David Bowie's LOW 33 1:3 series (Unabridged) Hugo Wilcken.mp3

"Low, the brilliant, haunting, experimental album created by David Bowie—with the assistance of Brian Eno and Tony Visconti—in the autumn of 1976, stands as a landmark achievement. In the perceptive commentary Low (Continuum; 33 1/3 Series, number 26), author Hugo Wilcken calls Bowie’s avant-garde disc “a milestone, both as an exemplary work in itself, and in the development of popular music.” During the mid-seventies, Wilcken observes, “Pop went arty. And Low marks the highpoint of this development, with its atmosphere of modernist alienation, its expressionism, its eclectic blend of R&B rhythms, electronics, minimalism and process-driven techniques, its suspicion of narrative.”

Only five of the album’s eleven tracks really have lyrics because “Bowie struggled to come up with the words on Low.” Side one, comprised of “nervy, fragmented art-funk,” featured Bowie’s hit single, “Sound and Vision.” Low’s second side offered four “textural…ambient pieces.”

Although Low was a challenging LP, it sold well, reaching number two in the UK and number eleven in the United States. More importantly, it influenced numerous bands, including Joy Division, Ultravox!, the Human League, Devo, Pulp, and Radiohead. Joy Division drummer Stephen Morris admitted that “when it came out, I thought Low was the sound of the future.”

Wilcken thoroughly examines the various influences on Bowie during his Low period. These included the German bands Kraftwerk, Can, and Neu!; musicians Scott Walker, Syd Barrett, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich; and the pre-World War I Brucke school artists (Kirchner, Bleyl, Nolde, and Heckel). The Brucke movement, Bowie explained, “was an art form that mirrored life not by event but by mood, and this was where I felt my work was going.” Iggy Pop, who had fallen on difficult times, also influenced Bowie. At the same time he was recording Low, Bowie produced his comrade’s album, The Idiot. According to Wilcken, “for Bowie, The Idiot wasn’t just about resurrecting Iggy Pop’s stalled career. It was also a dry run for Low, with which it would be recorded almost back-to-back, in the same studios.”

Wilcken adeptly analyzes the Bowie-Pop relationship. “Although there were certain things in common—both rock performers, both in something of a personal and artistic impasse, both struggling with drugs and mental health problems—it was basically a case of opposites attracting. Bowie was the sexually ambiguous English dandy; Iggy Pop the hyper-masculine American rocker.”

Further, Wilcken considers Bowie’s projects before The Idiot and Low, including his unreleased soundtrack for The Man Who Fell to Earth and his 1976 LP, Station to Station. During the soundtrack sessions, Bowie began exploring “atmospheric, mood music for the first time.” Discussing Station to Station’s link to Low, Bowie stated that “as far as the music goes, Low and its siblings [“Heroes” and Lodger] were a direct follow-on from the title track of Station to Station. It’s often struck me that there will usually be one track on any given album of mine which will be a fair indicator of the intent of the following album.”

Bowie made Low (initially titled New Music: Night and Day) at the Chateau d’Herouville outside Paris and the Hansa-by-the-Wall Studios in West Berlin. He resided in the German city for the next two years. During the day, Bowie visited Berlin’s art galleries (he favored the Brucke museum) and at night he frequented the cabarets and transvestite bars. While recording, “he quickly got into a routine of staying in bed until the afternoon then brunching on coffee, orange juice and cigarettes before walking to Hansa, where he would often work through the night. Daytime pleasures, when he indulged in them, included idling in coffeehouses and riding around the wide spaces of the city on bikes,” with his companions Iggy Pop and Coco Schwab, Bowie’s personal assistant. Photos from the period show him “very much acting the part of the Weimar-era Berliner, in his pinch-front fedora and leather overcoat.” Working with Eno, Bowie completed his matchless “Berlin Trilogy”: Low (1977), “Heroes” (1977), and Lodger (1979).

Bowie endured many trials during the recording of Low. His marriage to Angie was collapsing. He faced legal hassles with his former manager, Michael Lippman. And he struggled with “drug-induced mental health problems.” Bowie, Wilcken contends, “had cut back on his cocaine intake but hadn’t killed the habit altogether; some mornings he’d still be locking himself in the bathroom. Other days he might knock back a bottle of whisky…Essentially, the less coke Bowie did, the more he drank.” Eno related that during the Low sessions, Bowie “was pretty much living at the edge of his nervous system, very tense. But as often happens, that translated into a sense of complete abandon in the work. One of the things that happens when you’re going through traumatic life situations is your work becomes one of the only places where you can escape and take control. I think it’s in that sense that ‘tortured’ souls sometimes produce great work.” In short, Bowie’s tribulations helped produce a masterpiece.

Rock and roll enthusiasts, particularly Bowiephiles, will applaud this creditable study. Wilcken skillfully provides the low down on Low."