low

David Bowie challenged the trappings of mainstream success when he began his Berlin Trilogy with the abstract sonic textures and compressed pop experiments of this moody modernistic masterpiece. While he was working on his first starring role in the film, 'The Man Who Fell to Earth', Bowie composed music that he though would be part of the soundtrack; but decided not to go through with it because of legal issues with the studio and director Nicolas Roeg that arose during the production. Drawing from the Thin White Duke persona of 'Station to Station', the music provided the template for a new album that was recorded at Château d'Hérouville in France and Hansa Studio by the Wall in West Berlin. Bowie had bought a chalet near Lake Geneva and began painting and studying art. As part of an effort to kick his addiction to cocaine, he moved into an apartment with Iggy Pop in the Schöneberg section of Berlin and began collaborating with Brian Eno on ambient mood pieces that eventually comprised the second side of the album. 

Bowie says:  "Life in LA had left me with an overwhelming sense of foreboding. I had approached the brink of drug induced calamity one too many times and it was essential to take some kind of positive action. For many years Berlin had appealed to me as a sort of sanctuary-like situation. It was one of the few cities where I could move around in virtual anonymity. I was going broke; it was cheap to live. For some reason, Berliners just didn't care. Well, not about an English rock singer anyway...There's oodles of pain in the 'Low' album. That was my first attempt to kick cocaine, so that was an awful lot of pain. And I moved to Berlin to do it. I moved out of the coke center of the world into the smack center of the world. Thankfully, I didn't have a feeling for smack, so it wasn't a threat."

Co-produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti, 'Low' moved even further from standard song structures. Still, the rhythm section of George Murray and Dennis Davis keeps the groove going while Ricky Gardiner and Carlos Alomar provide jagged guitar support to the broken pop songs that make up side one. Its abstract, angular, avante garde sound was such a departure from his successful white soul sound that RCA Records and his ex-manager tried to prevent its release. Despite all this, 'Low' went to number seventeen in Austria, twelve in Sweden and New Zealand, eleven in the US, ten in Australia and Norway, and peaked at number two in the UK; and became an influence on the next generation of new-wave and post-punk auteurs.








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A funky meditation on inspiration, 'Sound and Vision' went to number sixty-nine in the US, number fifteen in Australia, number six in Germany, and number three in the UK. Visconti’s wife, Mary Hopkin did the background vocal.

"Don't you wonder sometimes

'Bout sound and vision

Blue, blue, electric blue

That's the color of my room

Where I will live

Blue, blue

Pale blinds drawn all day

Nothing to do, nothing to say

Blue, blue

I will sit right down, waiting for the gift of sound and vision

And I will sing, waiting for the gift of sound and vision

Drifting into my solitude, over my head"

The theatrical instrumental 'Speed of Life' kicks the album off with a dynamic groove.

The restless desperation of 'Be My Wife' was released as a single; but never charted.

"Sometimes you get so lonely

Sometimes you get nowhere

I've lived all over the world

I've left every place

Please be mine

Share my life

Stay with me

Be my wife"

Brian Eno came up with the music for 'Warszawa' while Bowie was in France suing his former manager. Visconti's four-year-old son helped him by playing a simple theme on the studio piano. When Bowie returned, he came up with the Polish folk vocalizations that were overdubbed to produce a choir of one hundred and ten voices.

'Low' 

full album:




All lyrics written by David Bowie; all music composed by David Bowie except where noted.

Side one
1. "Speed of Life"   2:46
2. "Breaking Glass" (Bowie, Dennis Davis, George Murray) 1:51
3. "What in the World"   2:23
4. "Sound and Vision"   3:03
5. "Always Crashing in the Same Car"   3:29
6. "Be My Wife"   2:55
7. "A New Career in a New Town"   2:51
Side two
8. "Warszawa" (Bowie, Brian Eno) 6:20
9. "Art Decade"   3:43
10. "Weeping Wall"   3:26
11. "Subterraneans"   5:39