Chapter Nine: The Thin White Duke (1976)

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 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

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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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

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,

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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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,

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 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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

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

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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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,

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

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 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, 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.

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

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 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 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 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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,

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 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.