Bowie in Berlin. A New Career in a New Town :: Education by Design Store

Editorial Review

By 1975 rock icon David Bowie was in crisis. Lost in Los Angeles, he was ravaged by cocaine abuse, overwork, and an obsession with the occult, while his marriage lay in tatters. Desperate to reignite his creative spark, Bowie relocated in mid-1976 to Berlin, accompanied by an equally troubled Iggy Pop, former Stooges frontman. The move to Berlin proved fortuitous both personally and professionally. There he produced two of Iggy Pop's best albums and starred in Just a Gigolo. Most importantly, he wrote and recorded three of his finest works — Low, Heroes, and Lodger — with the help of such legends as Brian Eno, Tony Visconti, and Robert Fripp. New Music Night and Day explores the sometimes dark forces that fueled Bowie's artistry during the time and the creation of these albums. The book explores how the albums ushered rock and pop into the electronic era and examines their continued influence on the contemporary musical landscape.

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Customer Reviews

The berlin years

2008-08-31
Great book for all Bowie fans specialy of the berlin era.
The making of Low, Heroes, Lodger + The idiot and lust for life of Iggy pop is very detailing, the writer knew about his subject is not the case of all the books about Bowie. This book is very instuctive and easy reading

The LOW down

2008-08-21
This is a book written by a fan for other fans. It's decent enough, but almost all the material (interviews, etc) is from second hand sources and subjected to much slanted speculation. The sections relating Bowie's film work are over-detailed.

I've been a Bowie fan since 1973 and revere his Spiders era material, which this author virtually dismisses even though it is the foundation of his subject's fame. I could never quite understand the fuss some people make over the "Berlin Trilogy". Bowie was always aping, and often bettering his models. But not in this case. The skewed pop and ambient music Brian Eno was making on his own before and after the collaboration with Bowie was superior. In fact, the best thing on LOW is "Warzawa" (the capital of Poland, thank you), an Eno composition marred by a histrionic Bowie vocal tacked on near the end. I've always found LOW a very flawwed, derivative effort, a poor man's ANOTHER GREEN WORLD. HEROES is more cohesive, and its magnificent title track is the last great Bowie song. Still, the instrumentals on Side 2 are even more faceless than those on its predecessor. LODGER has its moments, but thankfully, no instrumentals, for which Bowie, a consummate songsmith, had no evident talent.

The book does a service in reasserting Visconti's contribution. Rock writers still misattribute the albums' production to Eno. Fans seeking an authoritative account of this era should seek out his recent autobiography.

A fabulous book

2008-05-13
At the time of publication of Bowie's Berlin production, I was involved with music myself and can attest on the significance/impact/impulse generated by the 3 and a half masterpieces of the epoch (Lust For Life being half a chef d'oeuvre, Lodger none at all).
The reading of this book however is my first investment into getting to know the story behind the Berlin adventure. Compared to most literature on music, this book is extremely well written and a pleasure to read. Unlike my fellow reviewer, I also enjoyed the detours into side-stories and parallel personalities. The only character that finds it hard to come off the page is Iggy. But then the book is not about him...
Thoroughly enjoyable!

P.D.: Warsaw is not the Czech capital, it is Poland's.

Bowie the Fragile Genius

2008-03-27
David Bowie's albums Low, "Heroes," and Lodger are some of the most seminal pieces of popular music released in the 1970s. Two albums in the same ranks are Iggy Pop's The Idiot and Lust for Life, both of which Bowie had a large hand in creating. The years the two spent together in Berlin, each recovering from substance abuse and general mental deterioration, were a fascinating time that will interest any fan of either; and this book does an excellent job of detailing those heady days. Bowie is seen here as a fragile genius (if an opportunistic one) rather than the chameleon-like fashion plate he can be accused of being. My only quibbles are that the author sometimes gets lost in off-topic tangents that become boring history lessons - Christopher Isherwood may have played a role in Bowie's Berlin years, but we didn't need a multi-paragraph rundown on Isherwood and W.H. Auden's story (already told so many damn times!). Likewise, while the film The Man Who Fell To Earth (Bowie played the lead role) certainly had much to do with what became of Bowie in the years after its making, we didn't need a play-by-play, multi-page synopsis of the film. But once you get past those moments of excess, everything else in the book is well done, thoughtful, engaging . . . If you are interested in David Bowie in general, and particularly if you are a fan of his experimental late 70s work, or if you care to read about the friendship and working relationship between Bowie and Iggy (also Bowie and Eno, as well as Bowie and Tony Visconti), you will enjoy this book.