My Month of Bowie, day 13: 'Lodger' (1979)

Bowie gets smashed on Lodger.

The album: Lodger (RCA, 1979)

A flattened David Bowie.

My thoughts: I didn't grow up listening to the music of David Bowie—except for a few intense months when I was about 14—but I did grow up listening to the music of Talking Heads. Their albums were dear friends to me when I was an adolescent. David Bowie's Lodger might as well be a Talking Heads album. It has that same sound: herky-jerky like New Wave but with more of a groove to it so it doesn't sound sterile or robotic. God, I wish I'd been smart enough to listen to this album when it could have done me some good. There are cuts on it that sound like they could have come directly from Fear of Music (1979) or Remain in Light (1980).

Obviously, the biggest connection between the two Davids (Bowie and Byrne) is Brian Eno. Now that I think of it, I've never actually listened to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981) all the way through. I'm gonna put that one on the to-do list. No time for it this month. I think I'll enjoy it.

By all rights, Lodger should sound like an ending. It's the third part of Bowie's Berlin trilogy and his last album of the 1970s. And yet, it doesn't sound like the end of anything. When it came out, Bowie was only a year away from divorcing Angie, his wife of ten years. But Lodger doesn't sound like a breakup album either. Well, on the opening track ("Fantastic Voyage"), Bowie does sing, "I don't want to live with somebody's depression." That doesn't sound like a man in a happy marriage. 

The aforementioned Mr. Eno is a big part of Lodger, cowriting six of the ten songs. But unlike Low (1977) and "Heroes" (1977), Lodger doesn't have any lengthy, spooky instrumental passages. It's more rock-forward and down-to-business than the other two. In that vein, "Boys Keep Swinging" shows that Bowie never stopped trying to make the ultimate pop record. He's as obsessed with that goal as Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, or any of the half-mad Captain Ahabs of the music world, always chasing that white whale.

Somehow, I had this (wrong) idea in my head that Bowie's Berlin trilogy would be drab and difficult, with the songs averaging 50 BPM. I guess the word "Berlin" threw me off. Maybe that's why I'd been avoiding these albums for so long. But even though Bowie's lyrics on Lodger are labyrinthine as always, hinting at some kind of internal struggle we're never totally privy to, the music packs a wallop. He's not in a mellow mood on Lodger. The music here is punchy and aggressive, the sound of a man who has survived the craziest decade of his life and is readying himself for the fight to come.

Now he's only 32. And all he wants to do is boogaloo.

Next: Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)

My Month of Bowie, day 12: "Heroes" (1977)

If David Bowie is a religion, then Heroes is the hymnal. 

The album: "Heroes" (RCA, 1977)

Bowie: Now you see him...

My thoughts: There was an animated GIF I used to see rather frequently on the internet depicting David Bowie as he appeared on the cover of "Heroes," the second album in his famed Berlin trilogy. In the GIF, Bowie would wave his hand in front of his pale, unsmiling face, and his eyes, nose, and mouth would instantly disappear, leaving nothing but a blank expanse. Then he'd wave his hand again, and his famous face would be restored. And the whole process would loop over and over again because that's how GIFs work.

Before I actually listened to "Heroes" all the way through, I thought the GIF was just a typical internet nonsense joke. But now, I think it's a pretty good representation of the album itself. This LP was released less than a year after Low (1977), and Bowie was presumably drawing on the same musical influences this time around, namely German experimental rock and the ambient musical stylings of English musician Brian Eno. 

Based on that description, you'd think the Berlin trilogy would be unlistenable and impenetrable, maybe even the musical equivalent of a migraine headache. But "Heroes" isn't like that at all. Instead, the album feels invigorating and alive—contemporary and forward-thinking without being overly trendy. The title track, in particular, sounds like you've met up with Lou Reed when he's in a particularly chipper mood... or as chipper as he gets. This is a Lou Reed who would help you carry groceries to your fifth-floor walkup.

When I reviewed Low, I said that Side 2 of that album contained some long instrumental passages that sounded like they belonged in a science-fiction movie. This, I suppose, was the influence of Brian Eno showing through. Well, "Heroes" doubles down on that material. Triples down. Quadruples down. It feels like most of the second half is taken up with the eerie Eno-phonic instrumentals. There's something pleasingly tranquil about these tracks. It's the kind of thing you'd want to listen to while watering your plants or tending to a rock garden. Maybe, after the craziness of his life in America, Bowie wanted to recalibrate. This music helped him do that.

There are times when "Heroes" barely sounds like a David Bowie album, at least not the Bowie we've come to know over the course of the last 11 albums. But then, in the album's closing track ("The Secret Life of Arabia"), he sounds like himself again. That's why I said the animated GIF was such a good representation of this record. Bowie's rock star persona has become a disguise he can put on or take off with a wave of his hand.

Next: Lodger (1979)

My Month of Bowie, day 11: 'Low' (1977)

David Bowie began his "Berlin trilogy" with Low.

The album: Low (RCA, 1977)

Was Low a new high for Bowie?

My thoughts: By 1976, the year he made Station to Station, David Bowie was such a paranoid, drugged-out mess that he moved from Los Angeles to Berlin with Iggy Pop to get clean. How chaotic does your life have to be that Iggy Pop is a crucial part of your sobriety plan? 

Still in all, this sounds to me like the perfect idea for a prime time sitcom. Imagine persnickety Tony Randall as Bowie, a constantly-shirtless Jack Klugman as Iggy, Don Knotts as Brian Eno, Suzanne Somers as Angela Bowie, and Don Rickles as Drugs. (To clarify: Rickles would be the human embodiment of drugs, and he'd move next door to Bowie to tempt him every week, like the devil sitting on Bowie's shoulder.) It's The Bowie Bunch, Thursdays at 8:00 on ABC!

If such a sitcom were ever made, the instrumental "Speed of Life" would make an ideal theme song. That's the track Bowie uses at the start of Low, the first album in his famed Berlin trilogy that found him collaborating with experimental musician Brian Eno and taking inspiration from German bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Neu!, and other ones I've probably never heard of. This is such a storied era in Bowie's career that it merits a documentary all its own.

I'd certainly heard of the Berlin trilogy—rock critics and historians have been overanalyzing it for years—but I can't say I'd ever actually listened to any of these albums all the way through until this project. So I really had no idea what to expect from Low. I probably thought it would sound bleak and sterile, perhaps even mechanical, but I didn't find the album to be any of those things. In fact, this album contains "Sound and Vision," one of those perfectly-realized '70s pop gems that Bowie was so eerily good at making. It's like a hot toddy on a cold night.

And then, there's "Be My Wife," which contains these very simple, straightforward lyrics: "Please be mine/Share my life/Stay with me/Be my wife." That's a message you'd expect to hear on a 1950s doo wop record. Take, for example, "Life is But a Dream" (1955) by The Harptones. That song famously starts with these stark lines: "Will you take part in my life, my love?/That is my dream." After making my way through ten albums with abstract, ambiguous lyrics, it was refreshing to hear David Bowie speak so plainly for a change. Or maybe he's been speaking plainly this whole time and I just haven't been paying close enough attention.

Supposedly, some of the tracks on Low are pieces that Bowie was workshopping for the soundtrack of Nicholas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Ultimately, Bowie starred in that downbeat science-fiction film but did not record the soundtrack for it. (That task fell to John Phillips.) On Side 2 of Low, there are indeed some tracks with longish instrumental passages that sound like they belong in a pessimistic '70s sci-fi movie. But even these I found eerily pretty and not merely depressing. I was especially fond of Low's closing track, "Subterraneans," with its choral refrain: "Share bride falling star..." It reminded me somewhat of the Missa Luba (1965), the famous Congolese interpretation of the Latin mass. 

I wonder, once I hear the second and third entries in the "Berlin Trilogy," will they somehow coalesce into something even greater? You know, like one of those combiner robots from a Japanese cartoon? One way to find out. And I'm just realizing now that "low" is the antonym of "high." Boy, what a dope I am sometimes.

Next: "Heroes" (1977)