutionized '70s music and style by uncovering the discomfort and despair of urban life that hippie idealism denied. His third consecutive UK chart-topper and U.S. Top 5 breakthrough, 1974’s *Diamond Dogs—*Bowie’s first record of original material since killing off the Ziggy Stardust character that made him an instant superstar back home—remains rooted in his still-reigning glam scene that knocked most utopian '60s rockers off the UK charts with glistening shards of pansexuality, sci-fi fantasy, and bespangled spectacle. His bleakest album until recent swansong Blackstar, Diamond Dogs is a bummer, a bad trip, "No Fun"—a sustained work of decadence and dread that transforms corrosion into celebration. Whereas Ziggy features its titular messiah, Diamond Dogs has jackals that live on corpses the way Bowie fed off rotting urban culture and reckless rock'n'roll.

David Bowie - Station To Station

Taking the detached plastic soul of Young Americans to an elegant, robotic extreme, Station to Station is a transitional album that creates its own distinctive style. Abandoning any pretence of being a soulman, yet keeping rhythmic elements of soul, David Bowie positions himself as a cold, clinical crooner and explores a variety of styles. Everything from epic ballads and disco to synthesized avant pop is present on Station to Station, but what ties it together is Bowie's cocaine-induced paranoia and detached musical persona. At its heart, Station to Station is an avant-garde art-rock album, most explicitly on "TVC 15" and the epic sprawl of the title track, but also on the cool crooning of "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing," as well as the disco stylings of "Golden Years." It's not an easy album to warm to, but its epic structure and clinical sound were an impressive, individualistic achievement, as well as a style that would prove enormously influential on post-punk.

David Bowie - Singles (Pack 1)

I’m jumping ahead of myself with these two 12”ers, because I can. They’ve both been up before at other blogs and you may have already downloaded them individually, but here they’re in the same file so you get both in one click. To begin, for we have to start somewhere, Cat People has always been a favourite of mine. The Australian 12” Limited Edition version being rather rare is a fun outing with the family while Fashion shows the dancier side of Scary Monsters where David shows that he was still enjoying mixing the music genres after Boys Keep Swinging. Listen, all you really need to know is that these two singles are totally brilliant and that you need them in your collection. Out!

The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars

Upon the release of David Bowie’s most thematically ambitious, musically coherent album to date, the record in which he unites the major strengths of his previous work and comfortably reconciles himself to some apparently inevitable problems, we should all say a brief prayer that his fortunes are not made to rise and fall with the fate of the “drag-rock” syndrome. For although Lady Stardust himself has probably had more to do with androgyny’s current fashionableness in rock than any other individual, he has never made his sexuality anything more than a completely natural and integral part of his public self, refusing to lower it to the level of gimmick but never excluding it from his image and craft. To do either would involve an artistically fatal degree of compromise; this is not to say that he hasn’t had a great time with it. Flamboyance and outrageousness are inseparable from that campy image of his, both in the Bacall and Garbo stages and in his new butch, street-crawler appearance that has him looking like something out of the darker pages of City of Night. It’s all tied up with the one aspect of David Bowie that sets him apart from both the exploiters of transvestitism and writer/performers of comparable talent; his theatricality. The news here is that he’s managed to get that sensibility down on vinyl, not with an attempt at pseudo-visualism, but through employment of broadly mannered styles and deliveries, a boggling variety of vocal nuances that provide the program with the necessary depth, a verbal acumen that is now more economic and no longer clouded by storms of psychotic, frenzied music, and, finally, a thorough command of the elements of rock & roll. It emerges as a series of concise vignettes designed strictly for the ear.

Side two is the soul of the album, a kind of psychological equivalent of Lola vs. Powerman that delves deep into a matter close to David’s heart: What’s it all about to be a rock & roll star? It begins with the slow, fluid “Lady Stardust,” a song in which currents of frustration and triumph merge in an overriding desolation. For though “He was alright, the band was altogether”, still “People stared at the makeup on his face/Laughed at his long black hair, his animal grace.” The pervading bittersweet melancholy that wells out of the contradictions and that Bowie beautifully captures with one of the album’s more direct vocals conjures the picture of a painted harlequin under the spot-light of a deserted theatre in the darkest hour of the night. “Star” springs along handsomely as he confidently tells us that “I could make it all worthwhile as a rock & roll star.” Here Bowie outlines the dazzling side of the coin: “So inviting, so enticing to play the part.” His singing is a delight, full of mocking intonations and backed way down in the mix with excessive, marvellously designed “Ooooohh la la la”‘s and such that are both a joy to listen to and part of the parodic undercurrent that runs through the entire album. “Hang on to Yourself” is both a kind warning and an irresistible erotic rocker (especially the handclapping chorus), and apparently Bowie has decided that since he just can’t avoid cramming too many syllables into his lines, he’ll simply master the rapid-fire, tongue-twisting phrasing that his failing requires. “Ziggy Stardust” has a faint ring of The Man Who Sold the World to it; stately, measured, fuzzily electric. A tale of intragroup jealousies, it features some of Bowie’s more adventuresome imagery, some of which is really the nazz: “So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands?” David Bowie’s supreme moment as a rock & roller is “Suffragette City,” a relentless, spirited Velvet Underground-styled rush of chomping guitars. When that second layer of guitar roars in on the second verse you’re bound to be a goner, and that priceless little break at the end; a sudden cut to silence from a mighty crescendo, Bowie’s voice oozing out as a brittle, charged “Oooohh Wham Bam Thank you Ma’am!” followed hard by two raspy guitar bursts that suck you back into the surging meat of the chorus, will surely make your tum do somersaults. And as for our Star, well, now “There’s only room for one and here she comes, here she comes.” But the price of playing the part must be paid, and we’re precipitously tumbled into the quietly terrifying despair of “Rock & Roll Suicide.” The broken singer drones: “Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth/Then you pull on your finger, then another finger, then your cigarette.” But there is a way out of the bleakness, and it’s realized with Bowie’s Lennon-like scream: “You’re not alone, gimme your hands/You’re wonderful, gimme your hands.” It rolls on to a tumultuous, impassioned climax, and though the mood isn’t exactly sunny, a desperate, possessed optimism asserts itself as genuine, and a new point from which to climb is firmly established.

Side one is certainly less challenging, but no less enjoyable from a musical standpoint. Bowie’s favourite themes; Mortality (“Five Years,” “Soul Love”), the necessity of reconciling oneself to Pain (those two and “It Ain’t Easy”), the New Order vs. the Old in sci-fi garments (“Starman”); are presented with a consistency, a confidence, and a strength in both style and technique that were never fully realized in the lashing The Man Who Sold the World or the uneven and too often stringy Hunky Dory. Bowie initiates “Moonage Daydream” on side one with a riveting bellow of “I’m an alligator” that’s delightful in itself but which also has a lot to do with what Rise and Fall … is all about. Because in it there’s the perfect touch of self-mockery, a lusty but forlorn bravado that is the first hint of the central duality and of the rather spine-tingling questions that rise from it: Just how big and tough is your rock & roll star? How much of him is bluff and how much inside is very frightened and helpless? And is this what comes of our happily dubbing someone as “bigger than life”? David Bowie has pulled off his complex task with consummate style, with some great rock & roll (the Spiders are Mick Ronson on guitar and piano, Mick Woodmansey on drums and Trevor Bolder on bass; they’re damn good), with all the wit and passion required to give it sufficient dimension and with a deep sense of humanity that regularly emerges from behind the Star facade. The important thing is that despite the formidable nature of the undertaking, he hasn’t sacrificed a bit of entertainment value for the sake of message.

I’d give it at least a 99.

Hunky Dory

Recorded at Trident Studios in July 1971, several days after his Glastonbury appearance, Hunky Dory captures David Bowie in transition from the pot-enhanced rock of The Man Who Sold The World to the grand concept of Ziggy Stardust. Produced by Ken Scott, the album is very much a songwriter’s work and finds Bowie for the first time finding his own voice after scrabbling around stylistically for best part of a decade. Back in 1971, singer-songwriters were very much a la mode; in a way Hunky Dory is Bowie’s Tapestry or Madman Across The Water, albeit with themes that encompassed art, gender, other lifeforms and general strangeness. All the component parts of the Spiders From Mars are in place; Mick Ronson, Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder. Although Bowie tackled some “less complicated piano parts” due to “(inability)” as he wrote on the sleeve, it is session player Rick Wakeman who gives the album its pastoral flavour. Hunky Dory contains some of Bowie’s greatest songs. “Changes”, “Life On Mars?” and “Oh! You Pretty Things” are almost too well-known now; but to hear the scale of Bowie’s ambition is incredible. “Andy Warhol” introduced the pop-artist to many British listeners, while the fairly unrepresentative “Queen Bitch” (his tribute to Velvet Underground) points the way clearest to what was to lay ahead.

This album finally demonstrated David Bowie's enormous potential to the listening public. It became a huge hit after Bowie broke through and became a household name in 1972.

Selling The World

Even though it contained no hits, The Man Who Sold the World, for most intents and purposes, was the beginning of David Bowie's classic period. Though author David Buckley has described Bowie's previous record David Bowie as "the first Bowie album proper", NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have said of The Man Who Sold the World, "this is where the story really starts". Departing from the largely acoustic music of Bowie's second album, The Man Who Sold the World is generally considered a hard rock and heavy metal album. Working with guitarist Mick Ronson and producer Tony Visconti for the second time Bowie developed a tight, twisted heavy guitar rock that appears simple on the surface but sounds more gnarled upon each listen. The mix is off-centre, with the fuzz-bass dominating the compressed, razor-thin guitars and Bowie's strangled, affected voice. The sound of The Man Who Sold the World is odd, but the music itself is bizarre, with Bowie's weird, paranoid futuristic tales melded to Ronson's riffing and the band's relentless attack. Musically, there isn't much innovation on The Man Who Sold the World -- it is almost all hard blues-rock or psychedelic folk-rock -- but there's an unsettling edge to the band's performance, which makes the record one of Bowie's best albums.