Brilliant Berlin: The five best albums recorded at Hansa Studios
Abbey Road in London, Sun Studios in Memphis, Sound City in Los Angeles—plenty of recording studios have created so much magic that they’ve been written into cultural recognition. They’re like hallowed halls where new artists still clamber to get in the door and play alongside the memory of the legends. One of the most dynamic and interesting of them all has to be Hansa Studios, the Berlin recording studio that seemed able to revive the creativity of any artist who walked through the door.
Situated only 150 meters from the Berlin wall, when Hansa Studios opened in 1963 it became a strange yet shining light in Kreuzberg, the poorest part of West Berlin. But as the wall split the city, the West quickly became know as the cultural, cosmopolitan side, where artists roamed and created incredible things despite the difficulty. It earned the nickname of ‘Hansa by the Wall’, becoming a oasis for musicians right at the heart of the action.
There was always something special about Hansa. Perhaps it was because of that eerie location, giving every piece of art made there a sense of tension or high stakes, creating diamonds under pressure. Or, in the 1970s especially, it was largely down to the studio’s extraordinary ‘Studio 2’. Next door to the studio stood the Meistersaal concert hall, a stunning 1910s chamber music hall. From 1976, the room served as another recording studio, creating not only a beautiful sound but a moving atmosphere for legends to work in.
All of that, paired with the fact that Berlin was always a relatively cheap place for artists to live and worth, made Hansa a breeding ground for inspired works. There seems to be a pattern of artists feeling trapped or stuck in their earlier work, so transplanting themselves to Berlin for a period of rejuvenation or reinvention. Not only is it home to David Bowie’s famed years in the city, but plenty of other iconic albums have been made within its walls.
The best albums recorded at Hansa Studios:
David Bowie – Low and Heroes (1977)
What is there to do after Ziggy Stardust or the Thin White Duke? By the late 1970s, David Bowie, much like the characters he’d been playing for several albums and years now, was crashing out. After shooting to the top as one of the most famous musicians on the planet and being hit with this kind of genius reputation, there seemed to come a point where he looked in the mirror and was terrified at what he saw. He was drug addicted, stick thin, and seemingly being carried away by the phenomena he was making.
So, in the summer of 1976, Bowie and his friend Iggy Pop moved to West Berlin in an attempt to escape the limelight for a moment and try to shake their drug habits. With the guidance of producer Brian Eno and the inspiration provided by the city and its more experimental krautrock scene, Bowie’s Berlin years were a reinvention. At Hansa, he recorded the first two albums of his ‘Berlin Trilogy’, releasing Low and Heroes in the same year. It seemed that within the walls of the studio, and with the new inspiration he had found there, his creativity flooded back without the need to invent some kind of character to pin it to. For the first time since his breakout, it seemed like Berlin allowed Bowie to make music as simply as Bowie.
Iggy Pop – Lust For Life (1977)
It’s a similar story for Iggy Pop. Following the breakup of The Stooges in 1974, the band’s leader was also left spiralling out, going deeper into addiction and being utterly uncertain about his next move. After working with Bowie on the band’s final album, Raw Power, Iggy Pop brought him back on board when it came to starting his solo efforts with The Idiot. It was over the course of making that album that the pair decided they needed to go away, finishing the mixing of his debut solo album at Hansa as the city and studio’s influence began to hook them in.
While The Idiot announced Iggy Pop’s comeback, it was Lust For Life that made it a fact. With the huge title track, Pop seemed to find his voice again as a solo artist but also found a sound that still kept some of the wild Stooges’ spirits but was more considered and mature. Written and recorded entirely in their Berlin apartment and at Hansa studios, the album wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for their years spent in West Berlin and with the sanctuary provided by that studio, giving them a place to crash out and a place to start playing around and finding the joy in music again.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Firstborn Is Dead (1985) and Your Funeral… My Trial (1986)
There’s a pattern emerging of Hansa being a place for down-and-out musicians to find their feet again. Nick Cave is another. After The Birthday Party died in a blaze of wild punk glory, the musician needed a place to start over. Mark Reeder, a British producer who had also moved across to Berlin, said it was easy to coax the Australian musician over, stating, “I managed to lure him with the promise of cheap drugs, cheap drink and cheap living”.
The Berlin years were really the origin of the Bad Seeds, providing the perfect backdrop to merge the violent punk spirit of his previous outfit with a more considered, poetic edge. Talking about the city, Cave said, “Berlin gave us the freedom and encouragement to do whatever we wanted. We’d lived in London for three years and it seemed that if you stuck your head out of the box, people were pretty quick to knock it back in. Particularly if you were Australian. When we came to Berlin, it was the opposite. People saw us as some kind of force rather than a kind of whacky novelty act.”
While living cheap, smashing drugs and writing his debut novel too, Cave and his troupe recorded two of their earliest albums at Hansa.
U2 – Achtung Baby (1991)
Carrying on the grand tradition of heading to Hansa for a moment of reinvention, U2 were Berlin-bound in the early 1990s. After their 1988 release, Rattle and Hum got slack for feeling too tired, and similar to their previous releases, the Irish rock band knew they needed to shake things up, so they headed to the European capital of cool and called up the producer that had become the studio’s favourite resident wizard; Brian Eno.
Eno and Hansa seemed to be a match made in heaven when it came to giving musicians and bands the new sound they were after. With the city’s influence and Eno’s broad, experimental capabilities, Achtung Baby saw the band taking inspiration from electronic dance music, rock, industrial music and beyond, going far beyond the box they’d been settled into before.
R.E.M – Collapse into Now (2011)
But just as Hansa has a legacy of fresh starts, it also has a history of being the final calling port for a lot of iconic acts. Perhaps it’s simply a bucket list place that some bands want to record at before they call it quits, or maybe there’s a sort of understanding that if Hansa can’t refresh the group, nothing can.
R.E.M knew that Collapse Into Now was their goodbye record. After their 2008 tour, they’d discussed as a group how they wanted to go out on a high, so they started crafting a record, knowing it would be their powerful closing remarks. It was also a final chance to place themselves in some of the most inspiring places in the world, with Hansa’s Meistersaal concert hall being one of them. For Mike Mills, it was in that room that the experience got emotional. “We tried to enjoy it as much as possible and make it as fun as possible, but we’re not super-sentimental people in that sense,” he said, “The only time we got really poignant was when we were working in Berlin, and they have a beautiful room there, Meistersaal, where we recorded seven or eight songs.”
In many ways, Hansa and Meistersaal were where they held the funeral for the band. “There was no one there really except some friends, family, and significant others, and we knew that was probably the last time we would ever play together as R.E.M,” Mills said of their final moments as a group in the studio.
