40 Year Itch : Bowie in Berlin

David Bowie : Always Crashing in the Same Car

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In September 1976, David Bowie moved to Berlin where he worked with Iggy Pop on the mixing of Pop's comeback album, The Idiot,  and finished recording the album Low with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti.
Why Berlin?
 "I went to Berlin to find an environment unlike California, that dreadful, parasitic mire," said Bowie. "It seemed foreign and alien to anything I'd been through. Rough and tough, not the sweet life".

 The sweet life had taken its toll on Bowie.
One of the songs he would record for Low is called "Always Crashing in the Same Car". Bowie had come up with a public story behind the song, something about racing around in an underground parking garage, going faster and faster.
"As I was getting up to 40 and 50, going around the corners, I remember looking at the dash thinking 'Jesus! Aren't I going to crash soon?'".
 There is another story in which he claimed to have been recklessly chasing a drug dealer through the streets of Hollywood.

Jasmine, I saw you peeping
As I pushed my foot down to the floor
I was going 'round and 'round
The hotel garage
Must have been touching close to 94
Oh, but I'm Always crashing in the same car

This is most likely a metaphor for a cocaine addict who realized he was repeating the same self-destructive patterns over and over again in his life.
That would not be the case artistically.
Bowie appreciated the ambient sounds of Brian Eno's Discreet Music and Another Green World. Together they forged Eno's minimalist approaches with Krautrock sensibilities. Low would be one of the most intriguing albums of 1977, a year we will explore in 2017.
God willing.

40 Year Itch : I Am No Waterboy

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When Lou Reed followed up his commercially successful 1972 album Transformer with Berlin, some critics thought he was committing some kind of commercial seppuku. Writing for Rolling Stone, Stephen Davis called the album a disaster:

There are certain records that are so patently offensive that one wishes to take some kind of physical vengeance on the artists that perpetrate them. Reed's only excuse for this kind of performance (which isn't really performed as much as spoken and shouted over Bob Ezrin's limp production) can only be that this was his last shot at a once-promising career. Goodbye, Lou. 

40 years later that same publication ranks Berlin #344 of the Top 500 greatest albums of all time.

the 1979 Rolling Stone Record Guide describes the album as "grandiose, decadent", and finally "one of the most depressing records ever made, and oddly beautiful in its own awful way."

I think the earlier review is closer to the mark. 

Lou Reed recorded with one of the most exciting rock artists of his time: David Bowie. And what was his take-away? To make a depressing album of cabaret tunes that form a song cycle about a doomed couple that wallow their miserable way into prostitution and suicide.

OK, you may argue, this is capital "A" Art. Then why is Reed taking two songs from his Velvet Underground days (Oh Jim and Carolina Says (II))? And just in case you want to immerse yourself in a quiet pity party, there's two minutes of screaming and crying infants in "The Kids". A portent ( like the first 15 seconds of the album) of Metal Machine Music.

    The funny thing: I actually like the way Lou reinvented some of these songs for his live tour --witness Rock 'n' Roll Animal and  Lou Reed Live ( both recorded December 21st, 1973).

And yes, the Waterboys got their name from this album.