Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• McCombe, John

Titel

David Bowie and the Myth of the Berlin Trilogy: Tearing Down Musical Walls in the 1970s

Ist Teil von

• Journal of popular culture, 2017-10, Vol.50 (5), p.949-967

Ort / Verlag

Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Wiley Online Library All Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Far from being an homage to, or imitation of, the mid-1970s music of Kraftwerk, Neu, or Harmonia, David Bowie's so-called Berlin trilogy is a complex fabric of influences - American and European - and Bowie actually began to inhabit the space of Berlin, artistically speaking, years before he relocated to Hauptstrasse 155. This essay addresses prevalent misconceptions concerning Bowie's relationship with American and European culture in the 1970s. Although his 1976 move to Berlin made possible some of the decade's most ambitious and influential music, Bowie never neglected American music and culture in Berlin, nor did he reject European influences during a residence in Los Angeles that preceded his departure for Europe. Berlin, of course, did influence Bowie's interest in German music at a moment when he de-emphasized the "Philly Soul" obsession manifested in "Young Americans" (1975).