Been a while since my last post. No idea why, I guess there weren’t any reasons I felt I should be writing something. In the meantime I went to Edinburgh, had a fabulous time and a great meetup with my fellow devotee and great friend David McElroy of the Almost Predictable, Almost blog – where we discussed a lot about the past, the present and the future of Depeche Mode. Well, we discussed about other things as well, just to remind you we’re both very intellectual and sophisticated people.
So back to writing… yesterday was Lodger’s 40th release anniversary. And you know what, it’s one of Bowie’s most interesting records. It’s not a masterpiece, it’s not the no.1 record (or not even top-3 or top-5 record) in someone’s Bowie list but…. it’s a very interesting record.
Lodger is known as the 3rd and final installment of the so-called Berlin Trilogy. I guess the main reason for that was Eno’s involvement for the 3rd straight time. I can’t think of any other because Lodger, still innovative, is way different than Low and Heroes; those two records were released withing 6 months and Berlin was the central; Low was finished there, Heroes was recorded there and Bowie was basically living there.
Lodger has very little, if not nothing, to do with Berlin. By 1978 Bowie has gone back to his main residence of Montreux, Switzerland and the recordings take place there and in New York. Also by then Bowie has finally dealt with his fear for flying and he has gone to a number of trips, that shape almost exclusively the first side of the album: Fantastic Voyage, African Night Flight, Move On, Yassassin and Red Sails are more or less about those trips, both lyrically and musically. There’s a mixture of ethnic sounds and lyrics describing the experiences of travelling and living in places so different from one another – Cyprus, Turkey, Kenya.
The 2nd half is kind of closer to Low and Heroes, but still different. There’s criticism about the dance culture of the time (DJ), there’s also a rare occasion of dealing with domestic abuse (Repetition). But on Side 2, we find the typical Bowie ingredients; he goes back to being personal, touching the issues he’s mostly know about either lyrically (Look Back In Anger) or musically (Red Money, another take on Pop’s Sister Midnight). And of course there’s Boys Keep Swinging, the hit of the record and where Bowie takes again on the matter of gender and how that defines social behavior.
But the main thing about Side 2 is that Bowie makes another statement about himself. It’s the end of the 70s, the decade that will be mainly known as HIS decade. Bowie has gone into so many phases, changes, approaches and lifestyles from year to year that by the end of the 70s he feels tired and bruised (shown in the cover artwork as well). He feels that he has made his point as an artist, he’s seen that by now he’s the main influence of the latest trends (punk, new wave) and he also wants some sort of financial retribution for all his output. From Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog:
<<One should never underestimate how much of Bowie’s seemingly calculated moves were mere whimsy. Still “Red Money” fits with the themes Bowie was developing in Lodger, and which would further play out in Scary Monsters—fears of being reduced to an influence, impending obsolescence, a weariness with songwriting and performing, a broadening of perspective beyond the hermetic theater of the mind to (possibly) the greater world. “I am what I play,” Bowie sang in “D.J.”: “Red Money” is, literally, Bowie covering himself, making a palimpsest of a track, erasing Iggy Pop from the song that Bowie gave him.
“Sister Midnight” was a summoning, “Red Money” is a dismissal. Pop had coolly invoked the muse, raged into an Oedipal dream. Bowie offers men “who aren’t men” stranded in diseased, surreal landscapes, collecting blood money, aborting their missions. Bowie once told an interviewer the image of “the small red box” (“I couldn’t give it away/and I knew I must not drop it”) symbolized responsibility for him, with “Red Money” being in part Bowie’s resignation letter. Still, that could have been yet another red herring.>>
Bowie’s getting ready for the 80s, and he’s going to close the door for good (?) by 1980’s fabulous Scary Monsters – which sounds a lot more as the follow up to Heroes.
Lodger is a transitional record where Bowie opens himself to the world and tries to redefind himself. And makes sense that as challenging it was it got lost between Low/Heroes and Scary Monsters and therefore it was easier for all us mortals to simply labeled it as the last of the Berlin trilogy in order to make some sense of it. But 40 years later, Lodger is way more than that.
PopMart 2.0 