Today’s episode looks at Bowie’s years in Berlin. It was a time of tremendous personal and artistic growth as the newly minted 30-year-old escaped the trappings of his showiness bubble and re-entered reality. Holed up in a nondescript apartment with his friend Iggy Pop, Bowie lived a generally anonymous life in the German capital. The experience forced him to grow up and become an adult — a scary proposition for anyone involved in rock ‘n’ roll. But newfound maturity brought exciting new music, including the landmark album 'Heroes.' At the end of the decade he’d dominated, David built on all he’d learned through the many characters he’d played. Now he was ready to move forward as himself. But the transformation would be a difficult one, as he says some painful goodbyes.
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Off The Record is a production of I Heart Radio. It was crunch time for David Bowie as he sat in the control room of Berlin's Hansa Studios in August of He was due to record vocals for a new song. The only trouble was he hadn't finished the words yet. He stared at the unfinished lyrics on the pad of graph paper in front of him. Nothing was coming. He was stuck, specifically at verse five. The small audience that surrounded him wasn't helping. Among them was a good friend and co producer Tony Visconti. Tony was joined by Antonio mass, a German jazz singer and listed to provide backing vocals on the album. That was the official reason she was there, at least in truth. Visconti had taken a shine new where when they met at a Berlin club a few nights earlier. Though he was married, the two began an illicit of air their lovey dovey chit chat just a few feet away. It was a stressful distraction for David, whose own union to wife Angie had just recently disintegrated. Yes, he was glad for Tony and Antonia, but such gooiness was throwing him off, so he told them, in the nicest possible way, to go take a walk. Left with his thoughts, David's eyes wandered towards the window of the control room. If he wanted an inspiring vista, he wouldn't find it here. The scene outside was gloomy, an unsettling reminder of the deadly geopolitical divisions that ripped his newly adopted city in two. The imposing Berlin Wall dominated the view, so close that their music often attracted the attention of the gun toting Soviet officers and a nearby turret. David and Tony never shook the sense that one day these East German guards would simply open fire on them. Between that and the nearby rumble of tanks, it felt like making music and a war zone. Then David spotted some joy amid the grim tableau, a couple sharing a tender kiss beneath the wall. It was Tony and Antonia. The neglected neighborhood around Hansa wasn't especially romantic or safe for that matter, especially after nightfall, so they'd come to stand just a short distance from the studio. From David's point of view, it was quite an image, their loving embraced, dwarfed by the enormous symbol of fear and oppression that loomed just beyond. It gave one of the sense that their relationship was doomed from the start, thwarted by forces far more powerful than either one of them. But still there was beauty in the fragility. The senior minded David of Otto Mueller's Lovers between Garden Walls, one of his favorite paintings that hung in Berlin's Dibruca Museum, energized. He put pen to paper once more, and the words began to tumble out. I can remember standing by the wall, and the guns shot above our heads, and we kissed as though nothing could fall. He had a good feeling about this song. Early in the sessions, it had taken the form of a plotting rocker with echoes of his old Velvet Underground favorite I'm Waiting for the Man, But the addition of soaring guitar arcs and cascading synthwashes transformed it into something else entirely. For a time it remained an instrumental but ultimately David decided to develop it a little more. The music seemed to demand it. There was something grand and triumphant about it, even heroic. That's why he called the song Heroes. The title reflected his cautiously optimistic mood after walking himself back from the edge of person and all oblivion. The lyrics made references to his crumbling marriage and ongoing struggles with substance abuse, themes not usually associated with heroes, but that was sort of the point. After striking superhero poses with Ziggy Stardust and a host of other mythological sci fi archetypes, this hero was more human. David had written an anthem for the every day. He would say the song was about quote facing reality and standing up to it, achieving a sense of compassion, and deriving some joy from the very simple pleasure of being alive. The song Heroes reflected hope despite overwhelming odds. Nothing will keep us together, is the repeated refrain. Yet it doesn't have the ring of defeat. Instead, it's just a statement of fact. Time is short, but sometimes just one day is enough. When Tony and Antonia returned to the control room, David flashed them as lie grim Unknowingly they had helped him complete one of his most enduring songs. Now he had to go sing it time to get to work. 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 Bowie's years in Berlin. It was a time of tremendous personal and artistic growth as he escaped the trappings of his show business bubble and re entered reality. Pulled up in a nondescript department, he lived the generally anonymous life in the German metropolis. The experience forced him to grow up and become an adult, a scary proposition for anyone involved in rock and roll. But newfound maturity brought exciting new music, including the landmark album Heroes. At the end of the decade he dominated, David built on all he'd learned through the many characters he played. Now he was finally ready to move forward as himself. David Bowie turned thirty in January. Just a few weeks later, his new album Low was released to the public. It was a groundbreaking piece of work, fusing punkish guitar lashes and early techno with a funky R and B rhythm section, all forming a sonic blueprint for bands like You, Two Joy Division, and Human League. The record was far ahead of its time, and as with most art that's ahead of its time, it was met with some confusion among critics. Many were openly hostile. Words like difficult, inaccessible, and fragmented appear often in contemporary reviews. Trouser Press magazine voiced their disappointment with a two part feature titled The Man Who Fell from Grace. Some writers praised the more conventional pop tracks of the album's first side, before going on to dismiss the ambient explorations on the second. Journalist Robert Hilburn said, for twelve minutes, this is Bowie's most striking and satisfying albums since Ziggi, but the remaining twenty six minutes, including all of side to deal with a spacey art rock style that is simply beyond mass pop sensibilities. The New York Times described it as strange and spacey, with mindless doggrel for lyrics, before concluding, nevertheless, the whole thing strikes this listener is remarkably alluringly beautiful. The split opinion that greeted Low is perhaps best illustrated in the pages of The New Musical Express, which published two separate reviews side by side. One was more or less positive, the other nearly set the page on fire. Writer Charles Sharr Murray, normally one of Bowie's staunches supporters, called Low quote a totally passive icosis, a scenario and a soundtrack for total withdrawal, futility and death wish glorified an elaborate embalming job for a suicide's grave, an act of purest hatred and destructiveness. It stinks have artfully counterfeited spiritual defeat and emptiness. And there's more where that came from. He describes the music as quote, the sound of nothing, a bunch of intros that fade out while you're waiting for something to happen. As far as Murray was concerned, Low was quote so negative it doesn't even contain emptiness. David's label our Cia was inclined to agree. Still High from his recent gold sellers like Station to Station and Young Americans, which had yielded soulful, danceable chart toppers like Fame and Golden Years. The label Brass didn't know what to make of these wordless soundscapes. When David turned in the masters for Low in the fall of six, r c A immediately sent them back with a formal rejection letter, which David then framed and kept on his wall at home. The album was unmarketable, the label complained there was nothing that even slightly resembled the commercial single. Hell, half the songs didn't even have words. They demanded that he go back and fix it. David refused, reminding the executives that our ci A was contractually obligated to release whatever he gave them, So the label sat on it for a few extra weeks, forfeiting the lucrative Christmas market in the process. After all, their reasoned, it wasn't like anyone would be giving this bleak collection as a gift. One executive even resorted to bribery, declaring that he would buy Bowie a mansion in Philadelphia if he would only just make another Philly soul style hit like Young Americans. But David had other real estate opportunities in mind. But the fall of six he decided he wanted to stay in Berlin for the foreseeable future. In addition to the flourishing arts and music scenes, the city afforded him a life that was as close to normal is that have been in years. He could walk down the street, or take the Uban public transport, or visit art galleries and bars, all with minimal hassle. It's a very good place for someone like me to live, because that can be incredibly anonymous, he would explain. Locals don't seem particularly joyful about seeing a famous face. Given the constant cultural tensions that come with living on a socio ideological fault line, Berliners were not really impressed by the presence of a celebrity. The populace of struggling artists and social misfits were more concerned about how to stretch their meager salary through the week. David would later observe, the people in Berlin don't give a damn about your problems. They've got their own. I thought, if I could survive in Berlin without being molly coddled, then I had a chance of surviving. After weeks of staying at a hotel and briefly with Edgar Frosie of the German band Tangerine Dream, it was time for David and his travel buddy Iggy Pop to have their own pad, so David dispatched his trusty assistant, Coco Schwab to find him some suitable digs. However, there were some serious restrictions. David's efforts to entangle himself from unhappy managerial deals had rendered him almost bankrupt. Royalties from his earlier main Man era recordings had slowed to a trickle, and with the costly lawsuit with ex manager Michael Lippman looming, he was forced to penny pinch. David had paid for his recent studio time with a check which immediately bounced. Coco read him the Riot Act one day when he appeared wearing an expensive new jacket he just purchased for the first time since the sixties. The cost of rent was a factor, so David instructed Coco to lockdown the biggest, cheapest place she could find as fast as possible. By October of nine six, she'd found the one. It was one floor above an autoparts store in the unfashionable district of Schoonenberg, home to the many Turkish immigrants recruited to replace the cheap East German labor force. Following the construction of the Berlin Wall. The lower middle class residential neighborhood was worlds away from David's former homes and the opulent enclaves of Hollywood. In Switzerland, as it recalled, the nineteen seventy seven Schonenberg was somewhere to quote, force yourself to buy your own groceries. The building itself was downright dowdy, with its cream colored plaster facade beginning to crack and crumble. The aggressively ordinary, down at the heels locale suited both David's bank balance and his desire to live anonymously and simply. Even the address was nondescript to an almost comical degree. One hop Strassa or Main Street, with Jones his legal surname, on the doorbell, which almost never worked. Past the front door of this unassuming tenement block, one found a spacious seven room apartment with high ceilings and Art Deco framed windows. The dark wood panel the bode was relatively all stare, functioning as something midway between a dormitory and an oversized artist's garrett. Utilitarian to the extreme. It was damp, with water leaking through the bricks when it rained, which it often did. There were rooms for Iggy and Cocoa, and also one for David's five year old son Zoe when he came to stay. Filled with a chaotic jumble of toys, The most luxurious room was predictably David's own, done up with tiffany lamps, elegant drapery, traditional Teutonic oil portraits, richly woven rugs, and a wood burning fireplace, in addition to a functional home recording studio a must for any seventies rock are Worth his white Powder. An additional room had been set aside the function as Bowie's painting studio, crammed with easels, canvases, and brushes, as well as books about his favorite German expressionists. Soon the walls of one hop Strasso were adorned with Bowie's own work, competing for space alongside giant Neo Expressionist paintings and massive photo murals depicting pine scenes. David always considered himself a painter first and a musician second. Ever since his days as a student in Nolan Frampton's art class at Bromley Tech in Berlin. He continued his education with trips to the Brooker Museum, named for the die Bruca or bridge school of early twentieth century German expressionists. David had admired these painters in his youth. One of his favorite works was Eric Henkel's Rocke Roll, a stark depiction of insanity. It provided the inspiration for the cover art on his roommate Iggy Pop's long gest dating solo record, which was finally readied for release in the spring of ninety seven. The album will be called The Idiot. More literate fans assumed that the name was a reference to the classic Dostoyevsky novel, but Egg himself took a more literal interpretation of the title. David but always marvel what a dick I was, would recall or how awkward I was in social of situations and in all the things that you can do to make your career go better. So finally he said, look, we're gonna call this album the Idiot. David's basic thrust was an insult, as in you idiot. As the incident suggests, their relationship began to take on shades of a fraternal rivalry, though mostly a friendly one. At the time, David was reading a book of letters between the Van Gogh brothers, Vincent and Theo. This was basically how the paris all themselves, one genius artist and another slightly less than genius artist. At home, they bickered like siblings typical roommates, squabbles over who ate all the food in the fridge, or whose turn it was the vacuum, or who borrowed the other shirt without permission. The place was a classic bachelor pad. Other than making coffee, David was hopeless in the kitchen, and a tower of dirty dishes could often be found balancing precariously in the sink. The floor was littered with laundry and scraps of paper bearing semi complete sketches and songs. Despite the occasional mess, they fell into an easy domestic routine. The major weekly event was watching the TV show Scarsky and hutched together on Thursday nights. When Iggy later opted to find his own lodgings, it was just across the hall on the same building. After fueling up with their morning meal at a cafe next door, the friends would wander new neighborhoods by car or bike, or sometimes just on foot. David would recall, I'd like to go out and get lost and be in places made of wood, just to wash every shred of America off. Taking a walk was like taking a shower. Sometimes they'd go further afield, crossing the Iron Curtain and into East Berlin to see productions at the Berlin or Ensemble. Dramatist Bert told Breck's Home theater. Their passage through the infamous checkpoint Charlie was made easier by Iggy's girlfriend at the time, the daughter of a local diplomat, but that didn't make them exempt from the taunts by the local guards, who mocked the tooth of their outdated sixties passport photos David with the Space Oddity era perm and Iggy with a beadly mop top. In a way, it was fitting because their journey in the communist territory was like taking a trip back in time. Women still dressed in pencil skirts and wore their hair and fifty style beehive dues. The cars were mostly identical, the boxy State produced model known as Travis with free enterprise band. Consumer brands were practically non existent, and the streets were lined with billboards emblazoned with slogans like eat fish and drink milk. It was all very weird back in the West. David and Iggie would visit record shops and galleries, or brows markets, or just camp at coffee shops and discuss politics, art, literature, and music everyone's but their own. They went to the cinema regularly, taking in German art house movies and the latest from new Hollywood directors. A screening of Taxi Drive Or prompted Iggy to spontaneously shave his head into a mohawk, and the films of Fastbender inspired Bowie to grow a mustache for the first time in years. He stopped dyeing his hair and traded his designer clothes for jeans and nondescript plaid shirts. David was doing something he'd never done before, blend In. It would strike some as odd that, at a time when David was looking to wean himself off at drugs, he settled in Berlin, by his own admission, the smack capital of Europe. And who did I take with me? He'd later laugh, Iggy Pop was trying to get off a smack. The whole German venture had all the ingredients of a first class disaster, but overall they stayed clean, at least for the most part. Well, they didn't funnel illicit substances into their bodies with quite the same gusto they had back in Hollywood. They were not exactly living like monks in Berlin either. Iggy would later illustrate their rough weekly schedule as two days for binging, you know, for old time's sake, two days for recovery from said binge, and then three more for any other activity. This activity could include going to the library or taking Zoe to the zoo or the park, or it could involve hitting the town, and Berlin was certainly a good place for that. Allied occupation forces who oversaw West Berlin were notoriously lax when it came to enforcing prostitution regulations, closing hours, or really anything that inhibited a good time. Though David would frequently cite Berlin as his clinic, he wasn't above partying. On occasion, he'd replace his cocaine addiction with a pension for drinking, sometimes to excess. Friends would recall David binging several times a month, seeking a ball of whiskey and one night, and then muttering his regrets in the morning. David would later admit that he had fallen prey to the classic addicts mistake of merely exchanging one substance for another. According to him, Berlin was the perfect place for such debauchery. It was, in his words, a city made up of bars for sad people to get drunk in. He counted himself among them. His favorite watering hole was the old American sounding Joe's Beer House, where David was a regular. He'd seen himself at his usual corner table in the dark paneled bar and put away glass after glass of conic pilsner. Gradually, his aggressive introvert side would come out, and he get louder and louder, attracting more and more fans and fellow bar flies. David required more drinks to cope with this attention, and most evenings ended with him being held up by his belt loops by the bartender, only vomited in the alley outside. One night, he burst into tears, sobbing to all on the ear shot that leeches were bleeding him dry Financially, money problems were just one of the many reasons he drank Moreover. Alcohol helped all the psychic pain of the last few years, his failed marriage, spotty parenting, and disappointing business deals, to say nothing of the general stress of being David Bowie. In a sense, these excesses were understandable, if not totally excusable, but David did what he could to keep Iggy out of harm's way. Intercepting heroin dealers intent on paying his friend to visit, David would assure the pushers that they would not like the outcome if any of the junk found its way to Iggy. Usually it didn't, Booze would be their substance of choice. Iggy, in particular, had no off switch, stopping only for unconsciousness. Some of the clubs they frequented, like the formative punk venue s O thirty six and early electronic hub Metropol, were on the cutting edge of musical artistry, but mostly they preferred places that maintained their nineteen twenties Weimar Republic aesthetic. It was in one of these cabaret venues that Tony Wisconsin met jazz vocalist Antonio Mass. Though he was married at the time the pop singer Mary Hopkins, the two began seeing each other briefly. David, whose relationship with wife Angie was all but over, began a Berlin affair of his own. He'd started seeing a Dutch performer known as Romy Hog, six ft tall with a statuesque figure and an unerring eye for glamor in theatricality. She'd lived her early life as a man her theater Shay romy Hogg was like something out of the film Cabaret, Boasting the most dazzling drag show in town. The club had become a Berlin institution, attracting the likes of Mick Jagger, Freddie Mercury, Lou Reed, and Brian Ferry. David paid a visit when his Station the Station Tour first passed through Berlin in April of ninety six, and he was instantly entranced by Romy's beauty and gender fluid sensuality. She always ended her act by dramatically ripping off her wig and smearing her lipstick across her face until it resembled a brutal gash. It was a move that would have done David proud back in his mind days with Lindsay Kemp. He was hooked from the day they met, and so was Romi. We looked at each other and that was that, she would later say. David could hardly stand to leave her, and he early missed his station's Station show in Hamburg the next day. As a result, in romy he found a lover and a kindred artistic spirits, much as he had with Angie all those years ago. Some, including Romi herself, felt David borrowed a little too liberally from her stage act, copying gestures, images, and other elements in his own performances. They burned hot and cold for months, but ultimately their relationships self destructed. It went down on January David's thirtieth birthday. He was celebrating at a club in France when a photographer popped out of nowhere and snapped the picture of them. David didn't take kindly to the paparazzi intrusion and smashed the man's camera against the wall. Then he rounded on Romi, accusing her of setting up the press op exploiting his birthday at a further her own career. Their relationship fizzled out after that. Iggy Pop remained his best friend and constant companion in bur In. By the spring of ninety seven, they decided to head out on another adventure, a new tour. They had hit the road together a year earlier for David's station The Station Track, but now the roles would be reversed. Iggy would headline the dates and support of his first solo album, The Idiot, and David, the bona fide superstar, would perform as his humble backing musician. A decade ago, David was known to quit bands if he didn't get top billing, but now he was happy to see the spotlight and abdicate his role as the star, at least as much as he was able. He'd been there, done that. Now he just wanted to have some fun. The executives at David Bowie's label r c A all but begged him to promote his new album Low in the early months of ninety seven. As far as they were concerned, he turned in his least commercial work to date. The least he could do was get out there and try and sell it, but David steadfastly refused. He did no press for the album, saying only that the music spoke for itself, nor did he do the television circuit or even film a promotional video. In the end, it didn't matter. David's albums more or less sold themselves, and Low reached number two in the UK chart and number eleven in the States. After failing to perform these comparatively easy promotional tasks. Our c x X weren't surprised to learn that David would not mount a tour for low In a sense they understood it. Touring was grueling, especially for an ultra energetic frontman like David. But then David announced that he would hit the road after all, not for himself but for Iggy Pop, and not as a co headliner or even a guitarist sharing center stage. Instead, David would serve as a lowly keyboard player, shackled to the unglamorous rig in the back of the stage and off to one side, literally and metaphorically out of the spotlight. As far as our CIA was concerned, David was taking this whole living anonymously thing a little too far, too bad. What David wanted David got. Depending on how you looked at it, it was either a selfless act of encouragement or a selfish act of laziness. David had produced Iggy's first solo album, The Idiot, and he remained committed to reviving his friend's career after being derailed by drugs. With The Idiot due for release that March, Bowie assembled a live band that included guitarist Ricky Gardner and brothers Tony and Hunts Sales on bass and drums, respectively. After some rehearsals in a derelict film studio in a Berlin suburb, the group kicked off their six week trip across Europe and the US. The shows were well attended, likely due to a persistent rumor that David would sing a few numbers as well. The audience at general mission shows were embarrassingly lopsided, with crowds gathered at the side of the stage by David's keyboard, but David didn't indulge them. In fact, he barely acknowledged them. He was all too happy to stay in the back, just one of the boys in the band. More often than nought he was watching Iggy, who had never seen perform live in the flesh. I've never enjoyed a tour so much, David later said, because I had no responsibilities. I just had to sit there, drink a bit, have a cigarette and wink at the band. David's presence unquestionably aided in both the successive Iggy's tour and also the commercial impact of the idiot who else could get Iggy pop? On the boring Lee show Biz Dinah Shore Show. The album ultimately broke the top forty in Britain and hit number seventy two in the States, Iggy's first chart entries in either country. Whether intentional or not, the backup gig was also a canny move for David's career. He just turned thirty. That terrifying age and rock when one seems to go from relevant to ain't and overnight. John Lennon, a few years older than David, had recently entered his house husband phase, opting out of the music industry entirely to stay at home and take care of his infant son. But others like Mick Jagger, Elton John and Rod Stewart kept at it and were roundly dismissed as cultural dinosaurs by the new guard of punks, the sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten famously wore a T shirt proclaiming I Hate Pink Floyd. At the time, the biggest selling rock act on the planet, they were a stand in for all the musicians who had made their bones in the sixties, only to spend the next decade cashing in. But Bowie had always managed to avoid the scorn of the youths. In fact, he was embraced his punk spiritual godfather alongside the Who's Pete Townsend Pete, with his guitar smashing and furious playing that often left his hands, Bloody had the violent aggression, whereas Bowie provided the attitude of fearless outrageousness. Many British punks had come of ages glam rock fans. In fact, sex pistols could her is. Steve Jones had attended the Ziggy Stardust retirement gig in nineteen seventy three, where he made off with some Mike's amps and other expensive musical equipment crucial to help get his nascent band off the ground. So Bowie always had a connection with the punk kids on the come up, but his tour with Iggy, a god in that community, definitely succeeded in bolstering his cred with the younger generation of musicians. The tour's opening act came straight out of CBGB, Downtown, Manhattan's incubator for emerging American punk and new wave acts. They were called Blondie, so named for the stunning platinum mained front woman Debbie Harry. They had recently released their debut album, but we're essentially unknown outside of New York. To say that Debbie's beauty was the reason they got the job would be disrespectful to both her and the other members of the band, but it may well have played a role in why they got the gig over say the Ramons or talking Heads. According to Debbie, Bowie made his armorous intentions clear. Can I sleep with you? Debby says he asked her early on in the tour. Can you? She replied enthusiastically. On at least one occasion, she says, he flashed her, apparently as a thank you for scoring him some coke, rather than take offense. She recalled the moment in her memoir as quote funny, adorable, and sexy. I guess that was sort of flattered. She would later say, He's one of the great men that I admire in the music world. Clearly a genius and perhaps the most touching display of support for Iggy. David overcame his fear of flying. The scheduled only allowed a few days between the British and American shows, not enough time to cross the Atlantic by boat, as David usually did, so he boarded a plane for the first time since nineteen two. Despite his premonitions of danger, he lived, but he decided not to push it. Once in America, he preferred to travel the country in the back of his chauffeur driven limousine Iggy, both Carlos and Licenseless often joined him. Iggy would immortalize the scene in his song The Passenger, a portrait of the pair cruising along, talking and listening to music as they took in the landscape. They record the songs soon after arriving back in Berlin that spring, as they entered Hansa Studios to begin work on Iggy's next solo album with David producing. They'd be bolstered by Iggy's touring band as well as Bowie's musical director, Carlos Alomar. Their base of operations was the Cavernous Studio Too, which still looked much as it had in its prior incarnation as a turn of the century concert hall where high ranking Nazis at once waltzed. Contact with the producers and engineers located down the hall in the cramped control room was made possible through the use of close circuit cameras. Iggy took great pleasure and leaping on a chair and making faces into the lens to the amusement and occasional terror of whoever was watching on the other side. The album came together in barely two weeks, with most of Viggy's vocals cut in one take. If The Idiot was David at the Helm, this record was mostly Iggy, and he ensured it stayed that way by practically living at the studio, staying long after David had gone home for the night in order to prep for the next day. As a result, it's a much more brash and raucous endeavor than his prior record, with arrangements that are much rockier than anything David had assembled for The Idiot. In addition to The Passenger, brought to life by guitarist Ricky Gardner's catchy two chord riff, they also laid down a few tracks the debut during the Idiot tour, including Tonight, Some Weird Sin and Turned Blue, the title track at its genesis, and one of Eggy and Bowie's weekly Scar Sky and Hutch viewing sessions on the American Forces Network West, Berlin's sole English speaking TV channel, The network station i D featured a series of Morse code style blips from a radio tower beep beep beep, beep beep beep. David liked the rhythm and began strumming the chords on a uku layle that he had handy. The pattern formed the base is for Lust for Life, a song and title that showcases Egga's improved physical and mental state. The lyrics are five minutes of manic boasts, which he mostly made up on the spot. Iggy insists he's changing his ways, no more beating my brains with liquor and drugs. That wouldn't be entirely the case, but the intent was good enough. The album's cover photo was miles away from The Idiots, which had showed Iggy mimicking the anguished pose of Eric Henkel's painting Rock or Roll, a character crippled by insanity. Now he practically glowed on the cover of Lust for Life, a grinning portrait of health and positivity, looking as hopeful and optimistic as a senior class photo. Sessions for Iggy's album wrapped in June, by which time Bowie was keen to continue his own projects in the studio. Enlisting Tony Visconti once again as co producer, He sought to build on the experimentation that it made low such a radical departure, yet months living as a West Berliner had a transformative effect on him, but dar a cloud that characterized the prior album It Lifted, and David later described his mood at the time as good, buoyant. Even Brian Eno had re entered the Fold to continue their collaboration. The two developed a private language of surreal, Monty pythonesque comedy, routines and silly voices modeled after the double act Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. This often led to schoolboy giggling fits in the studio with the two doubled over and hysterics. They worked in intense spurts from noon till eight pm each day. Then it was off to the clubs. Having enlisted the familiar rhythm section of Carlos Alamar, George Murray and Dennis Davis, the instrumental beds fell into place quickly, usually completed in half an hour or less. Partially this was due to the enthusiasm that permeated the stimulating sessions. It was also partially due to the unnerving physical proximity to the Berlin wall outside the windows. The musicians saw gun toting Russian guards staring back at them through binoculars. This was a powerful motivator. Recording Tony Visconti, the band were speedy because they wanted to get the hell out of there. The backing tracks were usually called from group jam sessions on the former Mysosoul stage. Spontaneity was deemed more important than rough edges, and often the first take wound up on the final record. Sometimes they were helped along by ENO's Oblique Strategies, a set of cards he developed to aid and creative problem solving. Each card contained a cryptic phrase designed to jump start fresh ideas or just confused. They said things like what wouldn't you do, retrace your steps, or just simply distorting time. Dead Ends were a common hazard. Carlos Alamar in particular grew frustrated with ENO's avant garde approach. After all, he was a session prode toured with the likes of James Brown and Chuck Berry. Now he had some guy writing a list of chords on a blackboard and pointing to want at random with a baton, like some sort of eccentric for esser. He didn't need this, but occasionally the Oblique strategies yielded a fascinating discovery. This was the case for one song recorded after both Bowie and you Know each pooled the card and kept the instruction secret from one another. Like a game, they took turns over, dubbing back and forth, not letting the other hear what they were doing until it was all done. As it turned out, their directives were entirely opposite. Enos said make everything as similar as possible, and Bowie's read emphasized the differences. The study and contrast worked, yielding the instrumental tracks sense of doubt. They took the spur of the moment approach even further when they called in ENO's former collaborator Robert Fripp to add some of his trademark Frippartronics guitar work to the album in progress. Despite the fact that he hadn't played much over the last three years, Trup was happy to give it a shot. The King Crimson Axe Man arrived at Hansa immediately after touching down in Germany after a lengthy transatlantic flight. Understandably the days and jet lagged. Fripp asked to hear the songs they wanted him to play on, but Bowie mischievously refused, instructing him to just wing it and play whatever he felt with total abandonment. So Frip plugged into ENO's VCS three briefcase synth and letter ripped, reacting in real time to the playback tape while you know, manipulated the feedback laden sounds with oscillators and electronics. The first thing Frip heard was the backing for what became Beauty and the Beast, the first of six songs he banged out during his marathon tracking sessions. According to legend, he completed all of his guitar overdubs in just one six hour burst. More conservative accounts have this spread out over two days, but either way, the speed is all inspiring. Bowie's lyrics are written in much the same spontaneous manner. In many cases, he took the iggy approach of writing as he sang. According to Visconti, David never had a clue what he'd sing until he actually walked into the live room. Then he would stand at the mic, listen to a verse, jot down a few keywords or impressions that came to mind, then go for a take. I thought it was a very effective way of breaking normality. In the lyric, David would explain songs like Joe the Lion are exercises and stream of consciousness, while other tracks had lyrics plotted out in advance over the course of ten or fifteen minutes at most. The words that popped out of a subconscious often reflected as adopted home and the new friends he'd made there. The title for the instrumental V two Schneider name checks both a German ballistic missile from World War Two and also Florian Schneider of kraft Work, who would offer their own lyrical nod to Bowie and Iggy on their song trans Europe Express earlier that year. Nei Klon, another instrumental, takes its name from the Berlin district where Tangerine Dreams Edgar Frosie had lived. In Bowie's own mind, it represented the area of Berlin where the Turks are shackled bad conditions, the Turkish influence abundant, and Bowie's own Schoonenberg neighborhood can also be heard on the Secret Life of Arabia, the finale of the album, and Progress Beauty and the Beast touches on his Heaven and Hell mood swings that were common during the depths of his cocaine abuse in Los Angeles, but it also illustrates the dualities present in a divided Berlin, split between the Decadent West and I'll Stare East. Other songs had more personal meetings. Many would speculate that Blackout alluded not to power outages, but to Bowie's binge drinking and a brief hospitalization that had resulted. Some would go further and suggest that one line, Someone's back in town the Chips are Down, referenced Angie Bowie, who was visiting the city during the same period. It was the last time they'd meet before their divorce. Well, the album lacked the same autobiographical punch is low, David made up for it with passionate performances. However, one song left him stuck for words. It was a triumphant march with an uplifting chord sequence propelled forward by Dennis Davis, George Murray and Carlos Alamar's relentless rhythm section, ENO's shimmering synth, drones, and Fripps multilayered guitar. A composite of several different takes flowed along like a wave that never crested to Eno, the instrumental conjured the word heroic in his mind. He kept the thought to himself and was amused and a little stunned when Bowie informed him of the song's final title, Heroes. For years, Bowie claimed that an anonymous couple had inspired his words about the kiss under the Wall, but after decades of covering, David later admitted that the lovers were actually the still married Tony Visconti and Antonio mass Visconti. Repaid the lyrical tribute by devising an innovative way for his friend to record the vocals. Wanting to capture the full, luxurious sound of the Grand hall where they recorded, he devised them method where the room would sound progressively bigger as David sang. The producers set up three separate microphones at different locations within the live room, the first just a few inches from David's face, another twenty ft away, in the last fifty ft away. On each he attached a noisegate device, which mutes a microphone until the sound crosses a volume threshold. This allowed David's vocals to grow in intensity, beginning with the intimate croon of the first verse, up to the impassioned howl of the last singing at the top of his lungs. The blend of both sonic and emotional crescendos created a recording for the Ages in one of David's most arresting performances. Heroes would serve as the title track to his next album, released a widespread acclaim in October of nine. He put the word in quotation marks to add a level of irony, poking holes in the slightly bloated notion of heroism. Despite the avant garde working methods that it's so frustrated the likes of Carlos Alamar, David and Eno had kept their pretension in check and spent much of the session laughing at themselves and at some of their less successful concepts that didn't make the final cut. The album was rich with self parody as well as a lot of inventive ideas. David would recall. In that sense, the title is almost sarcastic. After all, the character in the song is not exactly supernatural or superhuman, certainly not on the level of Ziggy Stardos. To the thin white duke, he wears his flaws on his sleeve. He drinks all the time he has regrets and failures. It's certainly misleading to believe that Bowie meant heroes in any sort of self aggrandizing way. Even the most cursory look at the lyrics throughout the album show that this is not a happy record. David himself would describe Heroes as much louder and harder and energetic than his previous work on Low, but with words that were far more psychotic. My own mood was good, he would say, but those lyrics come from a nook in the unconscious. Still a lot of house cleaning going on. Even if it wasn't David's intention to harold his own survival after the dismal and dangerous prior years, it's hard not to appreciate it as such. Like Berlin, he was beaten, brutalized, and in a rock star since at least broke. The experience had changed him irreparably and charged him with a degree of empathy. In later years, David would describe the song as compassionate, compassionate for people, he'd say, and the silly, desperate situation they've gotten themselves into that we've all gotten ourselves into, generally by ignorance and rash decisions. There's hope and Heroes, not for riches or power or fame. No, the hope and Heroes is much more human and scale. It's the belief that things can be better. It's a plea for a moment of transcendence, regardless of how brief, even just for one day. Heroes would arguably be the greatest creative legacy of his years in Berlin. It certainly was for Bowie's friend and elder brother figure John Lennon. When the former Beatle emerged from his musical exile in to record a new album, he told the press it was to quote do something as good as Heroes, Hi praise. Indeed, a decade later, the band You Too, comparative up starts as far as Bowie was concerned, hired Brian Eno as a producer and traveled to Hansa Studios to record their landmark album Ak Tongue Baby. In a way, Heroes also marked the beginning of the end of David's time in Germany. Okay, there was his starring role in infamous World War One drama Just a Jigglo, a joint German English production, where he played a Troubled Prussian Soldier, but the less said about that, the better. It was a poorly reviewed cinematic fiasco that David would later describe as quote my thirty two Elvis movies contained in one but his next album, Lodger, the third of his so called Berlin Trilogy, was primarily recorded in New York City in Montrose, Switzerland, between the fall of nineteen seventy eight in the spring of nineteen seventy nine. Elements of his time in Berlin managed to peek through. The Assassin is imbued with the Turkish influence found in bowie Schoonenberg neighborhood and the gender bending boys keep swinging videos right out of romy Hoggs Cabaret. But Bowie's influences and aims it started to shift. Even you Know would admit that their once fruitful collaboration was starting to, in his words, peter out. The force that had pushed them towards the creative heights of the semi mythical Berlin Trilogy ultimately let him elsewhere. Far be it from David to sit still, after all, Yet he always looked back at the period with fondness and a certain sense of wonder. He'd say, for whatever reason, for whatever confluence of circumstance, answers, Tony Brian and I created a powerful, anguished, sometimes euphoric language of sounds. Nothing else sounded like those albums. Nothing else came close. If I never make another album, it really wouldn't matter. Now, Like complete beings within those three they are my d n A. Berlin had become a part of Bowie. Then a decade after the release of Heroes, he repaid the favor. It occurred on David's Glass Spider tour, launched in support of his seven album Never Let Me Down. The gargantuan theatrical production was unlike anything he'd ever attempted since the days of Diamond Dogs, boasting the largest touring set ever made at the time. The trek included a performance in June at the Concert for Berlin, a three day outdoor festival held on the grounds of the Reichstag, formerly the seat of the German government. The once proud building had become a bombed out ruin of the once unified country for are enhancing the symbolism, the structure sat uncomfortably close to the Berlin Wall, a sign of the divided times. The concert was clearly audible to those a short distance away in the Soviet sector, where Western music was viewed as an ideological threat and effectively banned. Well, the East German authorities were powerless to stop broadcasts from across the wall. Sale and purchase of this supposed capitalist propaganda music was strictly prohibited. Obviously, Eastern rock fans were not allowed to cross over and attend the increasingly political music festival, but they could hear it with crystal clarity, thanks to the efforts of sympathetic event organizers who helpfully pointed public address speakers their way. By the time David took the stage on the evening of June six, somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand East Berliners had gathered as close as possible to the wall. Though he couldn't see them, he could certainly hear the cheers. It was like a double concert. He would recall where the wall was the division. It wasn't long before the East Berlin assembly turned violent. The dreaded intelligence organization known as the Stasi unleashed mounted police tasked with dispersing the crowd by savage force. The true number assaulted by water cannons, stunned guns and night sticks will never be known, but the figures devastatingly high in defiance. Those gathered chanted a new slogan, down with the wall. It was the first time a mob a dared shouts as treason his thoughts in public. Just a few hundred meters away, Bowie continued his performance while a hundred and forty thousand Westerners watched, transfixed. Though we couldn't see what was happening on the other side of the wall, the sounds of brutality gave him a pretty good indication. In German. He offered words of support to the victims of oppression so tantalizingly near but beyond aid. We send our wishes to all our friends who are on the other side of the wall, he said shortly before launching into one of his greatest musical treasures. Berlin had given him heroes, and now he was giving it back. On the summer night, the song sounded almost like a prayer, he recalled. The lyrics penned exactly a decade earlier, seemed almost clairvoyant. I can remember standing by the wall, and the guns shot above our heads, and we kissed as though nothing could fall, and the shame was on the other side. Fans on both the West and the East sang along. It was one of the most emotional performances I've ever done, David would remember. I was in tears. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I had never done anything like that in my life, and I guess I never will again. Less than three years later, the Wall was demolished. Bowie's rolling its falls off have been overstated, but his performance in the Divided City made him a hero to a generation of for Lennards. When Bowie departed this planet in January of the German Foreign Office tweeted a message, goodbye, David Bowie, You're now among heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the Wall. This all seemed unthinkable. Back in the Wall looked completely indestructible, and so did David. After all, there was so much more to do. David Bowie had done next to nothing to help sell his album Low in early ninety seven, but with the release of Heroes later that year, he hit the press circuit with unusual gusto. I didn't promote Low at all, and some people thought my heart wasn't in it, he explained. This time I wanted to put everything into pushing the new album. I believe in the last two albums more than anything I've ever done before. With Low, David seemed unconcerned with clearing up any misconceptions about his words or music. Now he recorded foreign language versions of Heroes, singing the lyrics in French and German. David geared up for a tour and made high profile appearances on Top of the Pops and other music television shows. Rumors that he dropped in on The Muppet Show sadly proved false, but he did take an arguably weirder role on Bing Crosby's Christmas special. David's fondness from Middle of the Road entertainment stretched back to his obsession with British performer Anthony Newley back in the sixties, but this seemed almost perverse Bowie meets being the King of the cutting edge, appearing with the seventy four year old World War Two crooner in a festive card again. Whether David wanted to shock fans by making most conservative move possible or merely set out to subvert this most bland banal of art forms, He'd never say. The only explanation he'd ever, give was that he took the gig because his mother liked being given David's less than warm relationship with his mother, This seems somewhat doubtful, but hey, it was Christmas after all. Well, technically it was September when David filmed. Bing Crosby's Merry Old Christmas. Being extended the invitation to David, in part because his teenage children were big fans. But when David showed up, reportedly wearing outlandish makeup and an earring, the old timer may have had some second thoughts. According to Bing's kids, producers took David aside and gently requested that he wipe off the face pain and removed the earring. David duly complied, but there was a bigger problem on the horizon. The original plan was to perform a duet of the Little Drummer Boy, but when David arrived, he announced that he hated the carol. It didn't suit his range, plus it was just boring. Wasn't there something else he could sing? Just a short time before shooting began, the show's musical directors held an emergency writing session on an old piano in the studio basement. Within the hour, they presented David with a new counterpoint to Little Drummer Boy called Peace on Earth. Bowie loved it, and after a quick rehearsal, he and Being ran their act for the cameras. The sketch preceding the song is painfully stilted, but cute in that cross generational seventies Network TV special sort of way. The two compare holiday traditions before gathering around the piano and rifling through a pile of Christmas Carol sheet music. David plucks out the pages for Little Drummer Boy, describing it as a son's favorite, and then the musical odd couple launches into their tuneful melding of past and present Christmas melodies. It's undeniably sweet, though David himself would call the appearance ludicrous in later years. We were so totally out of touch with each other, He'd say, I was wondering if he was still alive. He was just not there. He looked like a little old orange sitting on a stool because he'd been made up very heavily, and there was just nobody home at all. You know. It was the most bizarre experience. That should have been the end of it. A throwaway ditty for a one off TV special. The master tape of the song was erased, but fervent Bowie fans swapped bootlegs of the recording, and five years after the broadcast, an official version of the Little Drummer Boy Piece on Earth Medley was released just in time for Christmas two. It became one of Bowie's best selling singles ever and one of the most successful holiday songs of all time. But being wouldn't live to see the duet duke it out with his own white Christmas on the holiday charts. He suffered a massive heart attack on a golf course in Spain one month after the shoot. By the time the TV special aired at Christmas time, he was dead. It was a maccabre twist and and already on settling holiday season for David. He spent Christmas in Berlin, gathering a small group of friends at his apartment on hop Strassa to enjoy a goose dinner cooked by Cocoa Schwab. Among the merrymakers was David's six year old son, Zoe. His presence sparked the very explosive and very public end to his marriage to Angie. She'd been living in Switzerland with her new boyfriend, surviving on a nominal annual allowance from David. Her hopes for getting much more in a divorce settlement were extremely low. Women in Switzerland didn't even have the right to vote until She could barely even get a meeting with a lawyer, much less find a good one to represent her. After visiting friends in New York, she returned to her Swiss home for New Year's expecting to find Zoe, but he wasn't there. David was annoyed that she left the boy with his nanny for Christmas, so he brought him to Berlin for the holiday. Angie was alone and inconsolable. She retaliated by some an a reporter for the Sunday Mirror. The plan was the Ventors spleen on record for some badly needed cash. The reporter found her nearly senseless on downers, screaming that Bowie had, without my knowledge, taken our son and ranting about wanting a divorce. It was the first time she had ever attacked her husband in public. For years, well, they may have disagreed behind closed doors, they'd always presented a united front. Going to the papers was tantam onto an act of war, but it was the last card she had to play, and she had no one on her side. She was helpless. I really want David to suffer, Angie told the reporter. Perhaps the only way he'll suffer is if I do myself. In a few hours after the interview, she nearly did. The reporter would claim that Angie locked herself in a bathroom in the early morning hours, where she shoveled fistfuls of tranquilizers down her throat. Then she let herself out and began roaming the house, ashing all the glassware and Christmas ornaments that she came across. Finally, she picked up a gleaming carving knife and for a few terrifying moments, considered thrusting it into her side until those present talked her out of it. Then she took a beat to regain her composure before hurling herself down the stairs. They found her in a crumpled, bloody heap. Then she was taken to a nearby hospital, where she supposedly got so worked up that the woman in the bed next to her had a cardiac arrest. I tried to kill myself, and you would later admit, but my heart wasn't in it. I'm very competent. If I really wanted to kill myself, I think I would have succeeded. A second attempt a short time later was marginally more successful. A friend dragged her out of the bathtub where she laid comatose from an overdose of pills. Careless paramedics dropped her down the stairs on her way to the ambulance, breaking her nose in the process. The unfortunate incident made her wonder if the universe was trying to tell her suicide isn't pretty, baby. Either do it or don't do it at all. Angie's attempts to take her life made the months long divorce proceedings even more brutal, as both sides slung angry accusations at the other. David was abusive, Angie was unstable and a neglectful mother. Ultimately, a polaroid of Angie and an erotic pose with a girlfriend was leaked to the court by David's lawyers. It was hustler stuff recalled an official who saw the photo. As soon as the judge sat down, it was obvious which way the hearing would go. Zolwey's custody became a thorny issue, though Angie later claimed she never tried to take the boy from her husband. Zoe has always been my gift to David, you see, she would write in her memoir. By bearing my fragile husband a child, I was giving him someone to live for. And now, especially now, in David's darkest hour of need, I wasn't going to back out of that commitment. So I knew I wouldn't fight for Zoey's custody, and therefore I knew I was going to lose him. This was the worst thing possible for me. It felt like performing an amputation on myself. In the end, David was awarded full custody of the boy, who would later disowned his mother completely. She was a corrosive person, he said recently. At present, Andree reportedly hasn't seen Zoe or Duncan as he's now known since he was thirteen years old. He's cold like his father. She later said. David cut me off, and Zoe cut me off. When the settlement was reached a three years of legal wrangling, Andre was awarded seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars spread over ten years. The money was continued on her adherence to a gag order that prohibited her from discussing their marriage. Now no one, but no one tries to shut Angie up. She skirted the legal line on several occasions before publishing a tell all memoir called Backstage Passes just after the gag order expired. The book is unflinchingly honest or lurd and exploitative, depending on your point of view. It made headlines upon its release for Angie's insinuation that she caught her husband in bed with Mick Jagger in the seventies, a tale that's been widely debated ever since. David barely bothered to respond to the book. In fact, he rarely spoke about Angie over the years, usually referring to her in interviews only as my ex wife. He memorably described their time together as quote like living with a blowtorch. That sort of says it all. Angie's memories are more tingent with respect, though she remained understandably angry and hurt by the dissolution of their partnership both romantic and creative. She writes of David and her memoir with a degree of reverence, regardless of his performance with me David did do a wonderful job of broadcasting sexual freedom and personal liberation. He shown his light into a lot of dark places and people and helped them see them elves and maybe love themselves a little better. In the years since they're split from David, she's written poetry, recorded music, and worked as a journalist with a focus on gender issues, but shall always be linked to David. Her influence on his career is hard to define but undeniable. His life would have been very different without her. In addition to Angie, David would say farewell to another formative figure from his past, though under much more tragic circumstances. It was Mark Bolan, his friend and occasional musical rival. They'd come from similar circumstances, two boys from the sooty outskirts of London, shedding their boring home life with new names and self styled rock hero personas. The pair had come up together in the mod scene of mid sixties London, when they shared a manager and a ruthless level of ambition. Together they haunted the hip clothing boots cheaks of Carnebie Street, trying to one up one another with new out their threads and big dreams for the future. The race to fame was on. For a time it seemed like Mark was winning. Their relationship grew strained as his career took off as the frontman of the band t Rex, leaving David in the dust. We're still David had this nagging feeling that Bowland got his glittering, androgynous stage look from him. Their friendship would fluctuate along with their performance and the music charts, leading to the odds snipe in the press. Still they were friends, albeit jealous, slightly catty. Ones Market even asked David to be the godfather to his son Roland, as in Roland Bowland, not to be confused with Zoe Bowie, who David was probably only too pleased to note was born first. Clearly, their competitive streak ran deep. They started from the same place. No matter where David end, and no matter what he did, he always measured success in relation to Mark. Once Bowie burst onto the scene was ziggy stardust. Boland's career began to fade. He had been outperformed and out glamed. Unlike David, he stubbornly refused to evolve musically or visually, and his act began to appear Stale. Even producer Tony Visconti, who worked with both artists for a time, had moved on from Mark. The mid seventies were especially tough for Boland, who at that time seemed washed up, bitter and flabby, like a man who'd run his race. Critic Charles Sharr Murray would note, truthfully, if not unkindly, Boland was a one trick pony, kept trying to do his single, one trick even after he got too fat to jump the hurdle. But by n seven he was mounting a comeback, booking a tour with a damned just the support act, and netting his own primetime British television show called Simply Mark. Bowie was booked to appear on the show during his press blitz for Heroes in September of nineteen, but it was far from a laid back reunion between two long time pals. Bowie showed up in full superstar mode, arriving in a long limo with a huge entourage, including a fleet of guards who closed off the set to all but essential crew. Before long, Bowie's coterid effectively taken over the studio to Bowland. Bowie was showing off by showing him up on his own turf, trying to prove once and for all that he was the bigger star. Depressed at being eclipsed on his own show, Bowland sulked in his dressing room and drank. Bowie, meanwhile, was horrified to find a posse of press journalists that had been summoned by the show's producers, making him feel exploited by his old friend. They took to the stage a short time later in equally pissy moods. Boland was worse for the wear with drink as they started out on a blues number called Standing Next to You. Soon after they began, David received a nasty shock from a microphone that nearly knocked them over. Then Boland drunkenly fell off the stage. It was bad. They had almost nothing usable by the time the shoot was scheduled to end, but the unionized production crew refused to work overtime, and all they had in the cam were a handful of shambolic takes. Boland was in tears and Bowie was furious. He exited a short time later, coolly suggesting the Bowling that they do lunch. Bowie's way of telling him to get lost. It was the last time they would ever see each other. Like being Crosby, Boland was dead before the episode aired. It was September, a week after the ill fated taping. Boland was returning home from an evening of dinner and drinks with his longtime girlfriend, soul singer Gloria Jones. Much like Bowie with planes, Boland was always frightened of cars, despite making them a freak and topic of his songs. As a result, he never learned to drive. So it was Jones who was behind the wheel of their purple Mini when it swerved off the road just north of London and slammed into a tree. She was seriously injured but survived. Boland was killed instantly, his seat crushed into the back of a car. It was two weeks before his thirtieth birthday, a milestone he was always convinced he'd never reach. David traveled back from Switzerland for the funeral, attending alongside Elton John and Rod Stewart. The coffin was decorated with a four ft high floral sculpture of a swan made of chrysanthemums, in tribute to Boland's biggest hit rad a white Swan. David wept openly as he paid his respects. Boland's death forced him to consider his own mortality. Up to that point, death it seemed like an abstract notion. He teased it many times with drugs. So had many of his friends Ikey Pop, Lou Reed, Keith Richards. They had all pulled through. There was that wild night he spend in Berlin doing donuts in an underground parking garage at dangerously high speeds. Here he was completely fine. Mark was just coming home from a night out with his girlfriend. He had his car spun out, and now his life was over. It all seems so unfair. It made everything seem so fragile. Leaving Mark's funeral, David sas driver to make a detour. They headed towards the town of Brixton to number forty Stansfield Road. It was the house where David was born. He needed a reminder of where he came from and that it was real. It wasn't just another fantasy he constructed and willed into reality. It had existed. So much of his life was about being the other worldly starman, floating up on the stratosphere and beyond. Now He wanted to feel his roots, something that tethered into the earth, and ensure he wouldn't float away. The Mercedes Limo made quite a splash as it crept down the sleepy one block residential lane. David exited the car and stared at the home or was sold crash landed thirty years earlier. He didn't breathe a word. Then he silently re entered the car and told his driver to head towards Beckenham. He wanted to pay a visit to Hadden Hall, the gothic monstrosity where his creative visions took shape. It was here that he had been born again as Zikky Stardust. It had only been seven years, but it felt like several lifetimes. How many people had he been since then? It was hard to keep counting. The stuck off acade of the old house was cracked and decayed, a ruined relic of a life he no longer lived and relationships that no longer existed. David desided here at had in the hall with his wife and friends, most of them he didn't know anymore. People grow and change, and fight and come and go. Life is messy. As David stood in the overgrown garden, literally in the shadow of his past. He received a tap on the shoulder. It was his former landlord. In his hand was a bill for unpaid rent from all those years before. David must have smiled as he reached into his funeral suit for his wallet. He'd spent the afternoons settling up his past. Now he was free to look forward to the future. It was, after all, what he did best. Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Noel Brown and Shan t. Tone. The sup provising producers are Taylor chikogn and Tristan McNeil. The show was researched, written and hosted by me Jordan run talk and edited, scored and sound designed by Taylor ch Coogne and Tristan McNeil, with additional music by Evan Tyre. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.