Berlin Trilogy

Apartment building on Hauptstraße 155 in Berlin Schöneberg where Bowie lived from 1976 to 1978

The Berlin Trilogy consists of three consecutively released studio albums by English singer and songwriter David Bowie: Low (1977), "Heroes" (1977) and Lodger (1979). Each album reached the UK top five and received lasting critical praise. According to Rolling Stone, "'[the] 'Berlin Trilogy' stands as some of the most innovative music in the artist's influential canon".[1] The albums are characterized by Consequence of Sound as an "art rock trifecta".[2]

Produced by Bowie and American record producer Tony Visconti in collaboration with former Roxy Music synthesizer player Brian Eno, the albums' collective name derives from Bowie's primary residence during the epoch. Only Low and "Heroes" were recorded at Hansa Studios in Berlin, nicknamed "Hansa by the Wall" for its proximity to the imposing structure that divided West from East Berlin.[3] By the early 1980s, Bowie would decamp to New York City.[3] He later reflected on the trilogy (and the single ""Heroes""), calling them his "DNA".[4]

Background

Bowie performing as the Thin White Duke, 1976. His look and character is somewhat based on Thomas Jerome Newton, the titular humanoid alien played by Bowie in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth. A still from the movie was used as the album cover for Low.

Following Bowie's Thin White Duke-period and the commercial success of the singles "Fame" and "Golden Years" in 1976, he retreated to Berlin in order to escape the drug scene of Los Angeles,[3] where he had developed a deleterious cocaine habit.[5] He explained: "For many years Berlin had appealed to me as a sort of sanctuary-like situation. It was one of the few cities where I could move around in virtual anonymity. I was going broke; it was cheap to live. For some reason, Berliners just didn’t care. Well, not about an English rock singer, anyway."[6] While sharing an apartment with Iggy Pop, Bowie began focusing on minimalist, ambient music in collaboration with Brian Eno and producer Tony Visconti,[7] and also cowrote and produced Pop's solo album debut The Idiot (1976) and its follow-up Lust for Life (1977).[8]

After releasing Low and ""Heroes"" in 1977, Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts in 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug addiction; biographer David Buckley writes that Isolar II was "Bowie's first tour for five years in which he had probably not anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before taking the stage. ... Without the oblivion that drugs had brought, he was now in a healthy enough mental condition to want to make friends."[9] Recordings from the tour made up the live album Stage, released the same year.[10]

Albums

Low

The album Low (1977) was recorded as Bowie grappled with difficult personal issues, including a troubled marriage and drug dependence: "There's oodles of pain in the Low album. That was my first attempt to kick cocaine, so that was an awful lot of pain. And I moved to Berlin to do it. I moved out of the coke centre of the world [i.e., Los Angeles] into the smack centre of the world. Thankfully, I didn't have a feeling for smack, so it wasn't a threat".[11] Visconti contended that the title was partly a reference to Bowie's "low" moods during the album's writing and recording.[12] The album marked a movement for Bowie into electronic[13] and ambient music.[14] Side one of the album contained short, direct avant-pop song-fragments;[15] side two comprised longer, mostly instrumental tracks.[15] Partly influenced by the Krautrock sound of Kraftwerk and Neu!, evinced a move away from narration in Bowie's songwriting to a more abstract musical form in which lyrics were sporadic and optional.[16][17] Although he completed the album in November 1976, it took his unsettled record company another three months to release it.[18] It received considerable negative criticism upon its release—a release which RCA, anxious to maintain the established commercial momentum, did not welcome, and which Bowie's ex-manager, Tony Defries, who still maintained a significant financial interest in the singer's affairs, tried to prevent. Despite these forebodings, Low yielded the UK number three single "Sound and Vision", and its own performance surpassed that of Station to Station in the UK chart, where it reached number two.

"Heroes"
"Heroes"
Sample of "Heroes" (1977). One of the ambient rock songs to emerge from Bowie's Berlin Trilogy era, "Heroes" gained lasting popularity.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Echoing Low's minimalist, instrumental approach, the second of the trilogy, "Heroes" (1977), incorporated pop and rock to a greater extent, seeing Bowie joined by guitarist Robert Fripp. Like Low, "Heroes" evinced the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city of Berlin.[19] Incorporating ambient sounds from a variety of sources including white noise generators, synthesisers and koto, the album was another hit, reaching number three in the UK. Its title track, though only reaching number 24 in the UK singles chart, gained lasting popularity, and within months had been released in both German and French.[20]

Lodger

Main article: Lodger (album)

The final piece in what Bowie called his "triptych", Lodger (1979), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of the other two, making a partial return to the drum- and guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era. The result was a complex mixture of new wave and world music, in places incorporating Hijaz non-Western scales. Some tracks were composed using Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies cards: "Boys Keep Swinging" entailed band members swapping instruments, "Move On" used the chords from Bowie's early composition "All the Young Dudes" played backwards, and "Red Money" took backing tracks from "Sister Midnight", a piece previously composed with Iggy Pop.[21] The album was recorded in Switzerland. Ahead of its release, RCA's Mel Ilberman stated, "It would be fair to call it Bowie's Sergeant Pepper ... a concept album that portrays the Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life's pressures and technology." As described by biographer Christopher Sandford, "The record dashed such high hopes with dubious choices, and production that spelt the end—for fifteen years—of Bowie's partnership with Eno." Lodger reached number 4 in the UK and number 20 in the US, and yielded the UK hit singles "Boys Keep Swinging" and "DJ".[22][23]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Kreps, Daniel (11 January 2016). "Brian Eno on David Bowie: 'I Feel a Huge Gap Now'". Rolling Stone.
  2. ↑ "Ranking: Every David Bowie Album From Worst to Best". Consequence of Sound. January 8, 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 Mastropolo, Frank (11 January 2016). "The History of David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy: ‘Low,’ ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lodger’". Ultimate Classic Rock.
  4. ↑ MacLean, Rory (13 January 2016). "Bowie in Berlin: 'He drove round the car park at 70mph screaming that he wanted to end it all'". The Guardian.
  5. ↑ Wilcken, Hugo (2005). Low. New York: Continuum. p. 24. ISBN 0-8264-1684-5.
  6. ↑ "Uncut Interviews David Bowie & Tony Visconti On Berlin". Uncut. March 2001.
  7. ↑ Sandford 1997, p. 149.
  8. ↑ Needs, Kris (January 2007). "The Passenger". Mojo Classic (60 Years of Bowie): 65.
  9. ↑ Buckley 2005, p. 293.
  10. ↑ Sandford 1997, p. 189.
  11. ↑ Scott Cohen. "David Bowie", Details magazine, September 1991: p.97
  12. ↑ BowieGoldenYears. Retrieved 12 June 2007.
  13. ↑ Lukowski, Andrzej. "Album Review: Low: Live in Chicago". Drowned in Sound. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
  14. ↑ Mastropolo, Frank. "The History of David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy: 'Low,' 'Heroes,' and 'Lodger'". Ultimate Classic Rock. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
  15. 1 2 AllMusic
  16. ↑
  17. ↑
  18. ↑ Ruether, Tobias (Winter 2006–2007). "The Man Who Came from Hell". 032c. pp. 82–85. Retrieved 21 July 2014.
  19. ↑ Pegg 2000, pp. 90–92.
  20. ↑ Sandford 1997, pp. 181–82.
  21. ↑ Carr & Murray 1981, pp. 102–107.
  22. ↑ Buckley 2005, p. 281.
  23. ↑ Sandford 1997, pp. 191–92.

Bibliography

  • Buckley, David (2005) [1999]. Strange Fascination — David Bowie: The Definitive Story. London: Virgin. ISBN 978-0-7535-1002-5. 
  • Carr, Roy; Murray, Charles Shaar (1981). Bowie: An Illustrated Record. New York: Avon. ISBN 0-380-77966-8. 
  • Pegg, Nicholas (2004) [2000]. The Complete David Bowie. London: Reynolds & Hearn. ISBN 1-903111-73-0. 
  • Sandford, Christopher (1997) [1996]. Bowie: Loving the Alien. Time Warner. ISBN 0-306-80854-4. 
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, April 03, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.