“Heroes” is the only Berlin Trilogy album fully created and recorded in Berlin

Most music fans know that the British singer and musician David Bowie lived in West Berlin and created three albums there, commonly referred to as the “Berlin Trilogy” (Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger). Although you’ll often read the claim that “Bowie spent 1976-1979 living and working in Berlin,” that’s not entirely true.

David Bowie on the cover of the “HEROES” album, created and recorded in West Berlin in 1977.
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Bowie did indeed choose to move from Los Angeles to the divided German city in 1976, and he had an apartment there. But, like most musical artists, he did not stay put the entire time. During his “Berlin years” he and his band also had recording sessions in France, Switzerland, and New York. They also went on tour around the world, often for months at a time. If you add up the days he was actually present in Berlin from 1976 to 1979, it probably adds up to less than two years.

David Bowie is not the only famous person to seek out Berlin exile. Shortly after he died in 2016, Erin wrote about Celebrities Who’ve Called Berlin Home, including Bowie and Christopher Isherwood (see below).

Born in Brixton, South London as David “Davey” Robert Jones on 8 January 1947, the singer-songwriter and actor David Bowie lived a full and interesting life. When he died of cancer on 10 January 2016, only days after his 69th birthday, Bowie had spent very little of his total lifespan in West Germany. But his time in Cold War West Berlin marked a key turning point in his life and career. Had he not left California for Germany, it’s likely he would not have lived to be 69.

Bowie’s Schöneberg apartment building at Hauptstraße 155 in Berlin as it looks today. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

Although he was rarely totally free of substance abuse in Berlin, Bowie managed to escape the cocaine capital of L.A. for the heroine capital of West Berlin. But Bowie (unlike his pal Iggy Pop) was not attracted to heroine. In Berlin his usual drug of choice was alcohol. He once observed that Berlin is “a city made up of bars for sad people to get drunk in.”

Switzerland: Bowie’s Legal Residence

For tax reasons, David Bowie and his wife Angela had their legal residence in Switzerland, and he also recorded there at the Mountain Studios in Montreux. After leaving California and before moving to Berlin, at the conclusion of his European tour to promote Station to Station, Bowie first went to his Swiss home (Clos de Mésanges) in Blonay near Lake Geneva. He and his wife were rarely there at the same time, and this was no exception. But he did not stay there long. Bowie already had made plans to move to West Berlin.

But first he needed to help his friend Iggy Pop with an album (The Idiot), working first in France and then at Musicland, Giorgio Moroder’s studio in Munich, in July 1976. When the recording was done in the Bavarian capital, Bowie and Iggy traveled the 365 miles from Munich to West Berlin to work on mixing the album at the Hansa Studio, the future location for recording two of the “Berlin Trilogy” albums (Low and “Heroes”; Lodger was recorded in Switzerland and mixed in New York City).

Bowie had selected West Berlin for several reasons. He had long had an interest in Germany’s Weimar years and Christopher Isherwood’s writing on the topic. (Bowie had met and spoken with Isherwood in Los Angles.) He loved the German expressionists and Die Brücke in particular. But what he mostly wanted now was the isolation and tension of divided Berlin in the Cold War years. He was tired of being recognized and hounded wherever he went in L.A., London, and Paris. He wanted the anonymity that the outpost metropolis offered. As he put it: “Nobody gives a sh*t about you in Berlin.” (More recently, the well-known German TV host and actor Thomas Gottschalk did the opposite by having a home in Malibu/L.A., where nobody knows who he is.) Unlike almost any other city, Berlin would give Bowie a chance to work and recover from his addiction. A city full of misfits, draft dodgers, barflies, and struggling artists suited him just fine.

Then there was the German music of that era. Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, Faust and other “Krautrock” or kosmische Musik (cosmic music) groups were then becoming better known and influential in the English-speaking world. The mastermind behind much of this music was located in Köln (Cologne), not in Berlin. Konrad “Conny” Plank’s studio would later attract some British groups (Eurythmics, Ultravox) seeking his unique “Kraut” sound. But Bowie had his own ideas. West Berlin with its Wall of division was where he wanted to be.

By the time Lodger was released on 18 May 1979, Bowie had been on tour and he was in the UK making music videos. He would not return to Germany again except for concert tours. Back when he left L.A. he had packed all his belongings and had a plan. His departure from Berlin was more like a fadeout in a movie. He left for a long world tour and Berlin simply disappeared in his rearview mirror.

Bowie in the Movies

While in Berlin, Bowie agreed to appear (as a Prussian soldier) in a German-produced motion picture that was shot mostly on location in Berlin. Directed by David Hemmings, Just a Gigolo also featured a cameo appearance by Berlin native Marlene Dietrich. The fact that she was in the film was one of the main reasons Bowie agreed to make the picture. What he didn’t know was that Dietrich had refused to come to Berlin for filming, and her part was filmed in Paris, where she was living as a recluse at the time. So Bowie never got a chance to meet the former star, and the picture was panned by critics and moviegoers. Bowie admitted he made the mistake of not reading the script in advance, but there wasn’t really much to read. Even after re-edits, the film was a disaster.

Back in 1975, before his move to Berlin, Bowie had better luck with another film appearance, a sci-fi picture directed by Nicolas Roeg for British Lion in New Mexico. Bowie played the alien Thomas Jerome Newton, the main character in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Bowie, who didn’t like to fly in those days (although he later did), took the train from Los Angeles to Albuquerque, New Mexico for shooting near there. To play his alien character, Bowie basically played himself. The film is a curious oddity that was fairly well received by critics and audiences. Today it is considered a “cult classic.” Bowie later claimed the role influenced him long after completing the film.

Books About Bowie’s Berlin Years

If you’d like to know more about Bowie’s years in West Berlin, I know of two books that cover that topic in detail (available from Amazon.com or Amazon.de):

Bowie In Berlin: A new career in a new town by Thomas Jerome Seabrook (2008)
Kindle or paperback editions

Heroes: David Bowie and Berlin by Tobias Rüther (translated from German)
Kindle or paperback editions
Also available in the original German from Amazon.de