Blackout (David Bowie song)

"Blackout"
Song by David Bowie from the album "Heroes"
Released	October 14, 1977
Recorded	Hansa Studio by the Wall, West Berlin July–August 1977
Genre	Art rock
Length	3:50
Label	RCA Records
Writer	David Bowie
Producer	David Bowie, Tony Visconti
"Heroes" track listing
"Sons of the Silent Age" (4) "Blackout" (5) "V-2 Schneider" (6)

"Blackout" is a song written and recorded by David Bowie in 1977 for the album "Heroes". Author Nicholas Pegg described the track as "typical of the darkly exhilarating sonic schizophrenia of the "Heroes" album”,^[1] while biographer David Buckley remarked on "a backing verging on industrial".^[2]

Regarding its lyrics and subject matter, Bowie himself has claimed that "Blackout did indeed refer to power cuts".^[3] However NME's Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray considered it to have "overtones of Bowie's personal blackout in Berlin (where he collapsed and was rushed to hospital)",^[4] noting the line "Get me to the doctor’s" and an atmosphere of "disorientation, fragmentation, panic".^[4] Nicholas Pegg surmised that, by the same token, the line "Someone's back in town, the chips are down" may have referred to his wife Angie, who had just arrived in Berlin around the same time.^[1]

Live versions

• A concert performance recorded in the spring of 1978 was released on the live album Stage. This version was also released as a single by RCA in Japan in November 1978, backed with "Soul Love" from the same series of concerts.

Notes

1. Nicholas Pegg (2000). The Complete David Bowie: p.40
2. David Buckley (1999). Strange Fascination - David Bowie: The Definitive Story: pp.320-321
3. UNCUT interview (1999) cited at Bowie: Golden Years. Retrieved 20 May 2007.
4. Roy Carr & Charles Shaar Murray (1981). Bowie: An Illustrated Record: p.92

External links

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics