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David Bowie: Albums
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Bowie needed to finance the Arts Lab, so he signed with Mercury Records that year and released Man of Words, Man of Music, a trippy singer/songwriter album featuring "Space Oddity." The song was released as a single and became a major hit in the U.K., convincing Bowie to concentrate on music. Hooking up with his old friend Marc Bolan, he began miming at some of Bolan's T. Rex concerts, eventually touring with Bolan, bassist/producer Tony Visconti, guitarist Mick Ronson, and drummer Cambridge as Hype. The band quickly fell apart, yet Bowie and Ronson remained close, working on the material that formed Bowie's next album, The Man Who Sold the World, as well as recruiting Michael "Woody" Woodmansey as their drummer. Produced by Tony Visconti, who ... played bass, The Man Who Sold the World was a heavy guitar rock album that failed to gain much attention. Bowie followed the album in late 1971 with the pop/rock Hunky Dory, an album that featured Ronson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman.
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The cover of first of these albums, on which Bowie is seen reclining in a dress, was an early indication of his interest in expoloiting his androgynous looks in his appearance. This would be taken further with his next record, the seminal Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. Ziggy Stardust (as it is widely known) was a concept album concerning the career of an extraterrestrial rock singer. Bowie took the character to extreme ends, touring and giving press conferences as Ziggy before finally killing the character onstage in 1973. More importantly, the record contained some of Bowie's best work, much of it a reaction to his own fame and the difference between his beliefs and the reality of stardom. These themes were further explored, with the same musicians, on 1973's Aladdin Sane, a further concept work about the disintegration of society, which included the hit "Jean Genie".
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Given the amount of work Bowie packed into 1972 and 1973, it wasn't surprising that his relentless schedule began to catch up with him. After recording the all-covers Pin-Ups with the Spiders from Mars, he unexpectedly announced the band's breakup, as well as his retirement from live performances, during the group's final show that year. He retreated from the spotlight to work on a musical adaptation of George Orwell's 1984, but once he was denied the rights to the novel, he transformed the work into Diamond Dogs. The album was released to generally poor reviews in 1974, yet it generated the hit single "Rebel Rebel," and he supported the album with an elaborate and expensive American tour. As the tour progressed, Bowie became fascinated with soul music, eventually redesigning the entire show to reflect his new "plastic soul." Hiring guitarist Carlos Alomar as the band's leader, Bowie refashioned his group into a Philly soul band and recostumed himself in sophisticated, stylish fashions.
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After releasing Station to Station David Bowie moved to Berlin. He was interested in the German music scene, and wanted to end his drug abuse. In Berlin, he started to work with producer Brian Eno. David Bowie, in his turn, was producer for Iggy Pop. The Berlin Albums are Low (1977), Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979).
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HANSA STUDIOS, in Berlin, where David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Nina Hagen all recorded career-defining albums, looks out these days on a modern red-brick apartment complex behind the gleaming new Potsdamer Platz. But in the late 1970s, when Bowie and company were recording there, the landscape was bleakly romantic: a sandy wasteland marked only by the Berlin Wall, which inspired Mr. Bowie’s epochal song “Heroes.”...
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IN a Manhattan rehearsal studio, Gerry Leonard seemed to be noodling on his guitar as the rest of David Bowie's band waited. He played some sustained notes and a bit of minor-key arpeggio; he worked his effects pedals, adding echoes. A digital stutter entered the pattern, and suddenly the music gelled into ''Sunday,'' the song that opens Mr. Bowie's new album, ''Heathen,'' which will be released on Tuesday.
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