Bowie

by Pat Gilbert

  Bowie as Paul von Przygodski on the set of Just a Gigolo in Berlin.

  A poster for Just a Gigolo, featuring Bowie alongside fellow stars Marlene Dietrich, Sydne Rome, Kim Novak, and Maria Schell.

  The tour incited tumultuous scenes at every stop, including a two-night stand in Detroit where Bowie remonstrated with over-enthusiastic security staff and a barrage of gifts was thrown on the stage. The Dallas show on April 10 was filmed for a TV special titled David Bowie On Stage, featuring six songs including “Hang On to Yourself” and “Ziggy Stardust” from the Ziggy section. In Toronto, Bowie’s path crossed with Lindsay Kemp, touring Salomé. Such was the demand for guest passes at New York’s Madison Square Garden that Andy Warhol was only sent a single pair. Afterwards Bowie and his entourage celebrated at the era’s hottest nightspots, Hurrah and Studio 54. RCA was eager for another Bowie live record, and Visconti was dispatched to record the shows in Philadelphia, Providence, and Boston. Behind the scenes, a row brewed between Bowie and his label about whether a double live album would count as two discs or one, as the singer desperately maneuvered to fulfill his contract and move on to a new deal.

  On May 14, the tour arrived in Germany before visiting Austria and France. Two weeks later, the group recorded a set for Bremen Radio’s music TV program Musikladen Extra, which captured the essence of the Stage performance: Bowie sporting chic futuristic garb and playing a keyboard on “Sense of Doubt,” Belew in a trademark Hawaiian shirt teasing squealing notes from his guitar rig, Mayes and Powell creating dynamic interactions between piano and keyboards, and House adding further atmospheric textures with a violin treated with effects. Meanwhile, Alomar, Murray, and Davis were as funky as ever. The tour continued in Scandinavia and then Holland and Belgium, ending in the UK with three shows at the eighteen-thousand-capacity Earls Court Arena, the site of the disastrous Ziggy-era show five years earlier, though this time the sellout performances were a triumph. The gigs were filmed by David Hemmings, but as with Just a Gigolo, Bowie wasn’t overly impressed with the results and vetoed the idea of releasing them as an official document of the tour.

  Bowie onstage at the Fresno Convention Center, April 2, 1978—the third date of the Isolar II tour.

  Bowie and his band at Earls Court, London, August 28, 1978. From left: Simon House, Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis, Bowie, George Murray, and Adrian Belew.

  The Stage LP, recorded at various dates on the US leg of the Isolar II tour, opens with live takes of five tracks from Ziggy Stardust before turning to Bowie’s recent output for the remainder of the two-disc set.

  Bowie’s performances proved he was still an innovator, agitator, and master of his art, but also a maverick, and his hero status among the new rock elite was cemented on the eve of the UK dates, when he turned up to see Iggy Pop performing at the Music Machine in Camden and then went for a drink afterward with the ex-Stooge and Johnny Rotten. The impact of the tour—and Low and “Heroes”—on Britain’s post-punk scene was proving seismic as the multitude of synthesizer groups that were forming across the country attested. Bowie himself also felt inspired by his performances, and on July 2, the day after the last Earls Court show, he arranged for the group to meet at Tony Visconti’s Good Earth Studios in London to record “Alabama Song,” the Brecht-Weill collaboration that now featured in the Stage set.

  A pair of picture-disc singles taken from Stage, both of which pair tracks from Bowie’s recent Berlin-era recordings with a song from Ziggy Stardust.

  The third, final, and least well-loved entry in the so-called “Berlin trilogy,” Lodger.

  After a summer break, the band reconvened in September at Mountain Studios in Montreux to begin work on Bowie’s next studio album. Although Lodger is regarded as the last in the Berlin Trilogy, none of it was actually recorded in Germany, but the presence of Brian Eno and his unorthodox methodologies make it an instantly recognizable companion piece to Low and “Heroes”. The initial sessions began, as was customary, with Alomar, Murray, and Davis creating the basic tracks, which at one point involved Eno directing their efforts by pointing randomly at a list of chords (an exercise Alomar in particular felt was a rather wearisome). On what would eventually become “Boys Keep Swinging,” Eno asked the rhythm section to swap instruments, resulting in Alomar’s primitive, propulsive drum beat and a quirky bass line by Davis that ultimately had to be overdubbed by Visconti. Eno’s influence was also evident on the eccentric time signatures and world music inflections of “African Night Flight” and the Eastern-reggae hybrid “Yassassin.”

  Two picture-disc singles drawn from Lodger: “Boys Keep Swinging” and the Turkish-themed “Yassassin.”

  Bowie on the set of Saturday Night Live in December 1979 with Klaus Nomi (left) and members of the cast, including (from top center) Bill Murray, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, and Gilda Radner.

  When the other musicians arrived, the experimental vibe continued, adhering to a philosophy inherent in the album’s working title, Planned Accidents. Belew was presented with the same challenge that Fripp had encountered at Hansa, with instructions to play along with a track without first knowing the chords or even the key. After three passes, his work was considered done, since he would by then be too familiar with the backing track for contribution to be spontaneous. This method produced particularly effective results on “Red Sails” but eluded the guitarist other tracks, wherein more conventional methods were applied. At the end of the session, Bowie still hadn’t committed any vocals to tape and indeed wouldn’t do so for another five months or so when recording resumed in New York.

  With Stage appearing at the end of September, the group readied themselves for the final leg of the tour, which would take Bowie to Australia and New Zealand—his first visits to those territories—plus a return visit to Japan. The Australian dates, beginning at Adelaide’s Oval Cricket Ground, took place outdoors and, depending on the nature of each venue, attracted between twenty thousand and forty thousand fans, his biggest live audiences so far. In Japan, a country whose culture had remained close to Bowie’s heart, he was treated like a returning hero and responded with a series of dazzling performances, the last of which took place at Tokyo’s NHK Hall. The gig was filmed in its entirety and an hour-long edit was transmitted on Japanese television, providing a stunning document of the later version of the show, which omitted “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” in favor of “Alabama Song.” After the gig, there was a Just a Gigolo–themed party to celebrate the film’s release early the next year. The group then flew home, but Bowie and Schwab remained in Tokyo to enjoy Christmas.

  Bowie would not tour again for another four years, but the Isolar II world jaunt had enshrined his status as one of the greatest artists rock had ever seen and as a relentlessly creative individual who showed no sign of flagging. This impression of boundless inventiveness was further highlighted by the release of Lodger in May 1979. After a quiet start to the year, Bowie and Visconti had finished the album at New York’s Power Plant, where Bowie recorded his vocals, transforming the experimental instrumentals recorded in Switzerland into a travelogue of songs concerning topics such as nuclear destruction and genocide (“Fantastic Voyage”), the ignoble art of playing other people’s records (“D.J.”), and the testosterone-fueled joys—and attendant sexual confusion—of young men coming of age (“Boys Keep Swinging”). Naturally, there were typically opaque moments too. Bowie amusingly admitted of “Red Sails,” “I honestly don’t know what it’s about.”

  Lodger’s sleeve featured a photograph taken by Brian Duffy of Bowie in a contorted pose reminiscent of an Egon Schiele portrait, with, as if he’d been the victim of an accident, his nose disturbingly flattened. The artwork didn’t always endear itself to reviewers; nor did the music within, which was admittedly uneven though sporadically brilliant—as with “Fantastic Voyage,” “Red Sails,” “Look Back in Anger,” and “Boys Keep Swinging.” In the UK, it reached No. 4, though it fared less well in the States, peaking at No. 20. Both Bowie and Eno co
nfessed a degree of disappointment with the record, and it would mark the end of their extraordinary fertile period of close collaboration. But the promo video for “Boys Keep Swinging,” featuring Bowie camping it up gloriously in drag, would denote the start of a new creative relationship with director David Mallet, who would become crucial in the Bowie’s development as a 1980s MTV icon.

  Bridging the gap between Lodger and Scary Monsters, Bowie released two non-album singles in early 1980: the Japan-only “Crystal Japan” and a double-A-side pairing a version of Bertolt Brecht’s “Alabama Song” with a stark reworking of Bowie’s own “Space Oddity.”

  CHAPTER 7

  1980–1984

  Game It’s No

  In January 1980, as a new decade dawned and Bowie turned thirty-three—the age when Christ supposedly met his maker—it was perhaps only natural that the singer should contemplate a fresh start. With the Berlin Trilogy wrapped up, his divorce from Angie in its final stages, and his fruitful working relationship with Brian Eno over—for now—it was a perfect time for a Bowie reboot. The 1970s had been the decade that propelled and defined the singer, taking him from playing a South London pub as a fading one-hit wonder to performing arena tours as one of rock’s greatest and most beguiling stars. Yet three decades of extraordinary work were still to come.

  Although 1979 was an unusually quiet year for Bowie, with no tour to promote Lodger and no other recording sessions of his own, it hadn’t been without incident. Two of the most dramatic events concerned Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, the stars whose ailing careers he had revived by producing their early solo albums. In Iggy’s case, Bowie had co-written his material, provided him with an income and a place to live, and performed in his touring band. But Bowie’s largess could sometimes complicate these friendships, as an extraordinary episode in spring 1979 demonstrated. On April 10, Reed played at the Hammersmith Odeon to promote his album The Bells and during the set was unsettled to spot Bowie watching from the wings. Afterward, the two men went for dinner at the Chelsea Rendezvous restaurant, accompanied by their girlfriends and Lou’s guitarist, Chuck Hammer. During the meal, Reed—whose recent albums had shown a dramatic decline in quality due to his continued substance abuse—was overheard asking Bowie if he’d produce his next record. Bowie responded, “Yes—if you clean up your act,” to which an outraged Reed exploded, snarling, “Never say that to me!” and slapping his friend hard across each cheek. The ex-Velvet was pulled away from Bowie and thrown out of the restaurant, leaving Bowie to stew over the attack. Later that night, Hammer heard Bowie thumping on the door of Reed’s hotel room, hell-bent on seeking revenge, but his knock was never answered.

  Bowie conducts an interview with MTV at the Carlyle Hotel, New York, on January 27, 1983—the day his deal with EMI was announced.

  Bowie with Keith Richards in the early 1980s. Bowie twice used Richards’s Jamaica studio: in 1976 for rehearsals for the Station to Station tour and again in 1980 on the early stages of Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).

  Bowie’s friendships were put to the test yet again that summer, when he visited Iggy at Rockfield Studios in Wales, where he was recording Soldier, his second album for Arista. His first record for the label, New Values, had lacked the spontaneity and magic spark of the Bowie-produced The Idiot and Lust for Life, and, as with Reed, Iggy’s career looked as if it was once more heading for the rocks. Bowie attended the sessions purely as Iggy’s friend but perhaps inevitably became involved creatively, causing friction with the album’s producer, Iggy’s fellow ex-Stooge James Williamson, who quit the project. Steve New, formerly of Glen Matlock’s post-Pistols group the Rich Kids, was drafted to play guitar, but once again Bowie’s presence caused ructions. According to Matlock, who played bass on the album, the flare-up involved New’s girlfriend Patti Palladin. “Bowie was chatting up Patti because he believed she had a pack of cigarettes stashed in her room,” Matlock told the author. “It was the middle of the night and everyone else had run out of them.” New assumed Bowie was moving in on his girl and punched the singer; then, believing Iggy was mortified at his outburst, New declared he was pulling out of performing on Iggy’s forthcoming US tour. This riled Iggy so much that he wiped the guitarist’s contributions from the album, resulting in Soldier’s rather incomplete sound. “The ironic thing is that Iggy thought it was funny that Steve hit Bowie,” added Matlock. “And also, even more ironic, Steve was the biggest Bowie fan I’ve ever met.”

  Bowie attends a press conference at the Keio Plaza Hotel, Tokyo, in April 1980.

  The start of Bowie’s own new album was similarly dogged by misunderstandings when it came to guitar players. After Bowie’s office engaged the services of Adrian Belew and reportedly paid him an advance, they never again contacted him. The trusted team of Carlos Alomar, George Murray, and Dennis Davis did, however, receive their now-customary invitations. Toward the end of 1979, Bowie and his aide Coco Schwab had rented an apartment on West 26th Street in Chelsea, and such was the singer’s closeness to his rhythm guitarist that Alomar and his wife took a flat on the same block. Work began in February 1980 at Keith Richards’s studio in Jamaica, used by Bowie four years earlier for the Station to Station tour rehearsals, and continued at the Power Station on West 53rd Street. This time, there was little sign of the experimental songwriting techniques that Bowie and Eno had employed on Bowie’s previous three albums; instead the singer revisited discarded song ideas from the past, sketched out a few new ones on guitar, or directed the band with simple instructions.

  Under Japanese influence: Bowie in Japanese-style overcoat circa 1979, and a picture-disc edition of “It’s No Game,” featuring a spoken-word vocal by Michi Hirota (below).

  According to Tony Visconti, in the producer’s chair once more, there was a palpable sense, although it was never overtly expressed, that Bowie wanted to make a record with a mainstream commercial appeal that contrasted sharply with the cult, underground atmosphere of the Berlin-era albums. Clarity of purpose was helped by a fresh, forensic studio methodology. “Bowie walked in with a clipboard, he had a moustache, and was wearing a full-length leather coat with Japanese sandals, and a big wooden crucifix around his neck,” Chuck Hammer told Bowie biographer Paul Trynka. “He was very open, but very organised.”

  A request to work up a tune around a Bo Diddley beat became the foundation of the soulful, church-y “Up the Hill Backwards,” while the call for a “mid-paced groove” supplied the skeletal frame for “Fashion.” “I Am a Laser,” a song dating from the Astronettes session in 1973, was remade into what would become “Scream Like a Baby.” Elsewhere, Bowie sketched out chord changes while the band filled in the gaps. Hammer, mischievously poached from Lou Reed after the Rendezvous scuffle, was asked to try out his new innovation, the synth-guitar, on the backing tracks for “Teenage Wildlife” and “Ashes to Ashes.” Exploring a concept he’d devised called “guitarchitecture,” involving the layering of synthesized guitar sounds, Hammer set to work. “It was very experimental even for us,” recalled Visconti. “It was 50/50 if he would make the cut.” Meanwhile, E-Street band pianist Roy Bittan, who was working elsewhere in the building on Springsteen’s The River, provided the song’s melancholic, minimalist keyboard motif. At Alomar’s suggestion, the group also recorded a cover of “Kingdom Come,” a recent solo song by Tom Verlaine, frontman and guitarist of New York art-rockers Television. Verlaine was asked to contribute guitar but, according to Visconti, spent so long fiddling around trying to find a decent sound on the numerous amplifiers he’d rented that his work was never used.

  After a month’s break, Bowie and Visconti relocated to the latter’s Good Earth Studios in London’s Soho, where Bowie planned to record his vocals and further collaborators were to join the fray. In an extraordinary return to his real-time composing technique on “Heroes,” Robert Fripp created the jerky, metallic riff to “Fashion” in just a couple of takes, later explaining, “There’s nothing you feel less like in the world than turning out a burning sol
o at 10:30 in the morning.” Meanwhile, an ill-tempered Pete Townshend, fueled by Burgundy (and famously declaring, “There’s no such thing as white wine!”), added guitar to “Because You’re Young.”

  The iconic cover art for Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) combined paintings by Edward Bell and photographs by longtime Bowie collaborator Brian Duffy.

  The album’s lyrics, brewing in Bowie’s mind since New York, were tackled last. One working title, “Is There Life After Marriage?,” suggested Bowie’s divorce from Angie was fresh in his mind—as would the final lyrics to “Up the Hill Backwards,” with their reference to the possibilities offered by the “arrival of freedom.” Among the most intriguing lyrics were those for “Ashes to Ashes,” a curious essay in self-awareness that revives the Major Tom character from “Space Oddity” (endearingly referred to as from “such an early song”), and for “Teenage Wildlife,” which poked fun at the “New Wave boys” of the New Romantic movement that, having been inspired to take up their synths by Low, “Heroes”, and the Stage tour, were now threatening to steal Bowie’s thunder. (The song’s “broken-nosed mogul” was later identified by Gary Numan—in the public’s mind a possible culprit himself—as Visage’s Steve Strange.) Meanwhile, actress Michi Hirota, wife of musician Joji Hirota and one of the cover stars of Sparks’ 1974 album Kimono My House, intoned a Japanese translation of the chilling lyrics for “It’s No Game”—Bowie’s reaction to the rise of far-right political parties in Britain—adding to the album’s chic, avant-garde, catwalk feel.