DHis recording of “Chinese Girl” appeared in David Bowie’s hit album “Let’s Dance”, and you wouldn’t have heard that it was produced during the “Berlin stage” of Bowie’s legend. In the late 1970s, the artist who was born in London as David Robert Jones lived and worked in this well-known walled city. The song “Where Are We Now?” from Bowie’s penultimate album “The Next Day” released in 2013 is a reminiscence of those years. Even the album cover mentions this time because it uses Berlin’s photo LP “Hero”.
The three albums-“Low”, “Heroes” and “Lodger”-are the products of that era. They are considered to be milestones in the turbulent career of the “Skinny White Duke”, as he claimed to be shortly before moving to Germany. In Berlin, he discovered Can and Kraftwerk, and collaborated with keyboard genius Brian Eno, who turned from Roxy Music and gorgeous rock to avant-garde, or with Robert Fripp of the avant-garde rock band King Crimson.
Drugs played a big role at the time. According to Iggy Pop in “Tagesspiegel” in February 2016, when Bowie was trapped in Berlin due to multiple tours, album productions and chemicals, he was the last. While Bowie reinvented himself and thrived again, his friend Iggy Pope fell into disrepair at the same time and in the same place: “I came to Berlin very healthy, but it was a mess,” the father of punk and punk The founder Pope said. The iconic band The Stooges Items. You can also see it in art: as Bowie got closer and closer to the avant-garde, James Newell Ostberg (the real name of pop music) tried to conquer the pop world.
Belated blow
As Julia Maehner suspected in Rolling Stone magazine in 2008, parties and drugs may have affected Iggy Pop’s Berlin albums “The Idiot” and “Lust For Life”. What is certain, however, is that for an artist who is valued by other sounds or not noticed at all, the time for new pop music incorporating industrial sounds is not yet ripe. The radical image change can only be undertaken by Bowie, who has perfected his existence as an artistic, man-made chameleon. Anyone who has heard of the nine LPs released in chronological order from 1971 to 1977, from “Hunky Dory” to “Heroes”, will recognize the ever-changing style of Bowie practiced in a short period of time.
Compared with the 1970s, the fact that the Berlin records of popular music now fit perfectly with Bowie’s work may be easier to recognize today. For example, compare the black-and-white cover artwork of “Idiot” and “Hero”-both were inspired by the 1917 woodcut edition of German expressionist painter Erich Heckel (1883-1870).” Roqueroll”. However, although Bowie’s albums at that stage of creation were particularly valued and admired, the response to Iggy Pop’s works was mixed. Some of his songs, such as “Passenger”, are now classics because they have influenced bands like Ministry or Sisters Of Mercy. The duet “Night Club”, “Lust For Life” or “Tonight” recorded by Bowie and Tina Turner was created during the joint creation process. This also applies to “China Girl”, which was released as the second single of “The Idiot” in May 1977-and ended in failure.
