Transcript
A (0:00)
Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music. Early and ad free on Amazon Music included with Prime. With Black Friday savings at the Home Depot, you can get up to $1,400 off plus get free delivery on select appliances like LG, America's most reliable line of appliances. Check out the newest LG refrigerator with new mini Craft ice straight from the dispenser shop. Black Friday savings on select LG appliances plus get free delivery now at the Home Dep. Free delivery on appliance purchases of $396 or more offer valid 11.5through12 3 US only. See store or online for details.
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A (1:09)
If you had to name the most influential artists in the history of rock, who would they be? Now? I'm talking about people who changed things, moved things, and otherwise propelled things forward for everyone else. So what's your list? Well, Elvis for sure. He's the guy that brought rock and roll to the masses in the 1950s, and he basically ushered in a whole new era in music. The Elvis epoch waned, but he's still a towering figure in the history of popular music. 2. Gotta be the Beatles it seems silly to have to say that, because how many stories have you heard about people deciding to form a band after seeing the Beatles on ed Sullivan in February 1964? The Beatles changed everything across all genres, and they did it in just seven years. Even though they broke up in 1970, they are still the greatest and most influential rock group of all time and will probably be fore and number three. I will fight you if you don't see anyone other than David Bowie, a guy who coincidentally shares a birthday with Elvis. The more you study the history of rock, the more you realize just how many roads lead back to Bowie in some way or another. And although he's been gone for years, he casts a big shadow. Maybe even bigger than he ever did. In fact, it seems that as more time passes, the more we realize how important Bowie was to, well, everything. If you're still unconvinced, stay with Me. I'll prove it. This is part two of why Bowie Still Matters. This is the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross, David bowie from his 1976 album Station to Station, a record that Bowie had no memory of making because by his own admission, he was so coked out during that entire period, from late 1975 through to sometime in late 1976, that he doesn't remember a thing. This song is actually a pretty good representation of his headspace back then. It was inspired by a dream, or more likely a drug induced hallucination with his friend Iggy Pop where an unidentified girlfriend was eaten by a holographic television model TBC 15. It appears too that he was caught up in the doomed spaceman character he played in the movie the man who Fell to Earth. It also hinted where Bowie was headed musically in the latter half of the 70s. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross and welcome to part two of a three part series called why Bowie Still Matters. Some artists come onto the scene, make a splash and then either slowly fade away or disappear completely. But not Bowie. He had a golden period that stretched roughly from 1970 through to 1983. Thirteen albums in those 13 years, and many of them remained not just classics, but milestones in the history of Rock. By 1975, he'd become a favorite among British punks. The music was good, but they also appreciated his fashion sense and the fact that Bowie didn't seem to give a damn about what anybody thought. Bowie's image was very non status quo, something the punks loved. You would have been hard pressed to find anyone in London into punk in 1975 who also wasn't into Bowie. Station to station arrived in January 1976. And even though the record yielded just one major hit, the song Golden Years, which talked about how isolated he felt during that time. Station to Station is now considered to be one of his most important albums. It wasn't at the time, but over the years it's been re evaluated most positively. By this time, Bowie had moved beyond his glam stage, exemplified by his Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane years. Over a period of about three years, Bowie had released six albums. He'd made a series of daring image changes, all of which captured the public's imagination. Station to Station was the era of his thin white Duke phase. This hollow, amoral, emotionless and damaged creature dressed elegantly in a white shirt and waistcoat. His concert tours were among the most theatrical and ambitious things ever taken on the road. It didn't look like he was capable of doing anything wrong. At least that's the way it looked to the general public. But the truth was that Bowie was drinking very heavily and using tremendous amounts of cocaine while eating little more than milk and peppers. At one point his weight was down to less than 90 pounds. The Cracked actor was really cracking up. He did crazy things like store urine in the fridge because he was afraid unspecified witches would were out to steal his vital essence. And he toured with a telescope because he was positive that aliens in an orbiting mothership were coming to get him. And he was deeply interested in what was happening in Germany with groups such as Kraftwerk, Ken New and the rising sound of synthesizers. So his music evolved again. It was funky, it was soulful, but there was something else going on. He began to think that these electronic methods of producing music. We're the future. And what better way to follow this muse than to move to where it all seemed to be happening. Germany. And not just any part of Germany, but West Berlin. And he'd take Iggy with them. They'd submerge themselves in the Berlin scene while simultaneously cleaning up and getting healthy. They knew that if they stayed in LA any longer, they'd just die. It was time to go. So they did. They found a very modest place at Hauptstrasser 155 in the Schonenberg area of the city. Right below was a gay bar where they used to drink. And it's not far from the Kreuzberg area. A good place for bars, clubs and funky shops. Berlin also had a very good recording studio called hansa, all of 100 ish meters from where the Berlin Wall ran through the city. It was in Studio 2 where Bowie and Iggy got back to the business of making music. And they were very serious about it. Bowie produced Gigi's the Idiot there and he also recorded two of his own albums. The first was Low, an experimental and often very electronic album that was part man who Fell to Earth, part Station to Station, and part whatever was happening in Berlin at the time. It was a colder sounding record for Bowie, even colder than Station to Station. But then again, he was trying desperately to kick his cocaine addiction and was often in a lot of physical and psychic pain. Side one could be characterized as a collection of short song fragments with nothing running longer than three and a half minutes. Side two was all instrumental, very art rock, and featured some very important contributions from Brian Eno, who had left Roxy Music and was really starting to come into his own as a producer. At first, fans were confused, including his record company. In fact, they didn't know what to do with the album, so they sat on it for three months before releasing it, even though they knew it was going to be a disastrous commercial failure. But as the years passed, Low has come to be recognized as a bold piece of work that further spread the idea of synthesizer music beyond just what the Germans were doing. Let me play you an example from side two. This is an instrumental track called Warzawa. At the time, this was viewed as something, I don't know, out beyond the orbit of Neptune. Now, though, we can look back at it and say, wow, Bowie was right again. Low became very important to a new generation of kids in the post punk era who wanted to do something different than just play guitars. Take Joy Division, for example. When they got together with producer Martin Hannah to record the classic album Unknown Pleasures, they wanted it to sound like what Bowie was doing. And think how many people that record influenced over the years. Depeche Mode, Gary Newman, omd, the Human League, Phil Collins, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, Arcade Fire. And many, many, many others have said that without Low, they just wouldn't exist. Ten months later came another Berlin album. Heroes was also recorded at Hansa. Bowie continued to follow his Kraut rock muse. In fact, the title of the album is a tribute to a song called Hero that appears on an album by the German band New. There's also a song on the record called V2 Schneider, which is a nod to Florian Schneider, one of the founders of Kraftwerk. This record caught the earliest bits of what would end up being called New Wave. Once again, Bowie was ahead of the curve and Heroes has gone down in history as one of Bowie's all time best records. The title track was allegedly inspired by something Bowie saw from the studio window one day. The young couple meeting by the Berlin Wall for a kiss. This was possibly producer Tony Visconti and his girlfriend Antonia Moss. Another story says that Bowie had just been to an art gallery and saw a painting from 1916 called Lovers Between Garden Walls by Otto Mueller. Another is that Bowie had just read a book called A Grave for a Dolphin, which told the story of a doomed love affair between a girl from Somalia and an Italian soldier. Or it may have had something to do with a woman named Claire Shenstone, with whom he spent some time during those recording sessions. So, you know, take your pick. Not only was the song recorded in English, but Bowie also did it in German. He was in Berlin, after all. And he also did it in French for good measure. The third album in Bowie's so called Berlin Trilogy actually wasn't made in Berlin at all. It was recorded in Switzerland, in New York, but its style and feel still had trappings of his German experience. And for the third time in a row, Brian Eno was there to make some important contributions. He didn't produce. That was still Tony Visconti's job, but he did help Bowie explore what he was trying to do. Lodger was the least commercially successful of these three albums when it arrived in the spring of 1979, two years after Heroes. Critics and fans didn't know what to make of it at first, but like a lot of Bowie material, it simply needed to age a bit. If you've never tried the record, spend some time with it. Bowie aficionados will tell you that it's perhaps his most underrated album. It is artsy, it is experimental. Side one is all about travel. Side two is Bowie's critique of what was happening to Western civilization at the time. And taken as a whole, it again encompasses what was about to happen with new wave and post punk music. And as time passed, appreciation for this album grew. If you want to fast forward ahead, this is the kind of music groups like Talking Heads would be making in a few years. Ask Moby and Blur and even Oasis what they think of this record and you'll get some very different answers from what people were saying about it in 1979. Lodger would be Bowie's last album of the 1970s, his most successful decades. But he wasn't finished yet. We'll look at Bowie's incredible early 80s phase next.