Watch David Bowie perform on German TV in 1978
David Bowie was in a transitionary period in 1978. To be fair, Bowie was constantly in a transition period, especially during the 1970s, but ’78 was a pivotal year between what Bowie had established for himself and what he would eventually become in the 1980s. In the 1970s, he was a chameleon-like art rock icon, but in the 1980s, he would become one of the biggest pop stars in the world.
Not that he was struggling for fame in 1978. The previous year, Bowie had released the critically acclaimed Heroes, and intended to heavily promote it. Bowie had spent the previous few years assisting his friend Iggy Pop with The Idiot and Lust for Life recordings, even touring with Pop as a backing musician instead of promoting his own album, Low. Bowie reclaimed his stardom with ‘Heroes’ and the ‘Isolar II’ tour in 1978, bringing the last vestiges of the ‘Thin White Duke’ persona to concert halls around the world.
That included an appearance on the German TV programme Musikladen, the successor to the influential 1960s show Beat-Club. Bowie had assembled one of his greatest bands for his live shows, anchored by the core rhythm section of guitarist Carlos Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis. Also along for the ride were future King Crimson guitarist Adrien Belew (playing some of the same parts that were recorded by his future boss, Robert Fripp), keyboardists Roger Powell and Sean Mayes, and violinist Simon House.
Bowie performed a truncated version of the sets that he played on the ‘Isolar II’ tour, although the shorter performance followed largely the same format that Bowie was employing on the tour. Shows started with ambient drones and more experimental “Berlin Era” songs, followed by the mixing in of a few glam rock stalwarts before careening to an end with a rendition of ‘Rebel Rebel’. This is how Bowie’s Musikladen performance went as well, starting with the moody keyboard swells of ‘Sense of Doubt’ and ending with the triumphant riff-rock of ‘Rebel Rebel’.
In between, Bowie busts out soon-to-be classics from “Heroes” like ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and the album’s iconic title track, Station to Station hallmarks like ‘Stay’ and ‘TVC 15’, and returns to his glam rock past with ‘The Jean Genie’. Bowie even gets a bit of a history lesson in with ‘Moon of Alabama’, the Kurt Weill composition that had previously been covered by The Doors under the title ‘Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)’. Although the band had rehearsed the entirety of the Ziggy Stardust album and would play a number of the album’s songs on tour, the Musikladen performance doesn’t include any of the LP’s tracks.
Check out Bowie’s full performance on Musikladen down below.
