Bowie’s 2nd official live album is the audio record of 1978’s Isolar II tour (a.k.a The Low/Heroes tour a.k.a the Stage tour). It’s a strange one, the tracks from earlier in his career, the Ziggy tracks for example, just don’t cut it for me, far too synthesised in this incarnation. Whereas the “Low” and “Heroes” tunes sound magnificent played live and, as I said a couple of albums back, the version of “Station To Station” on here is what finally allowed me to “get” that song. One of the band has also revealed that for the shows that were recorded for this album all the tempos were slowed down, the only shows where this happened. 

Also the album running order seems very disjointed. They messed with the set running order on the album. If you look online you can find set lists from the tour and re-sequence “Stage” so it runs as the setlist tell you it should. Then it makes far more sense.

I’m not going to say much more except if you can track it down there is a version of the song “Heroes” recorded, I think, at the Earls Court gig on this tour included in the soundtrack of the recently released “Moonage Daydream” documentary. Search it out, it’s fantastic.

Station To Station - https://youtu.be/bnEc91KRKrc

“Heroes” is the only one of the albums tagged as “The Berlin Trilogy” to have been completely recorded in Berlin. In style and structure it is not so very different to “Low”, a full side of songs and most of Side 2 taken up with instrumentals. Visconti and Eno were again here in a production/direction capacity. The band was made up of Alomar, Davies and Murray. There exists a tale that Bowie invited Neu! guitarist Michael Röther to join the sessions. Bowie insists Röther declined (although he also says the invite was for “Low” while Röther says it was for “Heroes”) and Röther claims the invite was rescinded in a phone call by one of Bowie’s staff. Either way we were certainly denied an intriguing collaboration. 

There is much to admire about “Heroes” but for me it is all about the title song. Back in the early 90’s I was out on tour with Kingmaker when on one late, no doubt boozy night the question was posed “If you could have been anywhere to witness any recording session which one would you be at ?” we all had our go at answering but the only response I remember was that of sound engineer Bo, who stared at the ceiling and said “in the control room at Hansa in Berlin when Bowie was recording THAT vocal”. He didn’t say which song, but I instantly knew what he meant, “Heroes”.

Reams and reams have likely been written about how Robert Fripp turned up and laid down that guitar part in one take, how Bowie wrote the lyrics at the last moment after spying Visconti and backing singer Antonia Maas stealing a private moment together in the shadow of the wall, about how Visconti set up microphones at different distances from his singer and gated them so they only opened when Bowie sang loud enough and so also caught the ambience of the room…the recording process is legendary. What came together out of that session is one of the greatest pieces of recorded music in human history, the full 6+ minute album version is nothing short of astonishing. 

I’m going to leave this write up there, I need to go listen to what I’ve just been eulogising, you should too…here you go…

“Heroes” - https://youtu.be/O1PDiYYjWo8

Bowie dragged The Thin White Duke out on the Isolar tour from February to May 1976 in support of “Station To Station”. Stacy Hayden replaced Earl Slick on guitar otherwise it was the same band as on the album. The tour was stark, Bowie dressed in black and white with only white light on stage. Iggy Pop was along on the tour too and the pairs drug use was getting serious. They were arrested in Rochester NY for possession. Bowie’s arrival in London resulted in the infamous “Nazi salute” photograph, Bowie claims he was caught mid-wave. (The tour is documented on the live CD “Live Nassau Coliseum '76” which was released as a bonus disc with “Station To Station” in 2010).

The tour concluded in Paris. After being driven out of the city by fans and then bouncing around the Château d’Hérouville (where he had recorded PinUps), recording Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot”, swinging through Munich and needing somewhere to escape the drug culture back in Los Angeles, Bowie and Iggy ended up in Berlin…the Heroin capital of Europe !

In September 1976 Bowie and band (Alomar, Murray, Davies, guitarist Ricky Gardiner and pianist Roy Young) along with Visconti and Brian Eno returned to the Château d’Hérouville where the majority of what was to become “Low” was recorded. Yes, you read that right, most of the album that is often described as the first in The Berlin Trilogy was recorded in France. 

Bowie was at this time involved in litigation with a former manager, his marriage to Angie was breaking up and she visited the studio with her new beau resulting in a huge row (out of which we at least got “Breaking Glass” and “Be My Wife”) he wasn’t in a good place. Visconti was also dissatisfied with the Château’s studio engineer. So everyone shipped back to Berlin where the album was finished at Hansa TonStudios.

Brian Eno’s contribution to “Low” cannot be denied or underestimated. Bowie had for sometime been a big fan of Krautrock artists like Kraftwerk and Neu!, and that can be heard, but Eno was an equally big influence. Bowie only sings on 5 of 11 songs on “Low” (although Visconti has said that both “Speed Of Life” and “A New Career In A New Town” were originally intended to have vocals but Bowie decided to leave them as instrumentals, bookends for Side 1) which led to much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth at RCA Records where some executives suggested he should return to Philadelphia and make “Young Americans II” !

On its release “Low” was advertised with the slogan “There’s New Wave, there’s Old Wave and there’s David Bowie” which at least shows someone at RCA understood him. The “songs” (as opposed to the instrumentals) are among his best. I’d put them up against anything he’d done before, especially “What In the World” and the single “Sound And Vision”. The instrumental tracks were a jarring shift in style for many, not jarring as in the music was jarring, it’s not, the instrumentals on side 2 are all very gentle and soothing in actual fact, “Warszawa” possibly being my favourite of the four. But hey, if you’d been paying attention over the last 6 years you could almost have expected the shift, right ? 

What In The World - https://youtu.be/HP8btAVedPg