Iggy Pop & David Bowie in Berlin: The City That Saved Them
In the mid-1970s, David Bowie’s life was spiralling. His previous years, marked by wild success and notoriety, had driven him to the brink of a personal and artistic collapse. The glamour of fame had mutated into isolation and paranoia, fueled by rampant cocaine addiction and the excesses of his rock-star lifestyle in Los Angeles.
By 1976, the need to escape this destructive environment became overwhelming, and Bowie made a life-changing decision. He fled to Berlin, a city divided both physically by the Berlin Wall and emotionally by the Cold War, but one that, for Bowie, held the promise of artistic renewal and personal sobriety. His arrival there marked the start of one of the most important and productive periods of his career.
Bowie had been enamoured of Berlin since his youth, having been introduced to German expressionist art and Fritz Lang’s monumental 1927 film Metropolis during his time at Bromley Technical High School in south-east London. He developed what he later referred to as “an obsession for the angst-ridden, emotional work of expressionists, both artists and filmmakers, and their spiritual home: Berlin.” As Bowie learned more about the artistic ethos of German expressionism, these influences found their way into his early work, especially during his time with Lindsay Kemp’s mime company in the late 1960s. These artistic connections, coupled with his desire to break from the constraints of his LA lifestyle, drew him to West Berlin in the 1970s.
But Bowie’s fascination with Germany wasn’t limited to the visual arts. He was also captivated by the new wave of electronic music emerging from the country, particularly the work of Tangerine Dream and its founder, Edgar Froese. Bowie was especially inspired by Froese’s 1975 solo album Ypsilon in Malaysian Pale, which profoundly shaped his own work on Station to Station (1976). “The randomness of the compositions fascinated me,” Bowie recalled, adding that this style would come to heavily influence his Berlin period. Thus, in 1976, seeking both personal redemption and artistic experimentation, Bowie left the sun-soaked excesses of Los Angeles and followed Edgar to Berlin.
Berlin, to Bowie, was the ideal environment for reinvention. “I liked the idea of the Berlin Wall because, at that time, I felt that it was always necessary to be in a place where there was tension,” he later said. “And you couldn’t find a place with more tension than… West Berlin [with its] factional elements, both musically and artistically. There was also a very strong socialist left-wing element there which gave it this kind of anarchistic vibe. I can see why, throughout the 20th century, it was the city [that] writers continually returned to, because both the negative and positive aspects of whatever’s going to happen in Europe always emanate at some point, right back to the 1920s, from Berlin.”
Bowie quickly found that Berlin’s fractured, gritty atmosphere was the perfect antidote to the artificial, hedonistic haze of LA. “I was very lucky to be there at that time, mainly because it was undergoing artistically its greatest renaissance since the Weimar days of the 1920s,” he remembered. “When I was there the whole new German expressionist period had started, and all of the German electronic bands were starting to come down to Berlin to work.”
As a city that had been physically and politically divided since the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, West Berlin was isolated in a sea of communist East Germany. After World War II, most industries and big businesses fled the city, leaving behind empty warehouses and factories. In their place, students, artists, and counterculture figures moved in, transforming Berlin into a crucible of radical thought and artistic experimentation. “It became like a workshop,” Bowie said. “And it was just a wonderful place to be for that.” One of the artists Bowie invited to join him in Berlin was his close friend Iggy Pop.
Bowie and Iggy Pop had first met in the early 1970s when Iggy’s brash, punk-inspired style of music caught Bowie’s attention. Their friendship deepened as Bowie produced two of Iggy’s albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life. Like Bowie, Iggy was grappling with substance abuse and personal demons, and he accepted Bowie’s invitation to come to Berlin. Iggy later reflected on the unique character of the city: “In Berlin you had a city that was built to hold millions of people, and in the western half there were very few people – around half a million – and most of those were draft-dodging, grumpy German students, resistant to any western influences.” He added, “And then you had the very personable prewar leftovers: bankers, cab drivers, restaurateurs, innkeepers. And, most importantly, there was very cheap space. There was no economy. The whole premise was being propped up artificially by political pressures of the time, and that’s what made it interesting. And Bowie’s wise investment was that he’d gotten to a point that he could afford to go there.”
By the time Bowie arrived in Berlin, he was ready to cast off the trappings of his previous life. Alongside Iggy, he rented a modest apartment above a car repair shop in the Schöneberg district. Bowie was nearly bankrupt due to his ongoing divorce and legal disputes with his former management, but Berlin’s low cost of living suited him. Tony Visconti, who had worked with Bowie on The Man Who Sold the World (1970), was enlisted as producer for Bowie’s next album, Low, and later “Heroes”, both of which reflected the artist’s desire to experiment. “Berlin suited his financial situation at the time,” Visconti noted. “He was almost bankrupt… but the financial costs gave him artistic freedom.”
Looking to explore new sonic territory, Bowie teamed up with Brian Eno, an avant-garde musician known for pushing creative boundaries. Eno, like Bowie, found Berlin the perfect symbol for their work. “Berlin at that time was this peculiar juncture between two cultures,” Eno said. “We were quite consciously trying to fuse high art and low art.” The fusion of funk rhythms, ambient landscapes, and avant-garde sounds led to some of Bowie’s most groundbreaking work. With Low, and especially “Heroes”, Bowie reshaped rock music by integrating the experimental, mechanical sounds of Berlin’s electronic bands with his signature glam and art rock sensibilities.
The recording of “Heroes” took place at Hansa Studios, located just 500 yards from the Berlin Wall, in a building that had once served as a Nazi ballroom. The presence of the Wall and the watchful East German guards in their towers added a palpable tension to the sessions. Tony Visconti recalled the view from the control room: “We recorded the album in the shadow of the wall… Directly in front of us was a guard tower with East German guards – you could actually see the red stars on their fuzzy hats.”
This sense of physical and psychological division bled into Bowie’s music. “There was a darkness to the music I wrote in Berlin,” Bowie reflected, “but it also had a great celebratory nature to it.” Tracks like the haunting instrumentals ‘Moss Garden’ and ‘Neuköln’ (named after a district in Berlin) captured the eerie quietness of the city’s empty spaces, while the title track ‘“Heroes”’ became an anthem of defiance and hope, inspired in part by Visconti’s fleeting kiss with a backing singer near the Wall. The song’s emotional power and its connection to Berlin’s divided landscape have made it one of Bowie’s most enduring and iconic pieces.
Bowie’s exploration of new sonic worlds, supported by Eno’s experimental ethos, fundamentally changed how he approached music. “I started using the album as an instrument,” Bowie explained. “If a note or sound effect would go wrong, I’d keep it, and get another four instruments to play the same wrong note. Then it sounds like an arrangement, and an integral part of the composition.”
Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy—Low (1977), “Heroes” (1977), and Lodger (1979)—marked a period of intense creativity and reinvention. As Brian Eno noted, “The state of mind existed before the choice of city… but Berlin encouraged strong statements.” This period not only rescued Bowie from the personal chaos of his earlier years but also revitalised his career, influencing a generation of musicians to come.
When “Heroes” was released in October 1977, it was met with critical acclaim. Though some listeners were taken aback by the dark, experimental instrumentals, the album has since been recognised as one of Bowie’s greatest achievements. Its influence extended beyond Bowie’s immediate circle, inspiring artists such as U2, Depeche Mode, and Nick Cave, all of whom would go on to record at Hansa Studios in the years following Bowie’s stay in Berlin.
For Bowie, Berlin was more than just a backdrop for his creative rebirth. It was the city’s fractured, turbulent spirit, its collision of old and new, that mirrored Bowie’s own journey. As he revisited the city musically in his 2013 single Where Are We Now?, reflecting on how much Berlin had changed since his 1970s sojourn, it was clear that the city had left an indelible mark on him, as Bowie later reflected:
“Berlin was a singular place, and it was there that I think I became the person I really wanted to be.”
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