Bowie was in trouble, but instead of going to rehab he went to West Berlin, bringing along the only guy you would want to have with you while you were detoxing… Iggy Pop. Makes perfect sense to me.

While he was in Berlin, to keep himself busy and to keep the money flowing, Bowie recorded a trio of album now colloquially as “The Berlin Trilogy” produced by Roxy Music’s Brian Eno. These three albums are now held up as a high-water mark in Bowie’s career, but to me they do just kinda sound the same as the last batch or two. The biggest difference is that on the first two album, Low and “Heroes” the second side is entirely composed of instrumentals – something that Bowie had not really dabbled with previously.

The big story behind these records was Bowie’s (and Eno’s) use of synthesizers. Synthesizers were still pretty unusual back in the mid-seventies. They were large and expensive and very few people even owned them, much less knew what to do with them. Eno and Bowie reportedly through out the instructional manual, and instead of using these primitive synths for their intended purpose (replicating known instruments and/or sounds) and started to really use the synth in pop/rock music.

But to my ears, it doesn’t sound nearly as well-integrated as the Beatles’ use of the Moog on Abbey Road or as adventurous or innovative as early synth pioneers such as Kraftwerk or Devo. That being said, these are still great albums. On the sides with the actual songs. But as much critical acclaim that Low or “Heroes” garnered, they weren’t terribly commercially successful at the time, so he completed his stay in Berlin with Lodger which is included in the trilogy mostly because it was also recorded in Germany. It is certainly more commercially minded, skipping the instrumentals and focused less on synth experimentation.

It was a step in a more popular direction for Bowie, but he was going to go full on in to trying to be a successful recording artist now that he had left the drugs and the iron curtain behind.