‘Where Are We Now?’: The song David Bowie wrote about the happiest time of his life
The summer of 1976 was characterised by a lot of things – blistering heat, disco fever, but for David Bowie, that stretch of months proved to be transformative and significant to the rest of his entire life and career than most. It obviously inspired transcendental hits like ‘Heroes’ at the time but the impact continued for a much longer period – even until the twilight of his career.
Of course, Bowie’s Berlin trilogy of Low, Heroes, and Lodger followed shortly in the wake of the period, recounting the life-altering societal freedoms and artistic outlets that the city had to offer in comparison to London or America. The seismic impact this had on his life needs no telling – not least for the fact he later came to brand the music produced in Berlin as his “DNA” – but clearly the memories of the frivolities of youth and social awakenings remained a guiding light even many years later.
The remnants of these reminiscences came to manifest ultimately on The Next Day, Bowie’s penultimate album from 2013 in which the track ‘Where Are We Now?’ stood out as a reflection on times lived, loved, and lost as the ‘Starman’ looked back over the expanse of his career. The setting is patently Berlin, seen in lyrics such as: “Had to get the train / from Potsdamer Platz / you never knew that / that I could do that / just walking the dead,” but the juxtaposition of memory and melancholy gave the song its most haunting effect.
Although Bowie himself didn’t undertake any interview when The Next Day was released, his many previous extensive opines on his time spent in Berlin shed light on exactly why the experience was so transformative to him. He recalled in a 1999 interview: “It was an irreplaceable, unmissable experience and probably the happiest time in my life up until that point. But I just can’t express the feeling of freedom I felt there. Some days [we] would jump into the car and drive like crazy through East Germany and head down to the Black Forest, stopping off at any small village that caught our eye. Just go for days at a time.”
Other experiences were decidedly more luxurious, the singer mused, such as the “KaDeWe, the giant department store in the Centre of West Berlin, which had the hugest food counters anyone could imagine with displays that are only imaginable in a country which either must have been seriously deprived of food at one time or where the populace just plain likes to eat a lot.”
However seminal living in the German city may have been, however, the microcosm experience of finding oneself couldn’t last forever, as Bowie put it himself when he said: “I had not intended to leave Berlin, I just drifted away.” That’s the exact predicament that ‘Where Are We Now?’ wrestles with – remembering the good times while wondering how the years afterwards have just slipped by, while resigning to the fact that those days are coming back. Bowie may never have thought he had an eye to the future, but he certainly seemed like he possessed one.
Bowie’s Berlin period – spent equally traversing the open roads while also indulging in the decadence of the city – is a whole chapter in the rock star’s life and career that warrants its own dissection and analysis in understanding exactly what made his sonic world spin from the 1970s onwards. Those notions simply cannot be condensed down, as they represented the process of Bowie’s real musical imagination truly taking flight.
