Chapter Nine: The Thin White Duke (1976)

Today’s chapter is a portrait at The Thin White Duke, the manifestation of megalomania and paranoia that gripped David Bowie at his personal low. Among his most frightening creations, the icy character unveiled on the title track to 1976’s ‘Station to Station’ is the physical embodiment of the drug abuse and psychic darkness that threatened to destroy him following years of mired in the toxic hedonism of Hollywood. Thankfully, he would rescue himself from these dire circumstances and move back in Europe, ultimately settling in Berlin along with his friend (and fellow substance abuser) Iggy Pop. The city would be both his savior and muse, providing the right environment to purge the noxious influences of Los Angeles and foster some of his most daring musical achievements. With help from longtime co-producer Tony Visconti and new friend/synth enthusiast Brian Eno, Bowie abandoned the flashy theatricality of his past and rewrote his musical language — fusing his beloved R&B with the proto-techno sounds of German bands like of Neu! and Kraftwerk. The result, ‘Low,’ would rank among his greatest work, kicking off a stunning string of albums later dubbed ‘The Berlin Trilogy.’ But more impressive than his musical reinvention was his personal one. David curbed his drug use and enjoyed an anonymous life that approached a healthy sense of normalcy. “Berlin was my clinic,” he said years later. “It brought me back in touch with people. It got me back on the streets; not the street where everything is cold and there’s drugs, but the streets where there were young, intelligent people trying to get along.” The city had rescued him from the almost certain oblivion. Not only was Bowie growing leaps and bounds as an artist, but he was also making his first tentative steps towards peace. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio.
A busted up Mercedes bands roared through an underground parking
garage and for Lynn careening dangerously in circles amid the
piercing squeal of rubber on concrete. David Bowie was doing
donuts and he was definitely breaking a speed limit. Hell,

(00:23):
at this rate, he was going to break the sound barrier.
He drove like he was on the auto box, narrowly
avoiding concrete pillars and other cars. Around and around. He
started to scream faster and faster, sixty than seventy than
than then he took his hands off the wheel. It

(00:48):
was the fall of David was quite literally spiraling. He had,
in his own words, reached the spiritual impass. He wasn't
suicidal per se. He just didn't particularly care whether he
lived or died. So he made a little wager with God,
gambling with his life. There is a certain romance to

(01:09):
it all. He recalled his early idol, James Dean, whose
life had been cut short in a high speed car
wreck two decades earlier. Perhaps he'd go out in the
same way, ram into a pillar or a car or
a wall. Bang he'd take out both himself and his passenger,
Iggy Pop, whose outlook on existence wasn't much sunnier. What

(01:30):
set him off could have been any number of things,
money problems, lawsuits, a press calling him a Nazi, his
impending divorce, booze, drugs, lack of drugs, all the above.
Maybe David himself would cite an unpleasant incident from earlier
that evening, cruising with Iggy down one of Berlin's main thoroughfares,

(01:52):
He'd spotted a parked limo that belonged to a local
coke dealer. David was convinced the guy had ripped him off.
In retaliation, he rammed the front grill of his rusty
Mercedes into the back of the dealer's car, then again,
and again and again. This continued for at least five minutes,
maybe ten. Nobody interfered, nobody even stopped. Then David sped off,

(02:18):
winding up in the parking garage, locked in a death
loop where one wrong move would wipe them both out.
At least that's the story David would tell, although we
did have a habit of self mythologizing. But even if
this wasn't technically true in the literal sense, it certainly
was in the spiritual one. The metaphor isn't subtle. Physically,

(02:41):
emotionally and creatively exhausted, Bowie was locked in a cycle
of drugs and depression, going round and round and unsure
how to get out of it. He would describe it
as quote like being in a car with a steering
had gun out of control, and you were going towards
the edge of a cliff. Whatever you did, it was
inevitable that you were to go over the edge. I

(03:01):
had almost resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't
going to be able to stop, and that would be it,
whipping himself in circles. That night in Berlin, he released
the wheel and squeezed his eyes shut, awaiting the crash
that seemed imminent for the last few years. But it
never came. Rather than a sudden smash, the car slowed

(03:22):
to an uncertain sputter Before the engine died. It was
out of gas. Just like David, there was only one
thing left to do. He and Iggy burst into hysterical laughter.
So David Bowie's time in Germany did not end with
a bloody heap of steel. Instead, he would finalize a
groundbreaking new record that many would rank among his finest. Low,

(03:47):
the first in a series of albums that would come
to be known as the Berlin Trilogy. It contained a
track called always Crashing in the Same Car. The song
is a nod to his trip to the brink, a
meditation on old destructive pad. He could have died, perhaps
even should have died. If not this night, then certainly
many others spent in l A, the noxious neverland that

(04:09):
had been his former home. He seemed destined to become
another seventies rock and roll casualty, just like Jim Jimmy
and Janice. But instead he was alive in Berlin. The
city would be both his savior and his muse. It
would be David's second chance. Hello, and welcome to Off

(04:33):
the Record, the show that goes beyond the songs and
into the hearts and minds of rock's greatest legends. I'm
your host Jordan Runtug. This season explores the life, or
rather lives, of David Bowie. Today's episode looks at the
Thin White Dupe, the manifestation of megalomania and paranoia that
gripped Bowie at his personal love. Among his most frightening creations,

(04:56):
It was the physical embodiment of the darkness that threatened
to eclip his own likeness of being, but he would
save himself with a new life in a new town.
It was a personal reinvention that was every bit as
impressive as his musical ones, and it was certainly more
fulfilling for David as he inched towards something resembling peace.

(05:25):
David Bowie found himself in hell at the dawn of
Technically it was Los Angeles, but the city of Angels
had more than its fair share of demons for David.
As he turned twenty nine that January. It was a
town he'd come to call the most vile piss pot
in the world and the most repulsive warts on the
backside of humanity. The place should be wiped off the

(05:46):
face of the earth, he'd later grumble. To be fair,
it wasn't completely l A's fault. Mired in the city's
toxic hedonism and shamefully indulged in sycophants, he followed cocaine
up his nose at a rate that worried he ben
the likes of Elton John and Keith Richards, hardly shrinking
violets surviving on a diet that consisted of little more

(06:06):
than red peppers and milk. His body grew frail and
his mind slid dangerously close to psychosis. He stayed awake
for as much as six days at a stretch, and
his rented bell Air home ruminating on the occult and
watching Nazi newsreels on loop. It was a dangerous period
for me, he would admit. I was at the end
of my tether physically and emotionally, and had serious doubts

(06:28):
about my sanity. It wasn't just the drugs, though they
certainly didn't help. His years of wilfully schizophrenic shape shifting,
both on stage and off, had left his sense of
self about as fragile as a pound frame. The cavalcade
of characters and personas stretched back to his adolescence, A

(06:49):
Laddin saying Halloween, Jack Ziggy, Stardust, Major Tom Hell, even
David Bowie was a facade that shielded David Jones, a
shy boy from the British suburbs. The constant masks swapping
left him wondering, in his words, whether I was writing
the characters or the characters are writing me. In January
of nineteen seventy six, he seemed destined to follow his

(07:11):
half brother Terry into a mental hospital or his father
into an early grave. Nineteen seventy six began much like
the unhappy year before. He just finished a new album,
Station to Station, a stunning piece of work that was
as transformative and innovative as the Philly soul steeped young
Americans have been in nineteen seventy five on shelves at

(07:32):
the end of January. Station to Station was proof to
all who listened that despite David's psychic turmoil, he was
just as creative as ever. Legendary rock critic Lester Bangs,
historically cynical about David's more theatrical work, proclaimed that Bowie
had quote finally produced his masterpiece, an album that built
on beautiful swelling, intensely romantic melancholy. But like the previous January,

(07:59):
David's career was in a state of chaos. A year
after severing ties with manager Tony de Freeze, David was
gearing up to fire his replacement, lawyer, Michael Lippman. Lippman
was generally viewed as a nice guy by those in
Bowie's coterie. Perhaps that was part of his downfall. He
lacked a freeze killer promotional instincts, and Barracuda business acumen.

(08:21):
Their relationship began the sour during the production of Bowie's
first feature film, The Man Who Fell to Earth. As
the star of the movie, David assumed he'd be asked
to write the soundtrack music. When he was passed over
by director Nick Rogue, David blamed Littman for the deal's collapse.
It all went downhill from there. The final blow came

(08:41):
when David flew his band to Jamaica for Christmas to
rehearse for an upcoming tour to promote Station to Station.
The entourage arrived on the island only to find that
no one the thoughts of book any hotels they were stranded.
Bowie pointed the finger at Littman for this logistical flub.
By New Year, Latman had got the axe, kicking off

(09:02):
a nine month, multimillion dollar court battle that would leave
David nearly broke. Despite his temporary homelessness, David felt restored
by the trip to Jamaica, or rather the trip out
of Los Angeles. His time away made him realize the
corrosive effect Hollywood was having on his health. He would say,

(09:22):
I was lucky enough to know somewhere within me that
I was really killing myself and that I had to
do something drastic to pull myself out of that. He
began plotting his Excess strategy from Los Angeles, but in
the meantime he had a tour to think about. It
was his first since the Diamond Dogs Trek had wrapped
over a year earlier. That tour, with its two hundred

(09:45):
and fifty dollars set and elaborate choreography, required weeks of
technical rehearsals. This venture would be significantly simpler when it
kicked off on February second in Vancouver. Instead of an
opening musical act, the audience was greeted with a screening
of Salvador Dolly and Luis Brunel's surrealist art film When
Chian and Delude. Even non cinephiles are probably familiar. It's

(10:10):
the one with a notorious sequence of a razor blade
slicing through an eyeball. German techno pioneers craft Work provided
the soundtrack to the gruesome images on the screen. As
mechanical blips, beeps, and whirls from the new album Radioactivity
ricocheted around the venue. The bisected eyeballs were jarring enough,

(10:31):
but the crowd was in for a second shock when
the concert began. Gone with the props, lasers, dancers, and
other trappings of glam rock maximalism that had factored so
heavily into Ziggy stardust, A, Laddin, Sane and the Diamond
Dogs tour. Where was the huge disco ball cage, or
the cherry picker, or the massive, decaying city stage set. Instead,

(10:53):
there was nothing but white, utterly blinding white racks of
pale fluorescent bulbs loomed over the stage. Flashes of light
rendered audiences temporarily blind, making the unholy howl of guitarist
Stacy Headon's feedback all the more potent. He was joined
by guitarist Carlos Alamar, bassist George Murray, drummer Dennis Davis,

(11:15):
and keyboardist Tony Kay. Through the sonic hazes, a song
began to take shape, the hypnotic lurching march of Station
the Station. As the lengthy intro wound down, Bowie appeared,
bathed in the harsh white spotlight, he heralds his own
return as the thin white Duke, David's latest and most

(11:37):
terrifying character, A cabaret crooner with pleated black pants, matching
vest and crisply starched white shirt. With the slick back hair,
he resembled the smoldering silver screen star of the nineteen thirties.
Almost The thin white Duke evoked them the farious glamour
in pre war Germany, a sort of sinister European superman,

(11:59):
dap her yet deadly. If Ziggy was androgynous, the Duke
was hyper masculine, dripping with an eroticism all his own.
Even without the props and the sets, he somehow came
across as even more theatrical and dramatic. The character has
been alternately described as a mad aristocrat and amoral zombie,
or an emotionless aryan superman. He was, em Bowie's own words,

(12:23):
a nasty character. Indeed, despite the Duke's icy exterior, the
shows were among David's most incendiary live performances to date.
When he wasn't delivering the Duke's dead pan croone, he
went back to being David, dancing, telling jokes, and even
playing sacks. At one point each evening he'd inevitably strip

(12:45):
off his shirt and performed topless. The fans ate it up.
One teenager cut a show in Detroit that March, showing
up in her highest platform shoes and a long black cape.
It was her first ever rock concert, and she wanted
to look her best. She was known then as Madonna Chaconi,
but today she gets by on just her first name.

(13:06):
I don't think that I breathed for two hours, Madonna
would later say, I came home a changed woman. She
was inspired by his consummate showmanship and pension for constant
self reinvention. Twenty years later, when David was inducted into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was she
who inducted him. The passion on stage was palpable, but

(13:28):
two weeks into the tour, David was complaining to a
journalist that he was quote a little bored and merely
doing the shows just for the money. He may have
been unhappy, but if he was going through hell, he
had company in the form of one Jim Osterberg, better
known as Iggy Pop since meaning at Max's Kansas City
in the fall of one. David had become something of

(13:50):
a guardian angel for the troubled punk godfather, frequently appearing
in times of trouble. When CBS Records was unhappy with
Iggy's mix of his album Raw Power. Bowie was called
in to clean it up. When Iggy was put on
a psychiatric hold in late nineteen seventy four following a
drug fueled altercation with the l A. P. D. Bowie
was one of the only people to visit him in

(14:12):
the psych ward. Upon his release, Iky had nothing, he'd
been dropped by his management, and was still hopelessly addicted
to drugs. By nineteen seventy five, he was reduced to
sleeping on a mattress stolen from a nearby thrift store
and living in an abandoned garage with a male hustler.
Iggy was on downers when he went to a local

(14:33):
supermarket and attempted to make off with some apples and cheese.
He was bailed out of prison by a well known
coke dealer, who put Iggy to work in some telemarketing
scam he was running. Not surprisingly, Iggy Pop was not
cut out to be a telemarketer and his tenure proof
short lived. Eager to be rid of him, the coke
dealer called another one of his clients, David Bowie, to

(14:54):
see if he could help set Iggy straight. Bowie was
not exactly a poster child for clean living at the stage,
but he'd do what he could. Iggy and David linked
up in February of six when the Station the Station
tour passed through southern California. From the start, it was
clear that Iggy was in worse shape than even the

(15:15):
exhausted and emaciated David. Bowie coaxed Diggy back into his
orbit by playing him a cassette of a lick he'd
written with Carlos Alomar. It was a germ of the
song Sister Midnight, and David asked Iggy if he wanted
to record it. Eggy liked the idea. The old friends
quickly rekindled the relationship, and Iggy was told to drop
by David's hotel the next morning with a suitcase. Iggy

(15:39):
came on board for the remainder of the tour, technically
as a backup singer, but primarily as a friend to David.
Both knew they were in a bad way, especially Bowie,
who knew that big changes had to be made if
he wanted to live out the decade. They had an
unspoken agreement to keep one another on track and hold
themselves accountable. Like ad hoc sobriety sponsors. More often than

(16:01):
not they were successful, which is surprising because in the
midst of the tour David was busted for drugs and
they weren't even his. It went down after a concert
in Rochester, New York, on March, David through a party
at his hotel suite, and true to form, he extended
a cordial invitation to a few women hanging out in
the hotel bar. They stopped by and things were great

(16:23):
for a time as everybody got to know one another. Then,
midway through the shin dig, the ladies revealed themselves to
be undercover narcotics officers, and they brought friends four vice
squad detectives. This spoiled the party somewhat as Bowie, Iggy,
Bowie's bodyguard and another young woman were arrested on possession
of marijuana charges. At the time, this was a Class

(16:46):
C felony, carrying a maximum sentence of fifteen years in prison.
Obviously no laughing matter, but Bowie can be seen smirking
ever so slightly in his booking photo, clearly bemused that he,
one of the great enthusiasts of the age, got caught
with something like pot, a drug he loathed. He spent
several hours in a jail cell before being released on

(17:08):
bond rest. Assured the stuff was not mine, he told
the press soon after. I can't say much more, but
it did belong to others in the room. We were
busted in, bloody potheads. What a dreadful irony Me popped
for grass. The stuff sickens me. I haven't touched it
in a decade. Overall, Bowie and Iggy did a good

(17:28):
job of staying off the hard stuff. Sure they slipped
up on occasion, but Bowie was proud when Iggy declined
the line of heroin offered by New York Dolls guitarist
Johnny Thunders. David felt protective of Iggy. Perhaps he saw
echoes of his half brother Terry. David had been powerless
to stop Terry's descend into mental illness. Iggy offered a

(17:49):
second chance at rescue and redemption. Their bond forged in
misery grew strong. This guy salvaged me from certain professional
and maybe personal annihilation. Simple as that, Iggy would say
in a lot of people were curious about me, but
only he had decent enough intentions to help me out.
He did a good thing. He resurrected me. He was

(18:11):
more of a benefactor than a friend. He went out
of his way to bestow some good karma on me. Jimmy,
as Iggy was always known in Bowie Circle, would ride
with David in the back of his chauffeur driven car
on the lengthy drives between concert dates. Along the way,
David DJ on the cassette player, playing tracks from his
favorite new artist like Tom Waits and Craftwork. Iggy got

(18:34):
a kick out of hearing The Ramons, a group who
so clearly out of debt to his former band, the Stooges.
They caught one of the band shows at CBGB, the
Granddaddy of all dive bars and New York's broke and
bombed out Bowery. Iggy was treated like visiting royalty by
the gangs of emerging punks, a welcome role reversal from
his usual status as Bowie screw up friend. In a

(18:56):
funny way, they each emvied each other. Despite his wild
man persona, Iggy was a college educated debate champ who'd
been voted most likely to succeed in junior high. Yet
he'd never have Bowie's credit with the intellectual elite, and
for all his boundary pushing, David would never enjoy Iggy's
dangerous reputation as a man on the edge. They complimented

(19:17):
each other well, often talking late into the night, for
sometimes just sitting quietly with cups of espresso, wordlessly enjoying
each other's company. In addition to hooking up with Iggy
on the l a tour dates, David encountered another man
who would alter the trajectory of his life. His name
was Christopher Isherwood, the British writer famed for a semi
biographical novel Goodbye to Berlin, later adapted into the Oscar

(19:41):
winning film Cabaret. Visiting David backstage following his performance at
the Forum, the prototypical Englishman abroad regaled Bowie with tales
of his time in Weimar era Germany. Theisher would maintain
that Berlin was no longer the den of depravity, decadence,
and artistic freedom it had been between World Wars. Bowie
heard enough to be intrigued. David knew he was coming

(20:03):
to the end of his time in Los Angeles. After
two years of residing in the United States. He was
pining for Europe. After wrapping his l a shows, David
visited his rented house in bel Air for what would
be the last time, to load up his belongings into
two U hauls. It was an unceremonious end to the
lowest period of his life. Berlin had long been on

(20:30):
Bowie's shortlist of potential new homes. As a student at
Bromley Tech in the early sixties, he poured over the
art of Max Reinhardt, Bertold Brecht and Fritz Lange. He
obsessed over the angst ridden emotional work of the Expressionists,
and Berlin had been their spiritual home. In particular, he
was drawn to the work of the die Bruca or

(20:51):
the Bridge movement. It was an art form that mirrored life,
not by event, but by mood. He would later say,
this was where I felt my work was owing. There
were certainly signs. The Diamond Dogs Tour boasted a backdrop
modeled after the nineteen nineteen expressionist film The Cabinet of
Dr Kalaghari and the Thin White Duke may well have

(21:11):
been a character from one of Isherwood's stories. Of course,
the Berlin of the nineteen thirties had mostly vanished by
nineteen seventy six. For a start, Allied troops have bombed
much of the city into rubble during World War Two.
What little remains was divided by the Berlin Wall, a
grotesque and deadly symbol of the geopolitical fault line between

(21:33):
Eastern communist repression and Western capitalism. Germany as a whole
was bisected along similar lines, with West Berlin as a
democratic oasis administered by the Western Alliance deep within the
Soviet controlled Eastern territory. Many of the businesses and industries
had moved out, leaving behind factories and warehouses that attracted

(21:53):
young artists looking for cheap studios or places to live.
As a result, West Berlin was thriving creatively, though decimated
in so many other ways. The split city mirrored Bowie's
own fractured psyche and the anarchist vibe of the left
wing socialist fueled as renegade spirit. In short, Berlin was
the perfect place for him to be. Berlin would strike

(22:16):
some as fitting for more worrying reasons. Dave is growing
fascination with German history and particularly his apparent fixation on
the Third Reich. At the height of his cocaine abuse
in Los Angeles, he sat for hours watching Nazi newsreels
with unnerving intensity. He became intrigued by the mythical link
between the Third Reich and the occult, and Hitler's supposed

(22:38):
search for divine artifacts like the Holy Grail and the
Spear of Destiny. In recent months, he began to go
public with his studies, raising eyebrows and a number of interviews.
In one, he characterized Adolf Hitler as quote a marvelous
morale booster, and in another he claimed that the young
Americans track somebody up there likes me was about how

(22:59):
Quote Hitler is on his way back. In an interview
with Rolling Stone published in February of ninety six, David
drew parallels between the fewer and themselves. I think I
might have been a bloody good Hitler, David said, I
would have been an excellent dictator, very eccentric, and quite mad.
In an interview with Playboy later that year, he would

(23:20):
dub Hitler quote one of the first rock stars, citing
his powerful messianic charisma that to David at least didn't
seem that far off from ziggy stardust. Look at some
of the films and see how he moved. David's quoted
as saying, I think he was quite as good as Jagger.
The world will never see his leg again. He staged
a country. Some critics would wonder if David took some

(23:44):
art direction from the Third Reich. One review of the
Station the Station Tour noted it's Nuremberg overtones, while another
said that the rock concert quote could have been staged
by Spear or Albert Spear, the chief architect of Hitler's regime.
That April, David took the show to Berlin, performing in
the German cultural capital for the first time. During his stay,

(24:06):
he visited communist East Berlin and cruised past the Looming Wall.
He was photographed gazing intently at a bust of Adolf
Hitler and later giving a stiff armed salute at the
ruined sight of the Furis fortified bunker where he'd ended
out his last days of the war and ultimately shot himself.
David made the photographer, promised to never release the image,

(24:27):
but his interests were not going unnoticed in the press.
Days after the Berlin shows, Bowie and some of his
entourage took advantage of a week long break in the
tour by taking a side trip to Moscow, David was
briefly detained at a border checkpoint when Russian customs officials
found contraband reading material and his luggage books about Albert

(24:48):
Spear and also Joseph Gebel's The Nazi Propaganda Minister. David
claimed he was planning on making a film about Gebel's,
presumably one of the many movie ideas he bandied around
in recent months. He was also supposedly in talks for
another movie, The Eagle Has Landed, where he was to
play a German officer who attempted to kidnap Winston Churchill

(25:08):
during World War Two. Neither movie idea ever materialized, at
least not for Bowie, but the incident did cause some
to wonder about his politics and morals, and even his
psychological state. A journalist at a tor stop in Sweden
a few days after questioned him about his supposed right
wing leanings. I believe Britain could benefit from a fascist leader,

(25:30):
David reportedly replied, after all, fascism is really nationalism. He'd
walked back the line during an interview with the English
outlet The Daily Express a short time later, insisting if
I said it, I have a terrible feeling. I did
say something like it to a Stockholm journalist. I'm astounded
anyone could believe it. I'm not sinister. But the worst

(25:51):
was still to come, with an episode that would unfairly
linked David's name with forces of evil. It occurred on
the afternoon of May second v X. David was returning
to England for his first British tour date since he
had retired Ziggy Stardust almost three years before. When it
came the Heroes Welcomes. It didn't get much better than this.
He was met at London's Victoria railway station by a

(26:13):
horde of two thousand fans and members of the press,
all eager to welcome back their favorite local boy made good.
David Chauffeur was also there to meet him, driving the
open top to Mercedes six hundred limousine that Bowie had
recently purchased from the estate of an assassinated Iranian prince.
A sound system had been set up on the train
platform so Bowie could address the ecstatic crowd, but the

(26:35):
pa failed, so David was forced to simply stand in
wave at his fans from the back of his limo
before speeding off. It was slightly disappointing to some, the
interaction had only lasted a few minutes, but aside from that,
there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the event, at least
not until a few days later, when the British music
magazine New Musical Express published a photo of David's arrival

(26:57):
on the front page of their May eighth issue. Out
of context, it looked quite bad. David, wearing a black shirt,
not unlike some fascist stormtrooper uniform, stood in the back
of a black Mercedes Hitler's favorite car with his right
arm outstretched. Those not getting the picture were helped out
by the headline above the photo, Hyle and Farewell. The

(27:20):
implication was that David was giving a Nazi salute. No
one present at the station that day noticed such a gesture.
A number of journalists had been sent to Cover's arrivals,
specifically because of his recent controversial comments about fascism. Surely
someone else would have noticed if David gave a hilarian
greeting to two thousand people, But no one else reported

(27:41):
anything for nearly a full week. Even the article that
accompanied the photo said nothing about any sort of salute.
In the piece, the author wrote that he was annoyed
Bowie hadn't stopped by to say hi. Perhaps the front
page photo was a perverse form of payback mixed with
the British press's unique skill for inflammatory lines. Bowie himself,

(28:02):
though never adverse to toying with controversy, knew this was
too far. He wouldn't speak to Fleet Street journalists for
nearly a year and a half. When he finally did,
he strenuously denied that he made a Nazi gesture that
did not happen. He told Melody Maker in October of
nineteen seventy seven, I just waved. Believe me, on the
life of my child, I waved, and that bastard caught

(28:25):
me in midwave man, as if I'd be foolish enough
to pull a stunt like that. I died when I
saw that photo. Film footage of David's arrival, now widely
available on the Internet, seems to prove definitively that David
was merely waving. But he had been playing with fire
in the press for months. It took long enough for
him to finally get burned. Today, it's easy to dismiss

(28:49):
those fascist lines as the ramblings of a man in
the grip of a crippling cocaine psychosis. Bowie himself would
admit as much in later years and showed deep remorse
for his quotes. I was out of my mind, totally
completely crazed, he would say. There's nothing to suggest that
David ever agreed with Hitler politically or endorsed the crimes
of the Third Reich in any way. His interest, as

(29:12):
he would later explain, was quote in Mythology about the
Arthurian period about the magical side of the whole Nazi campaign.
Perhaps magical isn't a word to be used in connection
with Nazis, but the points clear. It's no secret that
David made outlandish proclamations as a willing exchange for column
space throughout his early career. For him, that was part

(29:34):
of the game, dating back to his teenage years in
the mid sixties, when he parlayed his long feminine hair
and it his first television appearance. He was a natural
pr man, always on the lookout for a new and
fresh way to grab headlines. For a long time, he
used his sexuality as a conversational lightning rod during interviews.
In ninety two, he announced he was gay, and then

(29:56):
spent the next decade contradicting himself. He alway has kept
people guessing, and they never seem to get tired of it.
It's interesting to note that the journalists who reported David's
Britain could benefit from a fascist leader. Quote says he
was forbidden from recording the interview. According to him, he
had been goaded into asking about right wing politics by
David's own team. Years later, the writer believes he'd been

(30:20):
set up merely upon and a prearranged pr stunt. David
likely knew that such a statement would cause a splash.
By ensuring it wasn't on tape, he could simply deny it.
It was his word against the journalists. Thus he could
snag headlines while avoiding serious fallout by simply saying it
wasn't true. Obviously, saying you're homosexual and publicly flirting with

(30:44):
fascism or two extremely different things. Many forces may have
been at play, the drugs, the exhaustion, the psychic confusion.
Perhaps he was tired of superstardom and subliminally wanted to
sabotage himself, to end at all and return to some
us of normalcy outside the constant pressure of his daily
celebrity existence. No different in a way from doing donuts

(31:07):
in a hotel parking garage at seventy miles a reckless
though half hearted attempt at an exit. It's equally likely
that he was playing a character that of the thin
white duke. He was, as David would say, a nasty man,
indeed a terrifying ariaan ubermensch. In the end, it's impossible
to know what he was thinking. For all of David's

(31:28):
many phases, this one is the most concerning. He would
have to confront his fascist poses in the coming months,
when he'd settled in Berlin to make an album that
many consider his masterpiece. After The Station The Station Tore

(31:50):
wrapped in late May of nineteen seventy six, David moved
into his new home alongside his wife Angie and young
son Zoe. He joined his fellow British rock star brethren
and become a tax exile, relocating to Switzerland at the
advice of his accountant. The tax rates were lower, and
so were the number of what Angie called demons and
witches and roadies with bags full of cocaine. This will

(32:13):
be the first home that the couple ever actually owned,
at least for the short time they would remain a couple.
They had effectively lived separate lives in the last two years,
but they put a good face on their union in public.
In the Rolling Stone profile published that February, David had
said that Angie was quote remarkably pleasant to keep coming
back to, and for me she always will be. Angie

(32:35):
probably took those words at face value. If nothing else,
She'd proved so useful to David, practically indispensable since the
beginning of their relationship. She'd been the problem solver, the
one to make things happen. That had been the case
with their new home. Angie had been the one to
work out all of the tax and residency issues with
the Swiss government, putting her multi lingual skills to good use.

(32:58):
She had also been the one to find the house.
Located in Blena, a country town favored by British expats,
the luxurious seven rooms chalets sat on several acres perched
above the north shore of Lake Geneva. Among their neighbors
was Charlie Chaplin. The sound of a nearby river lulled
the residents to sleep, and from their bedroom, David and

(33:19):
Andie could see the verdant cattle pastures and wooden homes
at the Alpine village below. Despite the idyllic setting, the
home proved to be a bad omen. David hated it,
as Angie would right in her memoir. He walked through
that gorgeous house and couldn't stand it. He tried to
pretend he liked it, but you could see the horror

(33:40):
in his face. It wasn't his scene at all. He
would spend little time there over the years. Whenever Angie
was there, he wasn't, and vice versa. It wasn't just
that David hated the house. Sharing a roof was a
painful reminder of how much the two had grown apart.
A few relationships vibe the tumult and personal changes of

(34:02):
the last few years. He made it clear, through actions,
if not words, that she had outlived her usefulness to him.
So we made himself scarce in her hurt, Andie looked
for a villain, a scapegoat, some reason why her husband
had turned against her, something less painful than the horrific
truth that he no longer loved her. Angie directed her

(34:23):
I Krene Coco Schwab, nominally David's personal assistant, Coco was
an all in one nanny, manager, public relations rep, and
best friend, amongst so many other titles. Angie assumed that
lover could be added to that list. In many ways,
Coco took care of all the day to day tasks
that used to fall to Angie, making her an easy

(34:44):
target for blame. But in truth, their marriage was doomed
long before Coco entered the picture. Perhaps ultimately it was
for the best. Angie had spent the seventies using her
creativity to forward David's career. At least now she could
focus on her own While his relationship with his wife
was deteriorating beyond repair, David's bond with his five year

(35:06):
old son was strengthening. Throughout most of Zoey's early years,
David was away on tour, and Angie, by her own admission,
was not really the maternal type. As a result, the
boy was mostly raised by his nanny. David would forever
feel guilty for his desertion during this crucial period in
Zoey's life. I didn't give him enough time, he said

(35:26):
years later. It was a pretty rotten childhood. I think
probably one of the most major regrets of my life
is that I didn't spend enough time with him when
he was really young. In Switzerland, David attempted to make
up for his lack of paternal involvement, hoping to avoid
the cold and emotionally distant relationship he'd had with his
own parents. He was never touchy feely, a very English trait,

(35:48):
but he was engaged and attentive. They watched movies together,
instilling in Zoey a love of cinema that would continue
into adulthood. When he became a film director under the
name Duncan Jones. They had cuddle on the couch, David's
arm around his boys. He provided commentary on their private
screening Errol Flynn, Pirate movies, or when he got a

(36:09):
little older, a clockwork orange. At Zoey's fifth birthday party
that spring, David handed out musical instruments to his son's
friends and led the children through an impromptu staging of
the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk. But David wasn't
in Switzerland for long. In fact, his suitcases were barely
unpacked when he departed that June for Chateau Douville, just

(36:31):
outside Paris, where he was rejoined by Iggy Pop. The
studio estate immortalized by Elton John as the Honky Chateau
had hosted Bowie sessions for pin Ups three years earlier.
These days, scoring a hit record no longer interested him. Instead,
he aimed to produce songs that were uncompromising and indicative
of his present mental state. He sought to rewrite his

(36:54):
musical language without the flashy theatricality of his past. I
wanted to move out of the area narrative and character,
he would say. I wanted generally to reevaluate what I
was doing. I realized that I exhausted that particular environment.
He wanted to continue the sonic exploration to be gun
on Station the Station, fusing his beloved R and B

(37:15):
sounds of young Americans with the proto techno of Kraftwerk
and noy German bands that used not only new electronic
instruments and since, but completely dispensed with traditional Western chord sequences.
If he was going to go this far out on
a limb, it seems safe to experiment on his buddy
Iggy first, you know, just to get all the kinks

(37:36):
worked out. David oversaw sessions for Iggy's first solo album,
refining his production skills and techniques. As he went, He
freely admitted to using his friend as a guinea pig
for what he wanted to do with sound. Iggy meanwhile
inspired David with the spontaneity in the studio, writing free
associative lyrics on the spot, practically on the mic. The album,

(37:58):
which would come to be known as The Idiot, would
be finished before the end of August, but not released
until the following March. Canny as ever, Bowie wanted to
make sure that he had a new record of his
own on the shelves before The Idiot came out, lest
anyone think he was simply following Iggy's lead. In September
of nineteen seventy six, Bowie began work on his new album.

(38:21):
To help him realize this new musical vision, he need
an equal collaborator. Iggy, despite the friendship and demons they shared,
just wasn't up to the task. So Bowie sought out
Brian Eno, then still known primarily as a departed founding
member of Roxy Music. They met in person just a
handful of times, but always in memorable circumstances. Roxy Music

(38:43):
had served as an opening act for some Ziggy start
up states in nineteen seventy two. A year later they
worked in adjacent studios while David was recording Diamond Dogs,
but nothing e became of these early meetings. Both greatly
admired the other's work. In effect, they had operated on
parallel or two stick tracks. Both were titans of early
seventies glam rock who yielded to their more intellectual pursuits

(39:06):
in a stubborn attempt to avoid the boring repetition demanded
of mainstream chart success. They became reacquainted after one of
Bowie's London shows that May, when they talked through the night.
Bowie in particular was impressed with ENO's recent albums Another
Green World and Discreet Music. These groundbreaking experiments and ambient

(39:27):
compositions were borne by accident, specifically a car accident. You
Know had been struck by a taxi while crossing the
street one day in nineteen seventy. As he recovered in
the hospital, a friend stop by to visit, bringing a
record of eighteenth century harp music as a gift. She
put the record on the turntable on her way out
the door, but the volume was too low and one

(39:48):
of the speakers wasn't working. Unable to get up to
adjust the volume himself. The stray harp notes simply faded
to the background, blending with the rain outside and the
sounds from the hall. The experience presented, you know, with
a whole new way to perceive music, not as something
separate from one's surroundings, but a part of it, just
as the color of the light and the sound of

(40:09):
the rain were a part of the ambiance. Hugely influential today.
ENO's phase into minimalist generative music were a little too
esoteric for the public at large and hadn't earned a
particularly favorable response. The fact that Bowie got it endeared
him to Eno, who thought, God, he must be so smart.
That became the first point of true musical connection, sowing

(40:31):
the seeds of the collaboration to come. Bowie had found,
as he would later say, a musical soulmate, brimming with
fresh ideas and concepts to flesh out with his new friend.
Bowie also needed an old friend who understood his creative shorthand,
so we reached out to producer Tony Visconti. The Visconti
had a hand in recent albums like Diamond Dogs and

(40:52):
Young Americans. They hadn't completed an album together since the
scattershot sessions for The Man Who Sold the World in
seventy which were marred by Bowie's frequent and frustrating absences.
Visconti was surprised when he received the call out of
the Blue in June of nineteen seventy six from David,
with Eno chiming in on the extension. They explained the

(41:13):
Visconti that they've been writing songs for a totally new
kind of album, half filled with conventional tracks and the
other with instrumentals based on ENO's ambient work. Briefed on
the unusual nature of the project, they asked Visconti what
he could bring to the table. The producer mentioned his
new purchase, an early digital sampler machine called the even
Tied Harmonizer, capable of recording and playing back sounds at

(41:37):
any desired pitch without changing the tempo. It was developed
to pitch correct vocal performances, sort of like a primitive
version of auto tune, but the creative uses of it
were essentially endless. The device was just the second ever
sold in the UK and a total mystery to Bowie
and Eno. What does it do? They asked, Visconti struggled

(41:58):
to come up with a simple answer. Failing that, he
offered a much more compelling one. It messes with the
fabric of time, he said. That was all Bowie needed
to hear. He was so excited that he dropped the phone.
He and Eno erupted in the cheers. At the other
end of the line. Visconti was in, but they offered

(42:19):
him a word of warning. First. Bowie told Visconti that
their endeavor was purely experimental and might never see the
light of day. Are you sure you don't mind wasting
a month of your life with us in France, David asked.
Visconti replied, A month in the studio with David Bowie
and Brian Eno is not wasting a month of my life.

(42:39):
Sessions for Iggy's album blended almost seamlessly into David's as
summer turned to fall at the Chateau. The dates were
bolstered by the familiar instrumental lineup of guitarist Carlos Alamar,
bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis, in addition to
pianist Roy Young. Everything was great as far as the
music was concerned, but more owl on the castle wasn't

(43:01):
exactly soaring. It was vacation season in France and many
of the studio employees were away with almost no support
staff on hand. Even small problems quickly escalated into major catastrophes.
Case in point, the food. The French cuisine didn't sit
well with those in the Bowie camp, especially at the
time they were accidentally served some cheese that had been

(43:23):
left out too long, resulting in a serious bout of
food poisoning. Tony Visconti would later describe the sessions as
a horrible experience. He felt the technical specs of the
studio left something to be desired, leading to some chilliness
between Chateau engineering staff and the Bowie contingent. Things went
from bad to worse when a woman they were told

(43:43):
was a studio receptionist turned out to be an undercover
French reporter sent to do a story on David's new
life on the European continent. Bowie and co. Blamed the
studio for selling him out to the press, and the
frosty relations turned to open hostility. And then there was
the small matter of the ghosts. Several members of the

(44:04):
entourage claimed that the chateau was haunted by the spirits
of doomed lovers who would live there, composer Friedrich Chopin
and author George sand David refused to sleep in the
master bedroom, insisting that he felt inexplicable cold spots, a
telltale sign of paranormal activity. Brian Eno happily took it instead,
only to be awoken one night by the sensation of

(44:25):
a phantom hand on his shoulder. Ghosts or no ghosts.
Bowie also had his hands full dealing with flesh and
blood specters from his own past. In between sessions, he
took intermittent trips to Paris to face down his ex manager,
Michael Littman, who was now suing for two million dollars
and lost earnings after David fired him earlier in the year.

(44:49):
These tense meetings for the impending legal battle cast the
darkness over the otherwise fruitful recording dates. At times, David
seemed preoccupied in the studio as his attention drift to
less pleasant matters. Then less pleasant matters paid him a visit.
Angie dropped in on the sessions with a new boyfriend
in tow her open relationship with David. As much as

(45:11):
it still existed, had been heavily weighed in her husband's favor,
and he rarely took kindly to her more serious dalliances.
Angie's last ditch effort to repair their cracked marriage by
living together under one roof and their new Swiss home
had pretty much failed, miserably, signaling adrift from which she
knew there was no return. It's unknown whether this visit

(45:33):
with her new bow was an attempt to appeal to
David's jealous side and went him back, or merely provoke
him into a rage. In any event, rage is what
she got. The sound of shattering glass alerted one and
all to an altercation. David and Angie's boyfriend were tussling
on the floor, and Viscontin had to physically pull them apart.
The incident was unfortunate, but it added fuel to David's

(45:55):
creative fire. Shortly after, he and the rhythm section worked
up a new groove that would become the song Breaking Glass.
The sparse lyrics end with the line You're such a
wonderful person, but you've got problems. It's unclear whether David's
referring to himself to Angie order them both Despite the chaos,

(46:19):
the band worked fast. Basic rhythm tracks were wrapped in
just a few days, followed by an additional week of
overdubs by Carlos Alamar and fellow guitarist Ricky Gardner. Then
came the fun part, experimentation. There was no deadline and
no requirement that the songs even had to be released.
With all commercial pressures lifted, David's musical process had begun

(46:42):
to resemble the cut and paste technique he used to
assemble his lyrics, a sort of ritualized randomness that owed
more to feeling than linear narrative. You know, it was
instrumental and orchestrating this sort of controlled weirdness. To prime
the creative pump, they often employed Oblique Strategies, a set
of cards developed by Eno and artist Peter Schmidt designed

(47:03):
to inspire un orthodox approaches the problem solving. Each card
bore an obtuse and sometimes inscrutable suggestion, things like emphasize
the flaws, fill every beat with something, or use an
unacceptable color. This would send the two co conspirators veering
off into unexpected directions. The experimentation encompassed not just composition,

(47:26):
but also the instruments themselves, you know, nurtured David's growing
interests and synthesizers, which he used to suit his own
unique purposes early. Since We're intended to give players the
luxury of conjuring up a vast array of instruments through
the use of tape loops, strings, flutes, horns, practically a
whole orchestra at your fingertips, But David a little interest

(47:48):
in using sense to simply imitate real instruments. Instead, he
used the sense to create sounds of unreal instruments, textures
in his head that didn't actually exist. Record earnings of
guitar piano notes will be fed into the synthesizer and manipulated,
deforming the sound David called it. Visconti's harmonizer gave the

(48:09):
drums a distinctive down pitch snare sound, which other producers
would spend decades trying to emulate. Electronic instruments were not
completely new ground for David. He had used the style
of phone way back on Space Oddity and Walter Carlos's
electro versions of Beetho, and it served as the intro
music for the Ziggy star Dust stage shows. Since we're

(48:30):
used on a Laddin saying pin ups and diamond dogs,
but never as a lead instrument as they were now.
Aside from novelty projects like Popcorn and Switched on Bach,
they had largely remained out of the charts. Nobody of
David's popularity had ever experimented with them in such a
meaningful way. You Know is usually responsible for programming the

(48:53):
cumbersome machines and adding spaces, zips, fizzles, and wobbles from
his famous E M. S suitcase. Since often inaccurately perceived
as a co producer, you Know is nonetheless a revolutionary
influence on David's new sounds. His love of minimalist neo
classical composers like John Cage and Philip Glass, and general

(49:13):
disinterest in traditional rock and roll made him a compelling
musical foil for Bowie. He believed that the music should
outshine the individual personality of the musician, a marked contrast
to the character driven exercises that had defined David's career
to date. You Know would later describe their working methods
by saying, I become the sculptor. To David's tendency to paint,

(49:35):
I keep trying to cut things back, stripped them to
something tense and taught while he keeps throwing new colors
on the canvas. It's a good duet. The sessions marked
the beginning of the three step approach that David with
favor for the rest of his working life. Rhythm backing
tracks came first, followed by instrumental overdubs and solos. Then

(49:55):
the final weeks were used to carve vocal melodies from
the blocks of sound they'd crack died. This is the
opposite of conventional pop music songwriting, which leads with melody
some kind of hook to get lodged in the listener's head.
To leave this most important ingredient till last was practically
compositional blasphemy. But for Bowie, the unusual interplay between vocals

(50:17):
and instrumentation made this new music all the more arresting.
Well into the project, Bowie believed that the songs from
these free form, playful sessions were merely demos which would
form the basis of a more traditional album to be
tackled down the road. Experimentation being a hit or miss process,
he assumed that some of their unrefined work would be,

(50:38):
in his own words, pretty wishy washy. But as the
dates continued, he became convinced that what they'd made was
vital and interesting. One night, towards the end of the
Chateau sessions, Viscontin made a rough mix of their work
so far and played it back to David on a cassette,
a preview of the album in progress. They shared a
bottle of wine, and with each song, David grew more

(51:00):
more enthusiastic. When it was over, Visconti handed the cassette
to David, who gleefully waved it over his head, exclaiming,
we have an album. We have an album, but to
finish it they'd have to go to Berlin. Tired of

(51:25):
the headaches at the Chateau de Ville, David and company
departed France for Germany. After a short stint at music
Land Studios in Munich, where they were joined briefly by
guitarist Phil Palmer Bowie, Iggy and Visconti settled in Berlin
for final mixing. By the mid seventies, Bowie had become
increasingly fascinated by the innovative sounds of German comiche music,

(51:47):
off on anglicize to the unflattering nickname Kroud Rock. The
most famous of these bands in the English speaking world
was craft work. David would later describe their work as
almost a parody of minimalism, and instead of mimicking their
robotic lockstep beats, he had an R and B rhythm
section to subvert the form for his own expressionist mood pieces.

(52:08):
David also loved the work of other German bands like Tangerine, Dream,
Cluster Noi and Harmonia, and he eagerly devoured their discographies.
At one point, David approached German super producer Connie Plank
to oversee his new album, but Plank turned him down,
so it was Viscontine who stood beside David is co

(52:29):
producer at Hansa Studios in West Berlin that October. Initially
they used one of the smaller facilities before moving to
significantly grander accommodations and the Hansa complex known as Studio Too.
It looked like a ballroom on the Titanic, with elegant
dark wood paneling, luxuriant drapery and polished parquet floors. A

(52:50):
full size stage hinted at its original use as a
guild hall for local masons. Constructed in the early nineteen tens,
the building board witnessed to more than its fair share
of history. It's magisterial main room at housed expressionist art galleries,
Nazi balls, and chamber orchestras within its opulent walls. In
the basement, though, he had found Nazi era valve stamped

(53:13):
with swatstickas. But if the inside resembled the Titanic, the
outside was just a wreck. The stately ionic pillars were
pock marked with bullet holes and bomb damage from World
War Two, and many of the expansive picture windows remained
bricked up, providing a haven for an impressive number of pigeons.
A large portion of the roof pediment had been blown

(53:33):
off in the war and never repaired, and a segment
of the courtyard wall had crumbled into rubble. The street
was riddled with holes where buildings had once been before
falling victim to war and neglect. Hansa stood proud but broken,
like a palace gone to ruin. It seemed to sum
up all of the glamor and grotesquery of a divided Berlin.

(53:55):
Once the focal point of Berlin's artistic community, Hansel was
located in the ghostly no man's land of pot stammer Plats,
literally in the Shadow of the Berlin Wall, or the
anti Fascist Protective Rampart, as it was known in the East.
It had been constructed essentially overnight in August of nine
in an attempt to stop the flow of East berliner's

(54:16):
fleeing into the economically booming West. By the seventies, the
original concrete and barbed wire had been expanded to include
a booby trapped death strip patrolled by armed Soviet guards
perched and elevated gun turrets. The guard's orders were shoot
to kill, and they often did. More than a hundred
people were shot to death as they tried in vain

(54:37):
to escape. Just before Bowie's arrival, an eighteen year old
man was sprayed with bullets. Hansa was dubbed the Hall
by the Wall for its unsettling proximity to the deadly division,
known to locals as Die Mauer. Tanks prowled the street
outside the studios front door. The control room looked out

(54:58):
towards a guard tower close enough to make out the
red Soviet stars on the furry hats of the East
German soldiers. Bowie and Visconti became convinced that the guards
were spying on them Through their binoculars. They asked hansa
engineer du Meyer if the soldiers ever gave him trouble.
Du jokingly responded by flashing the guards with an overhead
lamp and sticking out his tongue. Bowie and Visconti didn't

(55:21):
find it funny and dove under the mixing desk in terror,
sure that the guards would retaliate by opening fire with
their stem guns. No matter where you looked, there was
no forgetting that you were in an ex war zone
and an international boundary. The bombed out buildings, uncomfortably close
guard towers, barbed wire, and permanent sense of vague danger

(55:44):
created a strange, tense atmosphere for making music. As Tony
Visconti would recall, everything said, we shouldn't be making a
record here. The constant exposure to the brutality of totalitarian
governments forced Bowie to confront his public dalliance with fascism
earlier that year. Regardless of his intentions, Berlin brought home

(56:06):
the horror of Germany's not so distant past. I really
had to face up to that, Bowie would later admit.
Suddenly I was in a situation where I was meeting
young men of my age whose fathers had actually been
s s men. One German acquaintance of David's northodontist possessed
reproduction skulls of Hitler's cabinet members, which he proudly showed

(56:27):
off to illustrate the supposed superior dental genetics of Nordic blood.
There were some, particularly in Germany, it seemed, who interpreted
David's thin white duke incarnation as his tribute to the
Arian notion of the ubermention it's not a far jump
to the Hitlerian ideal of the master race. David's recent
comments in the press not to mention his decision to

(56:49):
settle in Berlin only seemed to confirm these supposed sympathies.
Soon after he arrived, a putrid stream of fervent nationalists
and rabid racists began beating on his door. These were
people who assumed he thought like them. One night, an
art dealer came calling, trying to sell him a bust
of Hitler made by the fearer's favorite sculptor. The man

(57:10):
had to be physically removed by Iggy. Another day, while
out for a walk by Hansa Studios, David noticed his
name spray painted onto the Berlin wall, with the letters
twisted into the shape of a swatstika. The consequences of
David's words left him horrified. He had been chiefly interested

(57:31):
in the Third Reich's propensity for medium manipulation and obsession
with supernatural artifacts, topics of great interest to Bowie in
any period of his life, but he'd admitt in later
years to being politically naive for divorcing these mythological tales
of the occult from the genocide committed by the Nazi regime.
This was not merely science fiction, but terrifying, murderous reality. True,

(57:56):
David had been driven quite literally psychotic by drug use,
and unable to remember much of the period in question,
though no excuse, it does go a long way, and
explaining as it will advised comments, he would admit the
charges of racism had been raised quite inevitably and rightly
as he emerged from the cloud of cocaine. To be clear,
there's nothing to suggest that David actually subscribed to the

(58:17):
theories of eugenics put forth by the Third Reich. In fact,
most of his behavior over the years would suggest the opposite.
He was notoriously outspoken in his support for African American musicians,
famously halting an interview on MTV to grill the VJ
on why the network wasn't playing more work by black artists. Ultimately,
it was an unfortunate chapter in David's life, or rather

(58:40):
an unfortunate character the thin White Duke. But once David
arrived in Berlin, he took the persona off, put it
in a wardrobe, and locked the door. His true feelings
about the geopolitical schism tumbled out in a song, the
only one on his new record, written in Berlin, called
Weeping Wall. It's an instrumental piece performed entirely by Bowie

(59:05):
himself on synthesizers and percussion. A wordless chorus helped evoke
the misery of those trapped in the East, a sympathetic
nod that those caught on the wrong side of the wall.
Weepin Wall would be the last song completed for his
new album, and it was an album unlike any he'd
ever made. Initially titled New Music, Night and Day, it

(59:27):
was like his newly adopted city divided in two. The
first side was clearly Day, a series of short, spiky songs,
fragmented but still identifiable as pop. The Night of Side
Too held something different, entirely sprawling, minimalist, largely lyriclest tracks
that had far more in common with You Knows Another

(59:48):
Green World than ziggy Stardust. This wasn't entirely an accident.
You Know assembled the initial tracks for two of those
songs when David was called away to Paris to deal
with more of the unpleasant legal fallout from his split
with his manager. It was mostly a matter of practicality.
Why let expensive studio time go to waste? As far

(01:00:09):
as Eno was concerned, Bowie could keep any of the
pieces that he liked. Whatever remained, you Know would use
on his own album. It was during those Bowie list
sessions that Visconti's four year old son began playing a
three note figure on a baby grand piano over and over, ABC,
ABC ABC. The figure became locked in ENO's head. It

(01:00:31):
had an a motive, almost religious feel to it. He
gently scooted the boy over on the piano bench and
sat down beside him. Eno expanded the piece, which Bowie
would further develop into the song Warsawa, a haunting, wordless
hymn inspired by a record of a Bulgarian Boys choir,
David had recently purchased. The syllables Bowie sang were meaningless,

(01:00:54):
chosen purely for the sound they evoked, but it brimmed
with emotion. Though the melodies were plentiful, Bowie found himself
suffering from a case of writer's block during the sessions.
He intended the craft lyrics to each of the songs
on side one, but he came up short for two
Speed of Life and a new career in a new town. Instead,

(01:01:16):
he chose to leave them both as instrumentals. The words
he did manage to write are an unvarnished reflection of
his mental angst. The first three lyrical tracks in the
album Breaking Glass, What in the World and Sound and
Vision find Bowie confined to a room, secluded but suffocated.
When I left l A. I tried to find out

(01:01:36):
more about the world, he told Rolling Stone in I
discovered how little I knew, how little I have to say.
These instrumental tracks reveal a man literally stuck for words.
His troubled personal life further tied his tongue. In addition
to the two million dollar lawsuit leveled by his ex manager,

(01:01:56):
his marriage to Angie was in its final death throws.
She is sited her husband in Berlin several times that
in November, seemingly intent on settling once and for all,
what exactly was to become of their union, Even their
creative bond, the last link that kept them together, was
broken for good. She couldn't understand what on earth he
saw in Germany, she would write in her memoir. I

(01:02:18):
couldn't even begin to relate to either his fascination with
the magic behind the Holocaust or his affection for grim,
gray places. And that's putting it very mildly. Indeed, I
couldn't stand all that crap. The stress of one visit
pushed David to the breaking point, and he collapsed. Angie,
fearing he'd finally suffered a heart attack after years of

(01:02:40):
punishing his body, rushed him to a local hospital, but
a doctor declared there was nothing organically wrong with him,
simply that he had been overdoing things a bit, particularly
the drinking, which he had taken to with enthusiasm since
arriving in Berlin. It helped all the raw emotion that
the last few years had brought to the surface. In

(01:03:00):
Angie's eyes. It was David's all seeing, all knowing assistant
Coco Schwab, who was the real wedge in their relationship.
She was the gatekeeper and the assassin. She did his
dirty work for him and took all the consequences, she
wrote venomously. Fifteen years later, so Andie presented her husband
with an ultimatum, either Coco goes or I go. Bowie

(01:03:23):
responded by asking for a divorce, Andie refused. If he
wanted out, he'd have to do the deed himself. The
shock of it all delayed the pain that they both
knew intellectually would come should come. They've been through so much,
how could it not. Angie hoped against hope that with

(01:03:43):
all their marital issues out of the way, they could
go back to being friends and partners again. Even David
seemed to brighten after the difficult discussion was done. It
was as if a spark was rekindled. Maybe it was
just the drinks heat downed, but later that night they
slept together for the first time in years. The looming
split lent to forbidden alert of their relationship, and the

(01:04:05):
next few days in Berlin were unusually happy. Those were
good times, and you would write they had a strangely
erotic quality, almost the Listit as if the decision to
divorce had changed us from man and wife into brother
and sister, behaving very naughtily with each other. I started
to think that maybe, as in the beginning, we were
adventuring into something new, untried and exciting. But then a

(01:04:29):
fight between Angie and Coco brought the romantic interlude to
an end, a dramatic one at that, and you would
have it no other way. Of course. After the verbal altercation,
Coco fled the apartment instead of siding with his wife
or ex wife or whatever. David grew deeply upset and
ran to the telephone, desperate to track down his beloved aid.

(01:04:53):
As Andie would note, he seemed much more concerned about
Coco's welfare than her own. Upon locating Coco, David ran
out to meet her, leaving Angie alone. David had clearly
made his choice. There was only one thing left to do. Leave,
so Angie caught a cab to the airport, but not

(01:05:13):
before going to Coco's room, gathering up all of her
clothes and tossing them into the street below. For David
and Angie, that was the end, though they had continue
to play a role in each other's lives. For the
next few years, they did interact from a distance. According
to Angie, they met just once more at a cafe
in Switzerland to exchange divorce documents. All this was going

(01:05:41):
down as David was finalizing his new album. He would
later characterize his mood during the sessions with a single word,
one that would give the record its ultimate title, Low.
As he neared the end of his twenties, he put
the finishing touches on his most adult work to date,
one that has showed persons and storytelling. He'd reached the

(01:06:02):
point where as he later said, I really didn't need
to adopt characters to sing my songs. Low is a
highly personal snapshot of a moment in time. The music
was literally expressing my physical and emotional state. He'd say.
It was a byproduct of my life. It just sort
of came out. The cover, a shot of Bowie and

(01:06:24):
profile from The Man Who Fell to Earth was a
visual pun Low Profile Get It. In addition to ignoring
nearly all conventions of a commercial rock and roll album,
David did next to nothing to actually promote it. In
the past, he was all too willing to publicize his
work through high concept stunts and choice quotes. Now he

(01:06:45):
was silent. He refused all interview requests for Low, saying
only it doesn't need to be discussed. It speaks for itself.
There would be no tour. Instead, he was happy to
stay in Germany for the time being. At least Berlin
was my clinic, he said some years later. It brought
me back in touch with people. It got me back

(01:07:08):
on the streets. Not the street where everything is cold
and there's drugs, but the streets where there were young,
intelligent people trying to get along. The city had rescued
him from almost certain oblivion, and the results shown through
in his latest work, It was art is therapy. The
record exposed his pain to the world and the results

(01:07:28):
pleased him overall. I get a sense of real optimism
through the veils of despair from Low, David said in
two thousand one, I can hear myself really struggling to
get well. Berlin was the first time in years that
I felt a joy of life and a great feeling
of release and healing. Low was in a sense, David

(01:07:49):
had a spiritual bottom. There was nowhere left to go
but up. Off The Record is a production by Heart Radio.
The executive producers are Noel Brown and shan Ty Tone.
The super Busing producers are Taylor Chokogne and Tristan McNeil.
The show was researched, written and hosted by me Jordan

(01:08:10):
run Tug and edited, scored and sound designed by Taylor
Chokogne and Tristan McNeil, with additional music by Noel Brown.
If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
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