Chapter Ten: 'Hero' in Berlin (1977)

Today’s episode looks at Bowie’s years in Berlin. It was a time of tremendous personal and artistic growth as the newly minted 30-year-old escaped the trappings of his showiness bubble and re-entered reality. Holed up in a nondescript apartment with his friend Iggy Pop, Bowie lived a generally anonymous life in the German capital. The experience forced him to grow up and become an adult — a scary proposition for anyone involved in rock ‘n’ roll. But newfound maturity brought exciting new music, including the landmark album 'Heroes.' At the end of the decade he’d dominated, David built on all he’d learned through the many characters he’d played. Now he was ready to move forward as himself. But the transformation would be a difficult one, as he says some painful goodbyes.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Off The Record is a production of I Heart Radio.
It was crunch time for David Bowie as he sat
in the control room of Berlin's Hansa Studios in August
of He was due to record vocals for a new song.

(00:22):
The only trouble was he hadn't finished the words yet.
He stared at the unfinished lyrics on the pad of
graph paper in front of him. Nothing was coming. He
was stuck, specifically at verse five. The small audience that
surrounded him wasn't helping. Among them was a good friend
and co producer Tony Visconti. Tony was joined by Antonio mass,

(00:45):
a German jazz singer and listed to provide backing vocals
on the album. That was the official reason she was there,
at least in truth. Visconti had taken a shine new
where when they met at a Berlin club a few
nights earlier. Though he was married, the two began an
illicit of air their lovey dovey chit chat just a
few feet away. It was a stressful distraction for David,

(01:05):
whose own union to wife Angie had just recently disintegrated. Yes,
he was glad for Tony and Antonia, but such gooiness
was throwing him off, so he told them, in the
nicest possible way, to go take a walk. Left with
his thoughts, David's eyes wandered towards the window of the
control room. If he wanted an inspiring vista, he wouldn't

(01:26):
find it here. The scene outside was gloomy, an unsettling
reminder of the deadly geopolitical divisions that ripped his newly
adopted city in two. The imposing Berlin Wall dominated the view,
so close that their music often attracted the attention of

(01:46):
the gun toting Soviet officers and a nearby turret. David
and Tony never shook the sense that one day these
East German guards would simply open fire on them. Between
that and the nearby rumble of tanks, it felt like
making music and a war zone. Then David spotted some

(02:10):
joy amid the grim tableau, a couple sharing a tender
kiss beneath the wall. It was Tony and Antonia. The
neglected neighborhood around Hansa wasn't especially romantic or safe for
that matter, especially after nightfall, so they'd come to stand
just a short distance from the studio. From David's point

(02:32):
of view, it was quite an image, their loving embraced,
dwarfed by the enormous symbol of fear and oppression that
loomed just beyond. It gave one of the sense that
their relationship was doomed from the start, thwarted by forces
far more powerful than either one of them. But still
there was beauty in the fragility. The senior minded David

(02:57):
of Otto Mueller's Lovers between Garden Walls, one of his
favorite paintings that hung in Berlin's Dibruca Museum, energized. He
put pen to paper once more, and the words began
to tumble out. I can remember standing by the wall,
and the guns shot above our heads, and we kissed
as though nothing could fall. He had a good feeling

(03:20):
about this song. Early in the sessions, it had taken
the form of a plotting rocker with echoes of his
old Velvet Underground favorite I'm Waiting for the Man, But
the addition of soaring guitar arcs and cascading synthwashes transformed
it into something else entirely. For a time it remained
an instrumental but ultimately David decided to develop it a

(03:42):
little more. The music seemed to demand it. There was
something grand and triumphant about it, even heroic. That's why
he called the song Heroes. The title reflected his cautiously
optimistic mood after walking himself back from the edge of
person and all oblivion. The lyrics made references to his

(04:03):
crumbling marriage and ongoing struggles with substance abuse, themes not
usually associated with heroes, but that was sort of the point.
After striking superhero poses with Ziggy Stardust and a host
of other mythological sci fi archetypes, this hero was more human.
David had written an anthem for the every day. He

(04:25):
would say the song was about quote facing reality and
standing up to it, achieving a sense of compassion, and
deriving some joy from the very simple pleasure of being alive.
The song Heroes reflected hope despite overwhelming odds. Nothing will
keep us together, is the repeated refrain. Yet it doesn't
have the ring of defeat. Instead, it's just a statement

(04:49):
of fact. Time is short, but sometimes just one day
is enough. When Tony and Antonia returned to the control room,
David flashed them as lie grim Unknowingly they had helped
him complete one of his most enduring songs. Now he
had to go sing it time to get to work. Hello,

(05:17):
and welcome to Off 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 Bowie's years in Berlin. It was a
time of tremendous personal and artistic growth as he escaped

(05:38):
the trappings of his show business bubble and re entered reality.
Pulled up in a nondescript department, he lived the generally
anonymous life in the German metropolis. The experience forced him
to grow up and become an adult, a scary proposition
for anyone involved in rock and roll. But newfound maturity
brought exciting new music, including the landmark album Heroes. At

(05:59):
the end of the decade he dominated, David built on
all he'd learned through the many characters he played. Now
he was finally ready to move forward as himself. David
Bowie turned thirty in January. Just a few weeks later,

(06:19):
his new album Low was released to the public. It
was a groundbreaking piece of work, fusing punkish guitar lashes
and early techno with a funky R and B rhythm section,
all forming a sonic blueprint for bands like You, Two
Joy Division, and Human League. The record was far ahead
of its time, and as with most art that's ahead

(06:40):
of its time, it was met with some confusion among critics.
Many were openly hostile. Words like difficult, inaccessible, and fragmented
appear often in contemporary reviews. Trouser Press magazine voiced their
disappointment with a two part feature titled The Man Who
Fell from Grace. Some writers praised the more conventional pop

(07:02):
tracks of the album's first side, before going on to
dismiss the ambient explorations on the second. Journalist Robert Hilburn said,
for twelve minutes, this is Bowie's most striking and satisfying
albums since Ziggi, but the remaining twenty six minutes, including
all of side to deal with a spacey art rock
style that is simply beyond mass pop sensibilities. The New

(07:25):
York Times described it as strange and spacey, with mindless
doggrel for lyrics, before concluding, nevertheless, the whole thing strikes
this listener is remarkably alluringly beautiful. The split opinion that
greeted Low is perhaps best illustrated in the pages of
The New Musical Express, which published two separate reviews side

(07:46):
by side. One was more or less positive, the other
nearly set the page on fire. Writer Charles Sharr Murray,
normally one of Bowie's staunches supporters, called Low quote a
totally passive icosis, a scenario and a soundtrack for total withdrawal,
futility and death wish glorified an elaborate embalming job for

(08:08):
a suicide's grave, an act of purest hatred and destructiveness.
It stinks have artfully counterfeited spiritual defeat and emptiness. And
there's more where that came from. He describes the music
as quote, the sound of nothing, a bunch of intros
that fade out while you're waiting for something to happen.
As far as Murray was concerned, Low was quote so

(08:31):
negative it doesn't even contain emptiness. David's label our Cia
was inclined to agree. Still High from his recent gold
sellers like Station to Station and Young Americans, which had
yielded soulful, danceable chart toppers like Fame and Golden Years.
The label Brass didn't know what to make of these
wordless soundscapes. When David turned in the masters for Low

(08:54):
in the fall of six, r c A immediately sent
them back with a formal rejection letter, which David then
framed and kept on his wall at home. The album
was unmarketable, the label complained there was nothing that even
slightly resembled the commercial single. Hell, half the songs didn't
even have words. They demanded that he go back and
fix it. David refused, reminding the executives that our ci

(09:18):
A was contractually obligated to release whatever he gave them,
So the label sat on it for a few extra weeks,
forfeiting the lucrative Christmas market in the process. After all,
their reasoned, it wasn't like anyone would be giving this
bleak collection as a gift. One executive even resorted to bribery,
declaring that he would buy Bowie a mansion in Philadelphia

(09:39):
if he would only just make another Philly soul style
hit like Young Americans. But David had other real estate
opportunities in mind. But the fall of six he decided
he wanted to stay in Berlin for the foreseeable future.
In addition to the flourishing arts and music scenes, the
city afforded him a life that was as close to

(09:59):
normal is that have been in years. He could walk
down the street, or take the Uban public transport, or
visit art galleries and bars, all with minimal hassle. It's
a very good place for someone like me to live,
because that can be incredibly anonymous, he would explain. Locals
don't seem particularly joyful about seeing a famous face. Given

(10:19):
the constant cultural tensions that come with living on a
socio ideological fault line, Berliners were not really impressed by
the presence of a celebrity. The populace of struggling artists
and social misfits were more concerned about how to stretch
their meager salary through the week. David would later observe,
the people in Berlin don't give a damn about your problems.
They've got their own. I thought, if I could survive

(10:42):
in Berlin without being molly coddled, then I had a
chance of surviving. After weeks of staying at a hotel
and briefly with Edgar Frosie of the German band Tangerine Dream,
it was time for David and his travel buddy Iggy
Pop to have their own pad, so David dispatched his
trusty assistant, Coco Schwab to find him some suitable digs. However,

(11:05):
there were some serious restrictions. David's efforts to entangle himself
from unhappy managerial deals had rendered him almost bankrupt. Royalties
from his earlier main Man era recordings had slowed to
a trickle, and with the costly lawsuit with ex manager
Michael Lippman looming, he was forced to penny pinch. David
had paid for his recent studio time with a check

(11:27):
which immediately bounced. Coco read him the Riot Act one
day when he appeared wearing an expensive new jacket he
just purchased for the first time since the sixties. The
cost of rent was a factor, so David instructed Coco
to lockdown the biggest, cheapest place she could find as
fast as possible. By October of nine six, she'd found

(11:49):
the one. It was one floor above an autoparts store
in the unfashionable district of Schoonenberg, home to the many
Turkish immigrants recruited to replace the cheap East German labor force.
Following the construction of the Berlin Wall. The lower middle
class residential neighborhood was worlds away from David's former homes
and the opulent enclaves of Hollywood. In Switzerland, as it recalled,

(12:11):
the nineteen seventy seven Schonenberg was somewhere to quote, force
yourself to buy your own groceries. The building itself was
downright dowdy, with its cream colored plaster facade beginning to
crack and crumble. The aggressively ordinary, down at the heels
locale suited both David's bank balance and his desire to
live anonymously and simply. Even the address was nondescript to

(12:34):
an almost comical degree. One hop Strassa or Main Street,
with Jones his legal surname, on the doorbell, which almost
never worked. Past the front door of this unassuming tenement block,
one found a spacious seven room apartment with high ceilings
and Art Deco framed windows. The dark wood panel the

(12:57):
bode was relatively all stare, functioning as something midway between
a dormitory and an oversized artist's garrett. Utilitarian to the extreme.
It was damp, with water leaking through the bricks when
it rained, which it often did. There were rooms for
Iggy and Cocoa, and also one for David's five year
old son Zoe when he came to stay. Filled with

(13:18):
a chaotic jumble of toys, The most luxurious room was
predictably David's own, done up with tiffany lamps, elegant drapery,
traditional Teutonic oil portraits, richly woven rugs, and a wood
burning fireplace, in addition to a functional home recording studio
a must for any seventies rock are Worth his white Powder.

(13:39):
An additional room had been set aside the function as
Bowie's painting studio, crammed with easels, canvases, and brushes, as
well as books about his favorite German expressionists. Soon the
walls of one hop Strasso were adorned with Bowie's own work,
competing for space alongside giant Neo Expressionist paintings and massive
photo murals depicting pine scenes. David always considered himself a

(14:04):
painter first and a musician second. Ever since his days
as a student in Nolan Frampton's art class at Bromley
Tech in Berlin. He continued his education with trips to
the Brooker Museum, named for the die Bruca or bridge
school of early twentieth century German expressionists. David had admired
these painters in his youth. One of his favorite works

(14:25):
was Eric Henkel's Rocke Roll, a stark depiction of insanity.
It provided the inspiration for the cover art on his
roommate Iggy Pop's long gest dating solo record, which was
finally readied for release in the spring of ninety seven.
The album will be called The Idiot. More literate fans

(14:46):
assumed that the name was a reference to the classic
Dostoyevsky novel, but Egg himself took a more literal interpretation
of the title. David but always marvel what a dick
I was, would recall or how awkward I was in
social of situations and in all the things that you
can do to make your career go better. So finally
he said, look, we're gonna call this album the Idiot.

(15:07):
David's basic thrust was an insult, as in you idiot.
As the incident suggests, their relationship began to take on
shades of a fraternal rivalry, though mostly a friendly one.
At the time, David was reading a book of letters
between the Van Gogh brothers, Vincent and Theo. This was
basically how the paris all themselves, one genius artist and

(15:30):
another slightly less than genius artist. At home, they bickered
like siblings typical roommates, squabbles over who ate all the
food in the fridge, or whose turn it was the vacuum,
or who borrowed the other shirt without permission. The place
was a classic bachelor pad. Other than making coffee, David
was hopeless in the kitchen, and a tower of dirty

(15:50):
dishes could often be found balancing precariously in the sink.
The floor was littered with laundry and scraps of paper
bearing semi complete sketches and songs. Despite the occasional mess,
they fell into an easy domestic routine. The major weekly
event was watching the TV show Scarsky and hutched together
on Thursday nights. When Iggy later opted to find his

(16:11):
own lodgings, it was just across the hall on the
same building. After fueling up with their morning meal at
a cafe next door, the friends would wander new neighborhoods
by car or bike, or sometimes just on foot. David
would recall, I'd like to go out and get lost

(16:31):
and be in places made of wood, just to wash
every shred of America off. Taking a walk was like
taking a shower. Sometimes they'd go further afield, crossing the
Iron Curtain and into East Berlin to see productions at
the Berlin or Ensemble. Dramatist Bert told Breck's Home theater.
Their passage through the infamous checkpoint Charlie was made easier

(16:52):
by Iggy's girlfriend at the time, the daughter of a
local diplomat, but that didn't make them exempt from the
taunts by the local guards, who mocked the tooth of
their outdated sixties passport photos David with the Space Oddity
era perm and Iggy with a beadly mop top. In
a way, it was fitting because their journey in the
communist territory was like taking a trip back in time.

(17:14):
Women still dressed in pencil skirts and wore their hair
and fifty style beehive dues. The cars were mostly identical,
the boxy State produced model known as Travis with free
enterprise band. Consumer brands were practically non existent, and the
streets were lined with billboards emblazoned with slogans like eat
fish and drink milk. It was all very weird back

(17:40):
in the West. David and Iggie would visit record shops
and galleries, or brows markets, or just camp at coffee
shops and discuss politics, art, literature, and music everyone's but
their own. They went to the cinema regularly, taking in
German art house movies and the latest from new Hollywood directors.
A screening of Taxi Drive Or prompted Iggy to spontaneously

(18:01):
shave his head into a mohawk, and the films of
Fastbender inspired Bowie to grow a mustache for the first
time in years. He stopped dyeing his hair and traded
his designer clothes for jeans and nondescript plaid shirts. David
was doing something he'd never done before, blend In. It
would strike some as odd that, at a time when

(18:22):
David was looking to wean himself off at drugs, he
settled in Berlin, by his own admission, the smack capital
of Europe. And who did I take with me? He'd
later laugh, Iggy Pop was trying to get off a smack.
The whole German venture had all the ingredients of a
first class disaster, but overall they stayed clean, at least
for the most part. Well, they didn't funnel illicit substances

(18:44):
into their bodies with quite the same gusto they had
back in Hollywood. They were not exactly living like monks
in Berlin either. Iggy would later illustrate their rough weekly
schedule as two days for binging, you know, for old
time's sake, two days for recovery from said binge, and
then three more for any other activity. This activity could
include going to the library or taking Zoe to the

(19:06):
zoo or the park, or it could involve hitting the town,
and Berlin was certainly a good place for that. Allied
occupation forces who oversaw West Berlin were notoriously lax when
it came to enforcing prostitution regulations, closing hours, or really
anything that inhibited a good time. Though David would frequently
cite Berlin as his clinic, he wasn't above partying. On occasion,

(19:30):
he'd replace his cocaine addiction with a pension for drinking,
sometimes to excess. Friends would recall David binging several times
a month, seeking a ball of whiskey and one night,
and then muttering his regrets in the morning. David would
later admit that he had fallen prey to the classic
addicts mistake of merely exchanging one substance for another. According

(19:50):
to him, Berlin was the perfect place for such debauchery.
It was, in his words, a city made up of
bars for sad people to get drunk in. He counted
himself among them. His favorite watering hole was the old
American sounding Joe's Beer House, where David was a regular.
He'd seen himself at his usual corner table in the
dark paneled bar and put away glass after glass of

(20:13):
conic pilsner. Gradually, his aggressive introvert side would come out,
and he get louder and louder, attracting more and more
fans and fellow bar flies. David required more drinks to
cope with this attention, and most evenings ended with him
being held up by his belt loops by the bartender,
only vomited in the alley outside. One night, he burst

(20:34):
into tears, sobbing to all on the ear shot that
leeches were bleeding him dry Financially, money problems were just
one of the many reasons he drank Moreover. Alcohol helped
all the psychic pain of the last few years, his
failed marriage, spotty parenting, and disappointing business deals, to say
nothing of the general stress of being David Bowie. In

(20:57):
a sense, these excesses were understandable, if not totally excusable,
but David did what he could to keep Iggy out
of harm's way. Intercepting heroin dealers intent on paying his
friend to visit, David would assure the pushers that they
would not like the outcome if any of the junk
found its way to Iggy. Usually it didn't, Booze would
be their substance of choice. Iggy, in particular, had no

(21:20):
off switch, stopping only for unconsciousness. Some of the clubs
they frequented, like the formative punk venue s O thirty
six and early electronic hub Metropol, were on the cutting
edge of musical artistry, but mostly they preferred places that
maintained their nineteen twenties Weimar Republic aesthetic. It was in
one of these cabaret venues that Tony Wisconsin met jazz

(21:42):
vocalist Antonio Mass. Though he was married at the time
the pop singer Mary Hopkins, the two began seeing each
other briefly. David, whose relationship with wife Angie was all
but over, began a Berlin affair of his own. He'd
started seeing a Dutch performer known as Romy Hog, six

(22:03):
ft tall with a statuesque figure and an unerring eye
for glamor in theatricality. She'd lived her early life as
a man her theater Shay romy Hogg was like something
out of the film Cabaret, Boasting the most dazzling drag
show in town. The club had become a Berlin institution,
attracting the likes of Mick Jagger, Freddie Mercury, Lou Reed,

(22:25):
and Brian Ferry. David paid a visit when his Station
the Station Tour first passed through Berlin in April of
ninety six, and he was instantly entranced by Romy's beauty
and gender fluid sensuality. She always ended her act by
dramatically ripping off her wig and smearing her lipstick across
her face until it resembled a brutal gash. It was

(22:45):
a move that would have done David proud back in
his mind days with Lindsay Kemp. He was hooked from
the day they met, and so was Romi. We looked
at each other and that was that, she would later say.
David could hardly stand to leave her, and he early
missed his station's Station show in Hamburg the next day.
As a result, in romy he found a lover and

(23:06):
a kindred artistic spirits, much as he had with Angie
all those years ago. Some, including Romi herself, felt David
borrowed a little too liberally from her stage act, copying gestures, images,
and other elements in his own performances. They burned hot
and cold for months, but ultimately their relationships self destructed.

(23:29):
It went down on January David's thirtieth birthday. He was
celebrating at a club in France when a photographer popped
out of nowhere and snapped the picture of them. David
didn't take kindly to the paparazzi intrusion and smashed the
man's camera against the wall. Then he rounded on Romi,
accusing her of setting up the press op exploiting his

(23:50):
birthday at a further her own career. Their relationship fizzled
out after that. Iggy Pop remained his best friend and
constant companion in bur In. By the spring of ninety seven,
they decided to head out on another adventure, a new tour.
They had hit the road together a year earlier for
David's station The Station Track, but now the roles would

(24:12):
be reversed. Iggy would headline the dates and support of
his first solo album, The Idiot, and David, the bona
fide superstar, would perform as his humble backing musician. A
decade ago, David was known to quit bands if he
didn't get top billing, but now he was happy to
see the spotlight and abdicate his role as the star,
at least as much as he was able. He'd been there,

(24:34):
done that. Now he just wanted to have some fun.
The executives at David Bowie's label r c A all
but begged him to promote his new album Low in

(24:56):
the early months of ninety seven. As far as they
were concerned, he turned in his least commercial work to date.
The least he could do was get out there and
try and sell it, but David steadfastly refused. He did
no press for the album, saying only that the music
spoke for itself, nor did he do the television circuit
or even film a promotional video. In the end, it

(25:18):
didn't matter. David's albums more or less sold themselves, and
Low reached number two in the UK chart and number
eleven in the States. After failing to perform these comparatively
easy promotional tasks. Our c x X weren't surprised to
learn that David would not mount a tour for low
In a sense they understood it. Touring was grueling, especially

(25:38):
for an ultra energetic frontman like David. But then David
announced that he would hit the road after all, not
for himself but for Iggy Pop, and not as a
co headliner or even a guitarist sharing center stage. Instead,
David would serve as a lowly keyboard player, shackled to
the unglamorous rig in the back of the stage and
off to one side, literally and metaphorically out of the spotlight.

(26:02):
As far as our CIA was concerned, David was taking
this whole living anonymously thing a little too far, too bad.
What David wanted David got. Depending on how you looked
at it, it was either a selfless act of encouragement
or a selfish act of laziness. David had produced Iggy's
first solo album, The Idiot, and he remained committed to

(26:24):
reviving his friend's career after being derailed by drugs. With
The Idiot due for release that March, Bowie assembled a
live band that included guitarist Ricky Gardner and brothers Tony
and Hunts Sales on bass and drums, respectively. After some
rehearsals in a derelict film studio in a Berlin suburb,
the group kicked off their six week trip across Europe

(26:44):
and the US. The shows were well attended, likely due
to a persistent rumor that David would sing a few
numbers as well. The audience at general mission shows were
embarrassingly lopsided, with crowds gathered at the side of the
stage by David's keyboard, but David didn't indulge them. In fact,
he barely acknowledged them. He was all too happy to

(27:05):
stay in the back, just one of the boys in
the band. More often than nought he was watching Iggy,
who had never seen perform live in the flesh. I've
never enjoyed a tour so much, David later said, because
I had no responsibilities. I just had to sit there,
drink a bit, have a cigarette and wink at the band.

(27:30):
David's presence unquestionably aided in both the successive Iggy's tour
and also the commercial impact of the idiot who else
could get Iggy pop? On the boring Lee show Biz
Dinah Shore Show. The album ultimately broke the top forty
in Britain and hit number seventy two in the States,
Iggy's first chart entries in either country. Whether intentional or not,

(27:51):
the backup gig was also a canny move for David's career.
He just turned thirty. That terrifying age and rock when
one seems to go from relevant to ain't and overnight.
John Lennon, a few years older than David, had recently
entered his house husband phase, opting out of the music
industry entirely to stay at home and take care of
his infant son. But others like Mick Jagger, Elton John

(28:13):
and Rod Stewart kept at it and were roundly dismissed
as cultural dinosaurs by the new guard of punks, the
sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten famously wore a T shirt proclaiming
I Hate Pink Floyd. At the time, the biggest selling
rock act on the planet, they were a stand in
for all the musicians who had made their bones in
the sixties, only to spend the next decade cashing in.

(28:35):
But Bowie had always managed to avoid the scorn of
the youths. In fact, he was embraced his punk spiritual
godfather alongside the Who's Pete Townsend Pete, with his guitar
smashing and furious playing that often left his hands, Bloody
had the violent aggression, whereas Bowie provided the attitude of
fearless outrageousness. Many British punks had come of ages glam

(28:57):
rock fans. In fact, sex pistols could her is. Steve
Jones had attended the Ziggy Stardust retirement gig in nineteen
seventy three, where he made off with some Mike's amps
and other expensive musical equipment crucial to help get his
nascent band off the ground. So Bowie always had a
connection with the punk kids on the come up, but
his tour with Iggy, a god in that community, definitely

(29:19):
succeeded in bolstering his cred with the younger generation of musicians.
The tour's opening act came straight out of CBGB, Downtown,
Manhattan's incubator for emerging American punk and new wave acts.
They were called Blondie, so named for the stunning platinum
mained front woman Debbie Harry. They had recently released their

(29:40):
debut album, but we're essentially unknown outside of New York.
To say that Debbie's beauty was the reason they got
the job would be disrespectful to both her and the
other members of the band, but it may well have
played a role in why they got the gig over
say the Ramons or talking Heads. According to Debbie, Bowie
made his armorous intentions clear. Can I sleep with you?

(30:01):
Debby says he asked her early on in the tour.
Can you? She replied enthusiastically. On at least one occasion,
she says, he flashed her, apparently as a thank you
for scoring him some coke, rather than take offense. She
recalled the moment in her memoir as quote funny, adorable,
and sexy. I guess that was sort of flattered. She
would later say, He's one of the great men that

(30:24):
I admire in the music world. Clearly a genius and
perhaps the most touching display of support for Iggy. David
overcame his fear of flying. The scheduled only allowed a
few days between the British and American shows, not enough
time to cross the Atlantic by boat, as David usually did,
so he boarded a plane for the first time since

(30:45):
nineteen two. Despite his premonitions of danger, he lived, but
he decided not to push it. Once in America, he
preferred to travel the country in the back of his
chauffeur driven limousine Iggy, both Carlos and Licenseless often joined him.
Iggy would immortalize the scene in his song The Passenger,
a portrait of the pair cruising along, talking and listening

(31:07):
to music as they took in the landscape. They record
the songs soon after arriving back in Berlin that spring,
as they entered Hansa Studios to begin work on Iggy's
next solo album with David producing. They'd be bolstered by
Iggy's touring band as well as Bowie's musical director, Carlos Alomar.
Their base of operations was the Cavernous Studio Too, which

(31:29):
still looked much as it had in its prior incarnation
as a turn of the century concert hall where high
ranking Nazis at once waltzed. Contact with the producers and
engineers located down the hall in the cramped control room
was made possible through the use of close circuit cameras.
Iggy took great pleasure and leaping on a chair and
making faces into the lens to the amusement and occasional

(31:51):
terror of whoever was watching on the other side. The
album came together in barely two weeks, with most of
Viggy's vocals cut in one take. If The Idiot was
David at the Helm, this record was mostly Iggy, and
he ensured it stayed that way by practically living at
the studio, staying long after David had gone home for
the night in order to prep for the next day.

(32:12):
As a result, it's a much more brash and raucous
endeavor than his prior record, with arrangements that are much
rockier than anything David had assembled for The Idiot. In
addition to The Passenger, brought to life by guitarist Ricky
Gardner's catchy two chord riff, they also laid down a
few tracks the debut during the Idiot tour, including Tonight,
Some Weird Sin and Turned Blue, the title track at

(32:36):
its genesis, and one of Eggy and Bowie's weekly Scar
Sky and Hutch viewing sessions on the American Forces Network West,
Berlin's sole English speaking TV channel, The network station i
D featured a series of Morse code style blips from
a radio tower beep beep beep, beep beep beep. David
liked the rhythm and began strumming the chords on a

(32:56):
uku layle that he had handy. The pattern formed the
base is for Lust for Life, a song and title
that showcases Egga's improved physical and mental state. The lyrics
are five minutes of manic boasts, which he mostly made
up on the spot. Iggy insists he's changing his ways,
no more beating my brains with liquor and drugs. That

(33:16):
wouldn't be entirely the case, but the intent was good enough.
The album's cover photo was miles away from The Idiots,
which had showed Iggy mimicking the anguished pose of Eric
Henkel's painting Rock or Roll, a character crippled by insanity.
Now he practically glowed on the cover of Lust for Life,
a grinning portrait of health and positivity, looking as hopeful

(33:37):
and optimistic as a senior class photo. Sessions for Iggy's
album wrapped in June, by which time Bowie was keen
to continue his own projects in the studio. Enlisting Tony
Visconti once again as co producer, He sought to build
on the experimentation that it made low such a radical departure,
yet months living as a West Berliner had a transformative

(33:58):
effect on him, but dar a cloud that characterized the
prior album It Lifted, and David later described his mood
at the time as good, buoyant. Even Brian Eno had
re entered the Fold to continue their collaboration. The two
developed a private language of surreal, Monty pythonesque comedy, routines
and silly voices modeled after the double act Peter Cook

(34:19):
and Dudley Moore. This often led to schoolboy giggling fits
in the studio with the two doubled over and hysterics.
They worked in intense spurts from noon till eight pm
each day. Then it was off to the clubs. Having
enlisted the familiar rhythm section of Carlos Alamar, George Murray
and Dennis Davis, the instrumental beds fell into place quickly,

(34:41):
usually completed in half an hour or less. Partially this
was due to the enthusiasm that permeated the stimulating sessions.
It was also partially due to the unnerving physical proximity
to the Berlin wall outside the windows. The musicians saw
gun toting Russian guards staring back at them through binoculars.
This was a powerful motivator. Recording Tony Visconti, the band

(35:04):
were speedy because they wanted to get the hell out
of there. The backing tracks were usually called from group
jam sessions on the former Mysosoul stage. Spontaneity was deemed
more important than rough edges, and often the first take
wound up on the final record. Sometimes they were helped
along by ENO's Oblique Strategies, a set of cards he

(35:25):
developed to aid and creative problem solving. Each card contained
a cryptic phrase designed to jump start fresh ideas or
just confused. They said things like what wouldn't you do,
retrace your steps, or just simply distorting time. Dead Ends
were a common hazard. Carlos Alamar in particular grew frustrated

(35:46):
with ENO's avant garde approach. After all, he was a
session prode toured with the likes of James Brown and
Chuck Berry. Now he had some guy writing a list
of chords on a blackboard and pointing to want at
random with a baton, like some sort of eccentric for esser.
He didn't need this, but occasionally the Oblique strategies yielded
a fascinating discovery. This was the case for one song

(36:08):
recorded after both Bowie and you Know each pooled the
card and kept the instruction secret from one another. Like
a game, they took turns over, dubbing back and forth,
not letting the other hear what they were doing until
it was all done. As it turned out, their directives
were entirely opposite. Enos said make everything as similar as possible,

(36:28):
and Bowie's read emphasized the differences. The study and contrast worked,
yielding the instrumental tracks sense of doubt. They took the
spur of the moment approach even further when they called
in ENO's former collaborator Robert Fripp to add some of

(36:49):
his trademark Frippartronics guitar work to the album in progress.
Despite the fact that he hadn't played much over the
last three years, Trup was happy to give it a shot.
The King Crimson Axe Man arrived at Hansa immediately after
touching down in Germany after a lengthy transatlantic flight. Understandably
the days and jet lagged. Fripp asked to hear the
songs they wanted him to play on, but Bowie mischievously refused,

(37:13):
instructing him to just wing it and play whatever he
felt with total abandonment. So Frip plugged into ENO's VCS
three briefcase synth and letter ripped, reacting in real time
to the playback tape while you know, manipulated the feedback
laden sounds with oscillators and electronics. The first thing Frip
heard was the backing for what became Beauty and the Beast,

(37:33):
the first of six songs he banged out during his
marathon tracking sessions. According to legend, he completed all of
his guitar overdubs in just one six hour burst. More
conservative accounts have this spread out over two days, but
either way, the speed is all inspiring. Bowie's lyrics are
written in much the same spontaneous manner. In many cases,

(37:55):
he took the iggy approach of writing as he sang.
According to Visconti, David never had a clue what he'd
sing until he actually walked into the live room. Then
he would stand at the mic, listen to a verse,
jot down a few keywords or impressions that came to mind,
then go for a take. I thought it was a
very effective way of breaking normality. In the lyric, David

(38:15):
would explain songs like Joe the Lion are exercises and
stream of consciousness, while other tracks had lyrics plotted out
in advance over the course of ten or fifteen minutes
at most. The words that popped out of a subconscious
often reflected as adopted home and the new friends he'd
made there. The title for the instrumental V two Schneider

(38:35):
name checks both a German ballistic missile from World War
Two and also Florian Schneider of kraft Work, who would
offer their own lyrical nod to Bowie and Iggy on
their song trans Europe Express earlier that year. Nei Klon,
another instrumental, takes its name from the Berlin district where
Tangerine Dreams Edgar Frosie had lived. In Bowie's own mind,

(38:56):
it represented the area of Berlin where the Turks are
shackled bad conditions, the Turkish influence abundant, and Bowie's own
Schoonenberg neighborhood can also be heard on the Secret Life
of Arabia, the finale of the album, and Progress Beauty
and the Beast touches on his Heaven and Hell mood
swings that were common during the depths of his cocaine
abuse in Los Angeles, but it also illustrates the dualities

(39:20):
present in a divided Berlin, split between the Decadent West
and I'll Stare East. Other songs had more personal meetings.
Many would speculate that Blackout alluded not to power outages,
but to Bowie's binge drinking and a brief hospitalization that
had resulted. Some would go further and suggest that one line,

(39:40):
Someone's back in town the Chips are Down, referenced Angie Bowie,
who was visiting the city during the same period. It
was the last time they'd meet before their divorce. Well,
the album lacked the same autobiographical punch is low, David
made up for it with passionate performances. However, one song
left him stuck for words. It was a triumphant march

(40:03):
with an uplifting chord sequence propelled forward by Dennis Davis,
George Murray and Carlos Alamar's relentless rhythm section, ENO's shimmering synth, drones,
and Fripps multilayered guitar. A composite of several different takes
flowed along like a wave that never crested to Eno,
the instrumental conjured the word heroic in his mind. He

(40:25):
kept the thought to himself and was amused and a
little stunned when Bowie informed him of the song's final title, Heroes.
For years, Bowie claimed that an anonymous couple had inspired
his words about the kiss under the Wall, but after
decades of covering, David later admitted that the lovers were
actually the still married Tony Visconti and Antonio mass Visconti.

(40:49):
Repaid the lyrical tribute by devising an innovative way for
his friend to record the vocals. Wanting to capture the full,
luxurious sound of the Grand hall where they recorded, he
devised them method where the room would sound progressively bigger
as David sang. The producers set up three separate microphones
at different locations within the live room, the first just

(41:09):
a few inches from David's face, another twenty ft away,
in the last fifty ft away. On each he attached
a noisegate device, which mutes a microphone until the sound
crosses a volume threshold. This allowed David's vocals to grow
in intensity, beginning with the intimate croon of the first verse,
up to the impassioned howl of the last singing at

(41:31):
the top of his lungs. The blend of both sonic
and emotional crescendos created a recording for the Ages in
one of David's most arresting performances. Heroes would serve as
the title track to his next album, released a widespread
acclaim in October of nine. He put the word in

(41:51):
quotation marks to add a level of irony, poking holes
in the slightly bloated notion of heroism. Despite the avant
garde working methods that it's so frustrated the likes of
Carlos Alamar, David and Eno had kept their pretension in
check and spent much of the session laughing at themselves
and at some of their less successful concepts that didn't
make the final cut. The album was rich with self

(42:14):
parody as well as a lot of inventive ideas. David
would recall. In that sense, the title is almost sarcastic.
After all, the character in the song is not exactly
supernatural or superhuman, certainly not on the level of Ziggy Stardos.
To the thin white duke, he wears his flaws on
his sleeve. He drinks all the time he has regrets

(42:36):
and failures. It's certainly misleading to believe that Bowie meant
heroes in any sort of self aggrandizing way. Even the
most cursory look at the lyrics throughout the album show
that this is not a happy record. David himself would
describe Heroes as much louder and harder and energetic than
his previous work on Low, but with words that were
far more psychotic. My own mood was good, he would say,

(43:00):
but those lyrics come from a nook in the unconscious.
Still a lot of house cleaning going on. Even if
it wasn't David's intention to harold his own survival after
the dismal and dangerous prior years, it's hard not to
appreciate it as such. Like Berlin, he was beaten, brutalized,
and in a rock star since at least broke. The

(43:20):
experience had changed him irreparably and charged him with a
degree of empathy. In later years, David would describe the
song as compassionate, compassionate for people, he'd say, and the silly,
desperate situation they've gotten themselves into that we've all gotten
ourselves into, generally by ignorance and rash decisions. There's hope

(43:41):
and Heroes, not for riches or power or fame. No,
the hope and Heroes is much more human and scale.
It's the belief that things can be better. It's a
plea for a moment of transcendence, regardless of how brief,
even just for one day. Heroes would arguably be the

(44:06):
greatest creative legacy of his years in Berlin. It certainly
was for Bowie's friend and elder brother figure John Lennon.
When the former Beatle emerged from his musical exile in
to record a new album, he told the press it
was to quote do something as good as Heroes, Hi praise. Indeed,
a decade later, the band You Too, comparative up starts

(44:29):
as far as Bowie was concerned, hired Brian Eno as
a producer and traveled to Hansa Studios to record their
landmark album Ak Tongue Baby. In a way, Heroes also
marked the beginning of the end of David's time in Germany. Okay,
there was his starring role in infamous World War One
drama Just a Jigglo, a joint German English production, where

(44:51):
he played a Troubled Prussian Soldier, but the less said
about that, the better. It was a poorly reviewed cinematic
fiasco that David would later describe as quote my thirty
two Elvis movies contained in one but his next album, Lodger,
the third of his so called Berlin Trilogy, was primarily
recorded in New York City in Montrose, Switzerland, between the

(45:13):
fall of nineteen seventy eight in the spring of nineteen
seventy nine. Elements of his time in Berlin managed to
peek through. The Assassin is imbued with the Turkish influence
found in bowie Schoonenberg neighborhood and the gender bending boys
keep swinging videos right out of romy Hoggs Cabaret. But
Bowie's influences and aims it started to shift. Even you

(45:34):
Know would admit that their once fruitful collaboration was starting to,
in his words, peter out. The force that had pushed
them towards the creative heights of the semi mythical Berlin
Trilogy ultimately let him elsewhere. Far be it from David
to sit still, after all, Yet he always looked back
at the period with fondness and a certain sense of wonder.

(45:56):
He'd say, for whatever reason, for whatever confluence of circumstance, answers,
Tony Brian and I created a powerful, anguished, sometimes euphoric
language of sounds. Nothing else sounded like those albums. Nothing
else came close. If I never make another album, it
really wouldn't matter. Now, Like complete beings within those three

(46:17):
they are my d n A. Berlin had become a
part of Bowie. Then a decade after the release of Heroes,
he repaid the favor. It occurred on David's Glass Spider tour,
launched in support of his seven album Never Let Me Down.
The gargantuan theatrical production was unlike anything he'd ever attempted

(46:38):
since the days of Diamond Dogs, boasting the largest touring
set ever made at the time. The trek included a
performance in June at the Concert for Berlin, a three
day outdoor festival held on the grounds of the Reichstag,
formerly the seat of the German government. The once proud
building had become a bombed out ruin of the once
unified country for are enhancing the symbolism, the structure sat

(47:02):
uncomfortably close to the Berlin Wall, a sign of the
divided times. The concert was clearly audible to those a
short distance away in the Soviet sector, where Western music
was viewed as an ideological threat and effectively banned. Well,
the East German authorities were powerless to stop broadcasts from
across the wall. Sale and purchase of this supposed capitalist

(47:24):
propaganda music was strictly prohibited. Obviously, Eastern rock fans were
not allowed to cross over and attend the increasingly political
music festival, but they could hear it with crystal clarity,
thanks to the efforts of sympathetic event organizers who helpfully
pointed public address speakers their way. By the time David
took the stage on the evening of June six, somewhere

(47:46):
between ten and fifteen thousand East Berliners had gathered as
close as possible to the wall. Though he couldn't see them,
he could certainly hear the cheers. It was like a
double concert. He would recall where the wall was the division.
It wasn't long before the East Berlin assembly turned violent.
The dreaded intelligence organization known as the Stasi unleashed mounted

(48:09):
police tasked with dispersing the crowd by savage force. The
true number assaulted by water cannons, stunned guns and night
sticks will never be known, but the figures devastatingly high
in defiance. Those gathered chanted a new slogan, down with
the wall. It was the first time a mob a
dared shouts as treason his thoughts in public. Just a

(48:33):
few hundred meters away, Bowie continued his performance while a
hundred and forty thousand Westerners watched, transfixed. Though we couldn't
see what was happening on the other side of the wall,
the sounds of brutality gave him a pretty good indication.
In German. He offered words of support to the victims
of oppression so tantalizingly near but beyond aid. We send

(48:56):
our wishes to all our friends who are on the
other side of the wall, he said shortly before launching
into one of his greatest musical treasures. Berlin had given
him heroes, and now he was giving it back. On
the summer night, the song sounded almost like a prayer,
he recalled. The lyrics penned exactly a decade earlier, seemed

(49:18):
almost clairvoyant. I can remember standing by the wall, and
the guns shot above our heads, and we kissed as
though nothing could fall, and the shame was on the
other side. Fans on both the West and the East
sang along. It was one of the most emotional performances

(49:39):
I've ever done, David would remember. I was in tears. God,
even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart.
I had never done anything like that in my life,
and I guess I never will again. Less than three
years later, the Wall was demolished. Bowie's rolling its falls

(49:59):
off have been overstated, but his performance in the Divided
City made him a hero to a generation of for Lennards.
When Bowie departed this planet in January of the German
Foreign Office tweeted a message, goodbye, David Bowie, You're now
among heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the Wall.

(50:20):
This all seemed unthinkable. Back in the Wall looked completely indestructible,
and so did David. After all, there was so much
more to do. David Bowie had done next to nothing

(50:48):
to help sell his album Low in early ninety seven,
but with the release of Heroes later that year, he
hit the press circuit with unusual gusto. I didn't promote
Low at all, and some people thought my heart wasn't
in it, he explained. This time I wanted to put
everything into pushing the new album. I believe in the
last two albums more than anything I've ever done before.

(51:11):
With Low, David seemed unconcerned with clearing up any misconceptions
about his words or music. Now he recorded foreign language
versions of Heroes, singing the lyrics in French and German.
David geared up for a tour and made high profile
appearances on Top of the Pops and other music television shows.
Rumors that he dropped in on The Muppet Show sadly

(51:33):
proved false, but he did take an arguably weirder role
on Bing Crosby's Christmas special. David's fondness from Middle of
the Road entertainment stretched back to his obsession with British
performer Anthony Newley back in the sixties, but this seemed
almost perverse Bowie meets being the King of the cutting edge,
appearing with the seventy four year old World War Two

(51:55):
crooner in a festive card again. Whether David wanted to
shock fans by making most conservative move possible or merely
set out to subvert this most bland banal of art forms,
He'd never say. The only explanation he'd ever, give was
that he took the gig because his mother liked being
given David's less than warm relationship with his mother, This

(52:15):
seems somewhat doubtful, but hey, it was Christmas after all. Well,
technically it was September when David filmed. Bing Crosby's Merry
Old Christmas. Being extended the invitation to David, in part
because his teenage children were big fans. But when David
showed up, reportedly wearing outlandish makeup and an earring, the
old timer may have had some second thoughts. According to

(52:39):
Bing's kids, producers took David aside and gently requested that
he wipe off the face pain and removed the earring.
David duly complied, but there was a bigger problem on
the horizon. The original plan was to perform a duet
of the Little Drummer Boy, but when David arrived, he
announced that he hated the carol. It didn't suit his range,

(52:59):
plus it was just boring. Wasn't there something else he
could sing? Just a short time before shooting began, the
show's musical directors held an emergency writing session on an
old piano in the studio basement. Within the hour, they
presented David with a new counterpoint to Little Drummer Boy
called Peace on Earth. Bowie loved it, and after a

(53:19):
quick rehearsal, he and Being ran their act for the cameras.
The sketch preceding the song is painfully stilted, but cute
in that cross generational seventies Network TV special sort of way.
The two compare holiday traditions before gathering around the piano
and rifling through a pile of Christmas Carol sheet music.
David plucks out the pages for Little Drummer Boy, describing

(53:42):
it as a son's favorite, and then the musical odd
couple launches into their tuneful melding of past and present
Christmas melodies. It's undeniably sweet, though David himself would call
the appearance ludicrous in later years. We were so totally
out of touch with each other, He'd say, I was
wondering if he was still alive. He was just not there.

(54:05):
He looked like a little old orange sitting on a
stool because he'd been made up very heavily, and there
was just nobody home at all. You know. It was
the most bizarre experience. That should have been the end
of it. A throwaway ditty for a one off TV special.
The master tape of the song was erased, but fervent
Bowie fans swapped bootlegs of the recording, and five years

(54:27):
after the broadcast, an official version of the Little Drummer
Boy Piece on Earth Medley was released just in time
for Christmas two. It became one of Bowie's best selling
singles ever and one of the most successful holiday songs
of all time. But being wouldn't live to see the
duet duke it out with his own white Christmas on
the holiday charts. He suffered a massive heart attack on

(54:49):
a golf course in Spain one month after the shoot.
By the time the TV special aired at Christmas time,
he was dead. It was a maccabre twist and and
already on settling holiday season for David. He spent Christmas
in Berlin, gathering a small group of friends at his
apartment on hop Strassa to enjoy a goose dinner cooked

(55:10):
by Cocoa Schwab. Among the merrymakers was David's six year
old son, Zoe. His presence sparked the very explosive and
very public end to his marriage to Angie. She'd been
living in Switzerland with her new boyfriend, surviving on a
nominal annual allowance from David. Her hopes for getting much
more in a divorce settlement were extremely low. Women in

(55:33):
Switzerland didn't even have the right to vote until She
could barely even get a meeting with a lawyer, much
less find a good one to represent her. After visiting
friends in New York, she returned to her Swiss home
for New Year's expecting to find Zoe, but he wasn't there.
David was annoyed that she left the boy with his
nanny for Christmas, so he brought him to Berlin for

(55:54):
the holiday. Angie was alone and inconsolable. She retaliated by
some an a reporter for the Sunday Mirror. The plan
was the Ventors spleen on record for some badly needed cash.
The reporter found her nearly senseless on downers, screaming that
Bowie had, without my knowledge, taken our son and ranting

(56:14):
about wanting a divorce. It was the first time she
had ever attacked her husband in public. For years, well,
they may have disagreed behind closed doors, they'd always presented
a united front. Going to the papers was tantam onto
an act of war, but it was the last card
she had to play, and she had no one on
her side. She was helpless. I really want David to suffer,

(56:38):
Angie told the reporter. Perhaps the only way he'll suffer
is if I do myself. In a few hours after
the interview, she nearly did. The reporter would claim that
Angie locked herself in a bathroom in the early morning hours,
where she shoveled fistfuls of tranquilizers down her throat. Then
she let herself out and began roaming the house, ashing

(57:00):
all the glassware and Christmas ornaments that she came across. Finally,
she picked up a gleaming carving knife and for a
few terrifying moments, considered thrusting it into her side until
those present talked her out of it. Then she took
a beat to regain her composure before hurling herself down
the stairs. They found her in a crumpled, bloody heap.

(57:21):
Then she was taken to a nearby hospital, where she
supposedly got so worked up that the woman in the
bed next to her had a cardiac arrest. I tried
to kill myself, and you would later admit, but my
heart wasn't in it. I'm very competent. If I really
wanted to kill myself, I think I would have succeeded.
A second attempt a short time later was marginally more successful.

(57:42):
A friend dragged her out of the bathtub where she
laid comatose from an overdose of pills. Careless paramedics dropped
her down the stairs on her way to the ambulance,
breaking her nose in the process. The unfortunate incident made
her wonder if the universe was trying to tell her
suicide isn't pretty, baby. Either do it or don't do
it at all. Angie's attempts to take her life made

(58:04):
the months long divorce proceedings even more brutal, as both
sides slung angry accusations at the other. David was abusive,
Angie was unstable and a neglectful mother. Ultimately, a polaroid
of Angie and an erotic pose with a girlfriend was
leaked to the court by David's lawyers. It was hustler
stuff recalled an official who saw the photo. As soon

(58:26):
as the judge sat down, it was obvious which way
the hearing would go. Zolwey's custody became a thorny issue,
though Angie later claimed she never tried to take the
boy from her husband. Zoe has always been my gift
to David, you see, she would write in her memoir.
By bearing my fragile husband a child, I was giving
him someone to live for. And now, especially now, in

(58:49):
David's darkest hour of need, I wasn't going to back
out of that commitment. So I knew I wouldn't fight
for Zoey's custody, and therefore I knew I was going
to lose him. This was the worst thing possible for me.
It felt like performing an amputation on myself. In the end,
David was awarded full custody of the boy, who would

(59:10):
later disowned his mother completely. She was a corrosive person,
he said recently. At present, Andree reportedly hasn't seen Zoe
or Duncan as he's now known since he was thirteen
years old. He's cold like his father. She later said.
David cut me off, and Zoe cut me off. When

(59:32):
the settlement was reached a three years of legal wrangling,
Andre was awarded seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars spread
over ten years. The money was continued on her adherence
to a gag order that prohibited her from discussing their marriage.
Now no one, but no one tries to shut Angie up.
She skirted the legal line on several occasions before publishing

(59:54):
a tell all memoir called Backstage Passes just after the
gag order expired. The book is unflinchingly honest or lurd
and exploitative, depending on your point of view. It made
headlines upon its release for Angie's insinuation that she caught
her husband in bed with Mick Jagger in the seventies,
a tale that's been widely debated ever since. David barely

(01:00:18):
bothered to respond to the book. In fact, he rarely
spoke about Angie over the years, usually referring to her
in interviews only as my ex wife. He memorably described
their time together as quote like living with a blowtorch.
That sort of says it all. Angie's memories are more
tingent with respect, though she remained understandably angry and hurt

(01:00:40):
by the dissolution of their partnership both romantic and creative.
She writes of David and her memoir with a degree
of reverence, regardless of his performance with me David did
do a wonderful job of broadcasting sexual freedom and personal liberation.
He shown his light into a lot of dark places
and people and helped them see them elves and maybe

(01:01:01):
love themselves a little better. In the years since they're
split from David, she's written poetry, recorded music, and worked
as a journalist with a focus on gender issues, but
shall always be linked to David. Her influence on his
career is hard to define but undeniable. His life would
have been very different without her. In addition to Angie,

(01:01:27):
David would say farewell to another formative figure from his past,
though under much more tragic circumstances. It was Mark Bolan,
his friend and occasional musical rival. They'd come from similar circumstances,
two boys from the sooty outskirts of London, shedding their
boring home life with new names and self styled rock

(01:01:48):
hero personas. The pair had come up together in the
mod scene of mid sixties London, when they shared a
manager and a ruthless level of ambition. Together they haunted
the hip clothing boots cheaks of Carnebie Street, trying to
one up one another with new out their threads and
big dreams for the future. The race to fame was on.

(01:02:11):
For a time it seemed like Mark was winning. Their
relationship grew strained as his career took off as the
frontman of the band t Rex, leaving David in the dust.
We're still David had this nagging feeling that Bowland got
his glittering, androgynous stage look from him. Their friendship would
fluctuate along with their performance and the music charts, leading

(01:02:33):
to the odds snipe in the press. Still they were friends,
albeit jealous, slightly catty. Ones Market even asked David to
be the godfather to his son Roland, as in Roland Bowland,
not to be confused with Zoe Bowie, who David was
probably only too pleased to note was born first. Clearly,

(01:02:54):
their competitive streak ran deep. They started from the same place.
No matter where David end, and no matter what he did,
he always measured success in relation to Mark. Once Bowie
burst onto the scene was ziggy stardust. Boland's career began
to fade. He had been outperformed and out glamed. Unlike David,

(01:03:15):
he stubbornly refused to evolve musically or visually, and his
act began to appear Stale. Even producer Tony Visconti, who
worked with both artists for a time, had moved on
from Mark. The mid seventies were especially tough for Boland,
who at that time seemed washed up, bitter and flabby,
like a man who'd run his race. Critic Charles Sharr

(01:03:38):
Murray would note, truthfully, if not unkindly, Boland was a
one trick pony, kept trying to do his single, one
trick even after he got too fat to jump the hurdle.
But by n seven he was mounting a comeback, booking
a tour with a damned just the support act, and
netting his own primetime British television show called Simply Mark.

(01:04:00):
Bowie was booked to appear on the show during his
press blitz for Heroes in September of nineteen, but it
was far from a laid back reunion between two long
time pals. Bowie showed up in full superstar mode, arriving
in a long limo with a huge entourage, including a
fleet of guards who closed off the set to all

(01:04:20):
but essential crew. Before long, Bowie's coterid effectively taken over
the studio to Bowland. Bowie was showing off by showing
him up on his own turf, trying to prove once
and for all that he was the bigger star. Depressed
at being eclipsed on his own show, Bowland sulked in
his dressing room and drank. Bowie, meanwhile, was horrified to

(01:04:43):
find a posse of press journalists that had been summoned
by the show's producers, making him feel exploited by his
old friend. They took to the stage a short time
later in equally pissy moods. Boland was worse for the
wear with drink as they started out on a blues
number called Standing Next to You. Soon after they began,
David received a nasty shock from a microphone that nearly

(01:05:06):
knocked them over. Then Boland drunkenly fell off the stage.
It was bad. They had almost nothing usable by the
time the shoot was scheduled to end, but the unionized
production crew refused to work overtime, and all they had
in the cam were a handful of shambolic takes. Boland
was in tears and Bowie was furious. He exited a

(01:05:27):
short time later, coolly suggesting the Bowling that they do lunch.
Bowie's way of telling him to get lost. It was
the last time they would ever see each other. Like
being Crosby, Boland was dead before the episode aired. It
was September, a week after the ill fated taping. Boland

(01:05:48):
was returning home from an evening of dinner and drinks
with his longtime girlfriend, soul singer Gloria Jones. Much like
Bowie with planes, Boland was always frightened of cars, despite
making them a freak and topic of his songs. As
a result, he never learned to drive. So it was
Jones who was behind the wheel of their purple Mini
when it swerved off the road just north of London

(01:06:10):
and slammed into a tree. She was seriously injured but survived.
Boland was killed instantly, his seat crushed into the back
of a car. It was two weeks before his thirtieth birthday,
a milestone he was always convinced he'd never reach. David
traveled back from Switzerland for the funeral, attending alongside Elton

(01:06:31):
John and Rod Stewart. The coffin was decorated with a
four ft high floral sculpture of a swan made of chrysanthemums,
in tribute to Boland's biggest hit rad a white Swan.
David wept openly as he paid his respects. Boland's death
forced him to consider his own mortality. Up to that point,

(01:06:52):
death it seemed like an abstract notion. He teased it
many times with drugs. So had many of his friends
Ikey Pop, Lou Reed, Keith Richards. They had all pulled through.
There was that wild night he spend in Berlin doing
donuts in an underground parking garage at dangerously high speeds.

(01:07:13):
Here he was completely fine. Mark was just coming home
from a night out with his girlfriend. He had his
car spun out, and now his life was over. It
all seems so unfair. It made everything seem so fragile.
Leaving Mark's funeral, David sas driver to make a detour.

(01:07:35):
They headed towards the town of Brixton to number forty
Stansfield Road. It was the house where David was born.
He needed a reminder of where he came from and
that it was real. It wasn't just another fantasy he
constructed and willed into reality. It had existed. So much

(01:07:56):
of his life was about being the other worldly starman,
floating up on the stratosphere and beyond. Now He wanted
to feel his roots, something that tethered into the earth,
and ensure he wouldn't float away. The Mercedes Limo made
quite a splash as it crept down the sleepy one
block residential lane. David exited the car and stared at

(01:08:18):
the home or was sold crash landed thirty years earlier.
He didn't breathe a word. Then he silently re entered
the car and told his driver to head towards Beckenham.
He wanted to pay a visit to Hadden Hall, the
gothic monstrosity where his creative visions took shape. It was
here that he had been born again as Zikky Stardust.

(01:08:40):
It had only been seven years, but it felt like
several lifetimes. How many people had he been since then?
It was hard to keep counting. The stuck off acade
of the old house was cracked and decayed, a ruined
relic of a life he no longer lived and relationships
that no longer existed. David desided here at had in

(01:09:01):
the hall with his wife and friends, most of them
he didn't know anymore. People grow and change, and fight
and come and go. Life is messy. As David stood
in the overgrown garden, literally in the shadow of his past.
He received a tap on the shoulder. It was his

(01:09:21):
former landlord. In his hand was a bill for unpaid
rent from all those years before. David must have smiled
as he reached into his funeral suit for his wallet.
He'd spent the afternoons settling up his past. Now he
was free to look forward to the future. It was,
after all, what he did best. Off the Record is

(01:09:55):
a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are
Noel Brown and Shan t. Tone. The sup provising producers
are Taylor chikogn and Tristan McNeil. The show was researched,
written and hosted by me Jordan run talk and edited,
scored and sound designed by Taylor ch Coogne and Tristan McNeil,
with additional music by Evan Tyre. If you like what

(01:10:17):
you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For
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