The third and final album in Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy” was recorded in Montreaux, Switzerland and mixed in New York City…go figure ! As great as it is I find it confusing in places. Not because of the content but it’s always struck me that it’s not very well recorded…. maybe it was meant to sound like that, I don’t know, but Visconti has never seemed to me like a sloppy producer and on the whole “Lodger” isn’t a fantastic sounding record.

Some of it may be because on some tracks the musicians swapped instruments, for ”Boys Keep Swinging” guitarist Carlos Alomar plays drums and drummer Dennis Davies plays Bass (with some help from Visconti in the mix). But then on ”Red Sails”  guitarist Adrian Belew very obviously squashes a note in the main riff and it’s been left in there. Also the way the album starts with “Fantastic Voyage” apologetically stumbling in, it’s weird.

None of that is me saying “Lodger” is a bad album, it’s patently not. It is home to (after “Heroes”) my favourite of Bowie’s songs, “Look Back In Anger”. Bowie turns in quite the vocal performance here but the spotlight should really be shone on Dennis Davies, his drumming on this track is beyond superb. He drives the song from start to finish, and yes I know it’s more than one take and there are congas involved in the mix but it is a performance of the absolute highest skill, quality and above all feel, it flat out swings daddio ! (There’s a video on YouTube of Tony Visconti guiding Dennis’ young son through the track and absolutely delighting in explaining to this kid how great his Dad was, search it out).

The album also coughed up two great singles in the previously mentioned ”Boys Keep Swinging” and “DJ”. “Move On”, Red Sails”, “Repetition” and “Yassassin” are all great songs. Finally, closing song “Red Money” is a reworking of “Sister Midnight”, the opening track on Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot”, thus bringing the whole Iggy, Eno, Berlin period full circle and to a close.

Look Back In Anger - https://youtu.be/eszZfu_1JM0

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