The 1979 album David Bowie would always regret: “We didn’t do it justice”
No one in this world could ever know what to expect whenever they picked up a new David Bowie record.
‘The Starman’ thrived on making the kind of music that kept people guessing, and even when people thought they had him figured out in one part of his career, that was normally the moment where he would make a sharp pivot into something completely different. He liked the idea of being one step ahead of his audience, but sometimes getting ahead can mean that a few songs can get away from him every now and again.
Even though Bowie was a legend, he was never known to knock it out of the park every single time he performed. His official debut is still one of the more confusing albums in his discography, and there are more than a few times where he felt like he disappointed his fans on albums like Never Let Me Down, but it’s not like he was ever looking to take the easy road, either. He wanted to make music that challenged him, but even his celebrated records do have a bit of an asterisk next to them.
Bowie felt that he could improve on what he was doing, and while some records like Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane were fantastic, Diamond Dogs was the moment he realised that he was spinning his wheels a little too much. Young Americans became the perfect pivot for him to do something a bit more danceable, but Station to Station was the first time Bowie seemed to have a problem with one of his records.
It’s practically aces from cover to cover, but the fact that ‘The Starman’ couldn’t remember a goddamn thing about these sessions should tell you a lot about his state of mind. He was losing himself to cocaine and his interest in the occult, and to get away from Los Angeles, his time in Berlin made for some of the most interesting music that he ever made. He and Brian Eno were a match made in heaven, and all three albums he made with him were about finding new creative endeavours on every song.
Low was already one of the first instances of post-rock that the world had ever heard, but across each of the records, it was about deconstructing what Bowie’s music meant. ‘Be My Wife’ was a much more ramshackle version of what he was known for, and “Heroes” had the kind of caustic production that gives it a world of its own throughout its runtime. But looking back on every record he made, Bowie felt like Lodger was the one Berlin album that fell short a little bit.
Keep in mind, the songs were still great, but Bowie felt that the production was the one thing he regretted the most, saying, “Tony [Visconti] and I felt we rushed through the mixing process. We didn’t do it justice. It’s one of the few albums that Tony and I have always thought, God, I’d love to get my hands on that album again and re-mix it. It was done so quickly. It contains so many nuggets, I really like the stuff on it but I don’t think it was ever brought to its fullest state. We sold it short in the mixing, but it’s a lovely album.”
But in context, that kind of unfinished production does help it stick out compared to both of its predecessors. A lot of the songs aren’t necessarily as memorable as what turned up on the ones before, but when you look at it in the right context, hearing Bowie dabbling in the sounds of new wave felt like a prototype for the more synth-driven bands that were about to start blowing up around the start of the 1980s.
It was important for Bowie to get these albums out of his system at the time, but even when he became the darling of MTV a few years later, he wouldn’t have reached that point without albums like Lodger. The record was never going to be one of the biggest albums of that year or anything, but it acts as the perfect bridge from a song like ‘Heroes’ to what he would be doing on ‘Ashes to Ashes’.
