*Photo by the author, All Rights Reserved.
The Cosmic Sonic Tsunami
I'll never forget the first day I truly listened to David Bowie.
I'm sure I had heard his songs in the background, or in passing before, but never made the connection of who - or what - he was.
It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in my junior year of college in San Francisco. It had been a wonderful action-packed weekend of apartment parties, after-parties into the small hours and painting the town neon. I was sitting in the kitchen of the apartment I shared with four friends on 16th Street when one of my roommates in the room directly behind me started playing the Best Of Bowie album at high volume.
The power of the music hit me like a tsunami wave. Lounging back in the vintage barber chair we had dragged up from the street to serve as our leather-and-chrome art deco kitchen throne, I was awestruck, dumbfounded, shocked, amazed, thoroughly and tremendously astounded. Starman, Suffragette City, The Jean Genie, Rebel Rebel and Young Americans. John, I’m Only Dancing and Life On Mars? I was now convinced there was indeed life on Mars. Where else could a composer of sounds like this come from?
That was only a selection from Disc 1! My psyche reeled as if I had been struck by a sonic lightning bolt from above, just like the iconic design painted across Bowie’s face on the album cover of Aladdin Sane.
*Album cover photo by Brian Duffy, January 1973. Makeup by Pierre Laroche.
Following that unexpected listening session I quickly became obsessed with the mysterious character(s) of the artist known as David Bowie. This rabbit hole of history, personas, outfits, haircuts, transformations and musical explorations ran deep. Down it I happily ran with gleeful abandon.
I realized I should try to reign in my enthusiasm - or at least keep it to myself, or risk social alienation - one night out a week or two later with friends at a biker bar in the Mission district called Zeitgeist. Around a wooden picnic table in the garden yard I was quizzing them on the standard questions I ask anyone about an artist I’m into; have you ever seen them live, what’s your favorite album, what song moves you the most and man, isn’t Bowie just phenomenal? After 20 minutes or so of this one of them stopped me mid-rant to abruptly announce “OK Shawn, enough! We get it. You like David Bowie.”
I complied with their request yet failed to comprehend how any trivial subject they wanted to discuss could rival the glory and grandeur of Ziggy Stardust.
Looking back now I realize I didn’t stay friends with those people for much longer after that. I don’t regret it. I knew then and there that our friendships would be short lived. Everything works itself out for the best.
Many years later, I’ve been continuously fascinated and inspired by the work of David Bowie ever since. As a songwriter myself, I look to Bowie as one of a small group of truly timeless artists who never fails to ignite my creativity and passion for music. This is the first time I’ve published any writing about my evergreen appreciation for his artistry. It won’t be the last.
*Yours Truly wearing Bowie T-shirt, performing at Gold Sounds in Bushwick, Brooklyn with David Cornejo on drums. Photo by Vinny, All Rights Reserved.
A New Career In A New Town
I happened across the book Bowie In Berlin; A New Career In A New Town (2008, Jawbone Press) on a store shelf at random and bought it on the spot, instinctively knowing I was in for a treat. Author Thomas Jerome Seabrook has crafted a fascinating extreme close-up of a prolific career phase of one of modern music’s most influential popular artists.
This book is a variation on the standard rock music biography and it manages to hit all the right notes. Bowie In Berlin only traces the artists' career from the mid-seventies to the early eighties, but it has all the other weightier bios beat. Seabrook strikes a great tone to tell the story; a harmonious balance of intricate facts and information filled in with generally objective commentary on the circumstances of the people involved. Seabrook narrates from the consistent angle of neither a harsh, judgmental critic nor an awe-gushing super-fan, but a solid music journalist.
David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World - is our protagonist, assisted throughout by a charismatic cast of supporting characters. Tony Visconti is the hugely under-rated production engineer genius. Sonic cult-hero Brian Eno is the eccentric wizard who gently pushes Bowie to dizzying new heights of what songs can sound like. Rounding out the imaginative group is the magnetic and high-powered "street-walkin' cheetah with a heart full of Napalm", Iggy Pop.
Page 77:
“On the face of it, the friendship between David Bowie and Iggy Pop - the foppish English autodidact with a taste for German expressionism and gender-bending, and the uber-masculine American punk perhaps best known for carving into his body with shards of glass onstage - might have seemed an unlikely one. In fact, both had strayed far enough from the stereotypes draped upon them that they met somewhere in the middle, with Iggy now more likely to be found quietly immersed in financial newspapers during stops on the Station To Station tour.”
At this time both Iggy and David were attempting to gain some control and healthy balance to their lives after many long years of mind-bending decadence.
Page 19:
“There have, over the years, emerged numerous outlandish stories about David Bowie's mental health and general behavior during the time he spent in Los Angeles, some of which bear more relation to the truth than others. Many are tied to what was, undeniably, a deep obsession with black magic, which only exacerbated his already troubling paranoia. Among the most regularly cited of these stories suggests that Bowie kept his urine in jars in his fridge, for fear that some malevolent magician or other might use it to put a hex on him.”
The peripheral characters are the landscapes of rural France and the edgy city of Berlin. In these significant locations the team worked to write and produce five exceptional albums; the two solo records The Idiot and Lust For Life from Iggy and the loosely-defined trilogy of Low, Heroes and Lodger by Bowie.
What To Increase? What To Reduce?
The best part of the book is how the reader gets to step into the studio with these remarkable artists to view the process of how they crafted tiny ideas into timeless, game-changing music. Most rock music bios get dreadfully boring as they spend too long listing tabloid-esque cliché bad behavior fueled by fame, wealth and encouraged by the doldrums of the "Rock Lifestyle".
Bowie In Berlin mentions these elements only in passing, to fully describe the artists' state of mind and offer possible connections to how their music and personal lives reflected each other. It is much more original and fun to read about Brian Eno's mystical box of Oblique Strategies idea cards and how Bowie coped with lyrical writer's-block than it is to hear how so-and-so was publicly nude and disruptive due to another over-indulgence of whatever.
Pages 162 - 163:
“Of all of Eno's interventions on "Heroes", the one that drew the most resistance was the deployment of his Oblique Strategies. These are contained on a set of around 100 cards he first produced in 1975 in collaboration with the artist Pete Schmidt; each features a non-linear instruction designed to help the musician or artist in question overcome a creative block… Eno has continued to use Oblique Strategies during the three decades since, adding to and subtracting from the list depending on their relevance. "Some cards," he told Alan Moore in 2005, "their ideas have entered the culture so much that you don't need to say them any longer. Other ideas still seem fresh.”
Page 168:
“Their musical path would often be led by Eno's Oblique Strategy cards, which frequently took both off in unexpected directions. Sometimes this meant leaving the outcome entirely to chance. The most tangible example of this is when each would record a track (or several) on his own and then, before the other added his, push down the sliders, leaving them both unsure as to exactly what they were working with.”
The tale does slow down in thrills in the third act, but this is a good thing because it provides a positive and too-often rare ending. Far too many popular entertainment biographies end in depressing tragedy. If the main characters don't die in some sad way, then the third act is usually rife with squandered fortunes, broken dreams and former collaborators who truly seem to hate each other (reference any book on Guns N’ Roses).
Bowie In Berlin thankfully ends in triumph. Our hero uses his passion for bold vision and a diligent work ethic to overcome the difficult personal struggles of a painful divorce, professional lawsuits and the turmoil of recovery from nightmare-hallucination inducing substance addiction. On the surface the story is about a very famous person moving to a well-defined location to produce some of the most critically-acclaimed albums of his career.
Bowie In Berlin can also be seen as an inspirational self-help tale of redemption through open-minded creativity. On a long-shot of a chance, David Bowie had the foresight and sheer luck to find the right people and right places to bravely explore new realms in pop-rock songwriting. In the over-crowded scope of music in 2024, it's easy to forget how artistically different and influential to generations of younger musicians these five albums - (1) The Idiot, (2) Lust For Life, (3) Low, (4) Heroes and (5) Lodger - were, and continue to be today.
You don't have to be a huge Bowie fan to enjoy this book. I wish more writers would follow Seabrook's style and take us readers deeper into the writing and recording methods of our favorite artists, instead of pandering to voyeuristic gossip.
Bowie In Berlin is a gem, and you'll be happy when you find it.
Title: Bowie In Berlin; A New Career In A New Town
Genre: Music Biography
Author: Thomas Jerome Seabrook
Publisher: Jawbone Press (2008)
Number of Pages: 272
ISBN: 978-1-906002-08-4
My appreciation for Bowie has mostly been limited to his music and showmanship. Thanks for sharing this, Shawn. Sounds like a great read!