The 10 best songs from David Bowie’s Berlin period
The year was 1976. David Bowie was mentally and physically exhausted by the last few years he had spent in Los Angeles, where he lived in excess, fuelled by cocaine.
He claims that he “started on the drugs at the end of 1973 and then with force in 1974. As soon as I got to America, pow! It was so freely available in those days. Coke was everywhere. … Because I have a very addictive personality, I was a sucker for it.”
Determined to kick the habit and find a sense of rejuvenation and creative inspiration elsewhere, Bowie decided to move to Berlin, inspired by a love of Weimar Germany’s rich art movement during the 1920s, as well as the blossoming music scene that was occurring in 1970s Berlin.
Both he and Iggy Pop found an apartment together in Schöneberg before creating music, making friends, and immersing themselves in Berlin’s culture. During this time, Bowie completed what would become known as the Berlin Trilogy. These three albums represented Bowie’s growth whilst in Berlin and was comprised of Low, Heroes, and Lodger.
Bowie was greatly inspired by the likes of krautrock bands such as CAN, Neu!, and Faust, as well as electronic pioneers Kraftwerk and the recently-released ambient albums of Brian Eno. Around this time, Bowie also contributed hugely to Iggy Pop’s seminal album The Idiot, receiving a producer credit for his work.
The three albums from this period were a huge source of inspiration for a lot of artists, particularly Joy Division, Moby, and Gary Numan. Thus, in celebration of the transformative and influential period in Bowie’s life, here are ten of the greatest cuts from the Berlin Trilogy.
The 10 best songs from David Bowie’s Berlin period:
‘Sound and Vision’ (Low)
With cheery guitar chords and uplifting backing vocals, ‘Sound and Vision’ contrasts its upbeat sound with simple yet melancholic lyrics about Bowie’s mental state as he tried to free himself from his drug addiction. About the song’s words, he said they were about “wanting to be put in a little cold room with omnipotent blue on the walls and blinds on the windows.”
The song is one of Bowie’s most recognisable and defines his intentions to get clean and experiment with new sounds during this era. The song’s unconventional structure prioritises a long instrumental section that takes up more time than Bowie’s actual vocals.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ (Heroes)
Acting as the opening track on Heroes, Bowie is joined by Robert Fripp on guitar, whose razor-sharp chords slice through a building of drums and synths. The distant noise of keys works as the perfect precursor to an explosion of sounds that welcome Bowie’s vocals.
Bowie is also joined by Antonia Maass, a jazz singer from Berlin. Producer Tony Visconti recalls introducing Bowie to Maass, saying, “Before long, he had her jumping through hoops getting her to sing at the very top of her range. He also asked her to sing ‘liebling’ as an alternative to ‘darling’, bringing a little flavour of Berlin into the song.”
‘DJ’ (Lodger)
Drawing vocal parallels to Talking Head’s David Byrne, who was also collaborating with Brian Eno at the time, ‘DJ’ sees Bowie satirise 1970s DJ culture. The opening of ‘DJ’ begins with a short explosion of different sounds, including a violin, before keeping up a steady rhythm backed by Dennis Davis’ drums.
Bowie said about the track: “This is somewhat cynical, but it’s my natural response to disco. The DJ is the one who is having ulcers now, not the executives, because if you do the unthinkable thing of putting a record on in a disco, not in time, that’s it. If you have thirty seconds’ silence, your whole career is over.”
‘Warszawa’ (Low)
Heavily inspired by Brian Eno, Bowie collaborated with the British musician on ‘Warszawa,’ a six-and-a-half minute largely instrumental piece that evokes the desolation that the musician observed in Warsaw. Opening up the second side of Low, Bowie said:
“Side Two was more an observation in musical terms: my reaction to seeing the East bloc, how West Berlin survives in the midst of it all, which was something I couldn’t express in words. Rather it required textures.” The result is a hauntingly atmospheric piece that involves a melody mid-way through which was inspired by a Polish folk choir.
‘Heroes’ (Heroes)
During Bowie’s Berlin period, he made one of his most recognisable tracks, ‘Heroes.’ Lyrically, the track explores a doomed relationship between two lovers, one from East Berlin and one from the West. Although the song is widely used in popular culture to celebrate heroic events, the lyrics allude to much darker themes, despite its optimistic chord progressions.
Bowie was inspired by Visconti’s affair with Maass, which was doomed to fail since he was already married. Furthermore, Bowie was also inspired lyrically by the painting Lovers Between Garden Walls by Otto Mueller, as well as the short story A Grave for a Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno.
‘Moss Garden’ (Heroes)
Another ambient cut from the Berlin era, ‘Moss Garden,’ was created with the intention of evoking the feeling of being in the Saiho-ji gardens in Kyoto, Japan. Eno once described making the peaceful track: “I was just playing around with this chord-sequence on the Yamaha synthesizer and I said ‘Give us a shout when you think it’s long enough,’ and sort of carried on. And then David looked at the clock and said ‘Yeah, that’ll probably do’, and we stopped.”
One of the instruments featured on the track is a koto (箏), Japan’s national instrument. Amid Eno’s synthesizer, the koto brings an added depth and atmosphere. Bowie was partly inspired by kraut rockers Neu!, who used the instrument on their second album, Neu! 2.
‘Look Back in Anger’ (Lodger)
Featuring kinetic-sounding instrumentation driven by peppy drums, Bowie gives an unusually low vocal performance on ‘Look Back in Anger.’ The song is divided into two parts, with the first featuring the protagonist being visited by an angel before taking off together. The second half sees someone flick through a magazine whilst waiting for an unspecified person to arrive.
Bowie described the process of writing the song by saying, “We did one thing on this track which was a lot of fun but terribly frustrating for the musicians. Brian and I came up with a series of cards with chords on. We stuck them on a blackboard, and we had all the musicians sitting on chairs in front of the blackboard. Then Brian and I just pointed at the one to play next.”
‘Always Crashing in the Same Car’ (Low)
Working as both a metaphorical description of Bowie’s depression and the frustrating feeling of repeating the same mistakes, ‘Always Crashing in the Same Car’ also recounts the times when the musician would drive around car parks, crashing into cars.
He has also said of the song, “I wrote that in Berlin, in the mid to late Seventies. It was about one of the few very stupidly, badly attempted thank God, suicide attempts that I tried.” To make a long story short, Bowie once rammed his car repeatedly into a coke dealer’s car in a daze, which partly inspired the track.
‘Blackout’ (Heroes)
Featuring a bubbling undercurrent of panic that is held down by a rumbling bassline, before exploding into shouts of “Get me to the doctors!” and an erratic delivery of the following verse, ‘Blackout’ is one of Heroes‘ sonically darker moments.
The song was written a few months after Bowie’s collapse from severe chest pains resulting from his heavy drinking. However, Bowie has claimed that the song also references the power cuts that affected New York in 1977. Bowie once recalled being in New York at the time and writing ‘Blackout’ based on his experience, “I remember burnings, looting, it got very nasty.” No one can be sure of the true intentions behind the song’s disjointed lyrics, as Bowie was recording Heroes in Berlin at the time of the New York blackouts.
‘Breaking Glass’ (Low)
A short but impactful track that is punctured by Eno’s synthesizer alongside some twanging electric guitars and pounding drums, ‘Breaking Glass’ manages to spotlight every instrument flawlessly. George Murray’s infectious bassline carries the song as Bowie sings about the time he drew Kabbalistic drawings on the floor of a photographic studio.
In reference to the short length of the track, Eno said: “The feeling around was that we’d edit together… and turn it into a more normal structure. And I said, ‘No, don’t, leave it abnormal, leave it strange, don’t normalise it… If it’s like that, and you like it, keep it. Why fix it? It’s not broken.’”
