Lodger is David Bowie’s 13th studio album.
It was released on May 25th, 1979 and was the final instalment in
his Berlin Trilogy after Low and “Heroes” which were both
released in 1977. The trilogy comes out of a period when Bowie had moved from
Los Angeles to Europe in an effort to rid himself of his drug addiction and was
a very prolific time for the artist. The previous two records were highly
influenced by German krautrock and the recent ambient releases of Brian Eno,
who he collaborated with on all three of the albums. Lodger however
moves away from the more minimal ambient sounds of those albums and moves into
a more varied array of musical styles and genres including new wave and reggae.
It features more accessible songs throughout and the album is split into two
parts thematically through its lyrics rather than its music. Side one is
primarily devoted to the theme of travel and side two focuses on critiques of
Western civilization. While the brooding themes and musical style of the other
albums in the trilogy had a huge influence on later post-punk acts like Joy
Division, the upbeat world music sounds of this record could be seen a
forerunner to later work done by bands like Talking Heads, who Eno would also
later work with. Lodger tends to fly a little bit under the radar and is
usually overshadowed by far reaching influence of the rest of the trilogy, but
in terms of pure mainstream appeal it also feels the most commercial to me, it
is still very experimental, but a lot of the avant-garde aspects are buried
under an upbeat poppier sound.
After the release of “Heroes” Bowie spent most of
1978 on the Isolar II tour, also known as the Low/Heroes World Tour. This was
the first tour he had done promoting his own music since the release of Station
to Station, in 1976 (in between this he decided to take a backseat and
acted as a keyboardist for Iggy Pop). Now free of his cocaine addiction, this
was the first time in many years his tours were not being fuelled by excessive
drug use and he was in a much more stable place and positive place mentally. It
was also around this point that Bowie starred in the West German movie Just
a Gigolo in which a war veteran with no place in this world and no skills
decides to become a prostitute for rich lonely woman. The movie was a flop (pun
intended) and even today is still universally panned. Bowie was quoted in 1980
as saying: “Listen, you were disappointed, and you weren’t even in it. Imagine
how we felt, it was my 32 Elvis Presley movies rolled into one”.
The record was recorded primarily at Mountain Studios in
Montreux, Switzerland and kept most of the musicians and personnel from the
previous two albums. Lodger like “Heroes” before it featured the use of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards which were intended to challenge
constraint and break through creative blocks, through acts like having
musicians swap instrumentals or playing old songs backwards. It was all about
spontaneity and a sense of play and fun. The album is highly inspired by
Bowie’s travels and his perception of the world with him being quoted as
saying, “I don’t live anywhere, really. I travel 100% of the time” later saying
“the more I travel, the less sure I am about exactly which political
philosophies are commendable”. After the release of Lodger Bowie was
questioned by NME about his tendency to appropriate ideas from other
cultures. They questioned whether he ever felt in danger of misrepresenting
cultures, and he said:
“I don’t think that by taking a Japanese or an African
emblem or motif I try to represent them at all. I would have thought it was
pretty transparent that it was me trying to relate to that particular culture;
not in my wildest dreams would I think I was trying to represent them.”
The album opens with “Fantastic Voyage” and right from the
get-go you can tell this is going to be a different listening experience than
the rest of the trilogy with a serene piano based sound and a candid vocal
delivery it feels like things are going to be a little less intense this time
around and I welcome it. Combining the personal with the political it was
written under the backdrop of the Cold War with a real sense of empathy and
warmth. It’s about loyalty, dignity, and resistance with changing tempos and a
catchy chorus. It’s a great opener and it’s a good thing to remind ourselves in
the face of the world’s problems and political tensions that all our lives are
valuable. Coming out of his drug addiction it seems Bowie is now looking
outside of himself and his own personal neurosis and towards wider global
issues with awareness that at the end of the day we are all one people.
“African Night Flight” was inspired by Bowie’s trips to
Kenya meeting German military pilots drinking in Mombasa bars, staying in the
Treetops Hotel in Aberdare National Park with his son Duncan, and meeting with
Maasai people and tribe members. The backup refrain “asante habari habari ha”
translates to something like hello and goodbye in the Swahili language. This is
one the tracks on the album that was more Eno than Bowie according to producer
Tony Visconti who always said it’s his favourite track on the record and as
close as you’ll get to a David Bowie rap song.
One of my favourite tracks is the song that most perfectly
encapsulates the main themes of the record: wanderlust, global exploration, and
itinerant living. Bowie described “Move On” as a blatantly romantic song. At
this point in his career Bowie was setting forth a new image for himself as a
world traveller, a stateless figure without personal ties. Even the title of
the album Lodger plays into this image of someone who never stays put in
one place for too long. It was based on the 1972 song “All the Young Dudes”
being played note for note backwards with added vocal harmonies. The vocal
delivery on this track is powerful and it’s the kind of song I’d listen to
while looking out the window of an airplane and imagining I’m in a music video.
I love it.
“Yassassin (Turkish for: Long Live)” is a reggae track with
a Turkish flavour that was released as a single in just the Netherlands and
Turkey. The title also means something like “hooray” but it’s said Bowie saw
the phrase as some graffiti in Berlin and called the Turkish embassy to get them
to translate it for him and it was inspired by the Turkish immigrants he would
meet in Berlin. The song is from the point of view of a Turkish migrant in a
city that needs his labour yet still despises him. Bowie said it was so
interesting to see how well a reggae beat fuses with traditional Turkish
sounds.
This track closes “travel” side of the album is “Red Sails”
a song that plays with the adventurous side of travelling and features Bowie
taking to the seas in search of the hinterland. Bowie said he was putting the
German new-music feel against the contemporary English mercenary-cum
swashbuckling Errol Flynn out on the China sea added what “lovely
cross-references of culture, I honestly don’t know what it’s about”. In
generally, the song has got a great new wave feel and is just a lot of fun,
even featuring Beatlesque shouts and “ooohs” in the backup vocals.
Opening side two is “DJ” which apparently showcases Bowie
doing his best David Byrne from the Talking Heads impression. The track is a
comment on the cult of the disco DJ who’s confined to the atmosphere of the
dance floor saying, “if he dared let a couple of seconds in between records
then his career is blown, he’s got to keep that constant wave of people
moving”. The song was released as a single and Bowie even made a music video
for it, but it was not a success.
“Look Back in Anger '' was set to be the lead single from
the record and features a frantic drum beat, telling a strange story of a
protagonist being visited by an angel with crumbling wings, along with a person
idly flipping through magazines. It’s got an epic feel to it but it’s also a
little bit cryptic. Some love it, some hate it. Bowie biographer Nicolas Pegg
called it “one of Lodger’s dramatic highlights” while Roy Carr from NME said it
was “probably the low point” of the album. I personally can take it or leave
it. Interesting fun fact is that it’s said that the Oasis named their song
“Don’t Look Back in Anger” after this track, but I can’t find definitive proof
whether or not that’s actually the case.
Probably the most well-known track on this album is “Boys
Keep Swinging '' which had an infamous promotional video where Bowie appeared
in drag as three backup singers. He described the track is a tongue in cheek
“ultra-chauvinist overkill" song. While it has been viewed as a celebration of masculinity, it’s pretty
obvious that it’s an assessment of male entitlement and privilege. In an
interview with his future wife Iman in 2000 Bowie spoke about gender
inequalities stating, “I find it intensely offensive to see women treated as
chattel or appendages. I cannot think of a situation where a woman could not do
an equal if not better job than a man” saying that in this song the glory of
being a man was ironic and to ask if one gender is better than another is
“absurd question”. The single, helped by the controversy and hype of its music
video, reached number seven in the UK charts and Bowie would go onto play the
song on Saturday Night Live where one of his backup singers was the
criminally unknown German operatic, synthpop, new wave singer Klaus Nomi.
In line with the theme of gender inequality is “Repetition”
, a track that deals with domestic abuse and violence. A bleak story about a
guy named Johnny who takes his life dissatisfaction out on his wife. With a
low monotone delivery that echoes the dark subject matter, Bowie said wife
beating is something you faced with all the time in American newspapers, at the
time it seems he felt domestic violence was a distinctly American problem.
While always fascinated with identity and power before this it was rare for
Bowie to have direct commentary on “society” so this type of song is really new
territory for him.
The album ends with his last song of the 1970s “Red Money”.
In a way it’s the culmination of the entire Berlin era: It features the same
backing track as Iggy Pop’s “Sister Midnight” from the Bowie produced album The
Idiot, using Eno inspired techniques of repetition, along themes of
broadened perspectives. With the refrain “projects cancelled” and “can you hear
it fall” it’s as if Bowie is now ready to move away from this art rock
experimental phase of his career and explore something new.
When Lodger was first released it received mixed
reviews from critics and was considered both a continuation and departure from
his previous work depending on who you asked. But as time as gone it’s
developed more of a following and the upbeat nature and accessibility of many
of the tracks are seen as a preamble to the massive mainstream success he would
achieve with his next two albums Scary Monsters and Let’s Dance,
with lots of people naming it Bowie’s most underrated work. The experimentation
with world music needs to be noted and would influence everything from the
Talking Heads album Remain in Light the following year or even the legendary
Paul Simon record Graceland from 1986. Biographer Marc Spitz said the
album is “as innovative as anything Bowie has ever done”.
Lodger is a great album. It’s experimental but also
playful, it’s thematically rich and shows Bowie once again trying to stretch
the limits of what he’s capable of, someone who’s not afraid to take risks. It
is true that it’s probably the odd one out of the Berlin trilogy but that’s not
necessarily a bad thing, as much as I do love the ambient instrumental sides of
those previous albums, I am glad that this one has stayed with more
conventional song structures. I think it’s also a record that grows on you the
more you listen to it; it’s fun, it’s rewarding, it’s Bowie.
Lodger (1979) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
[9/10]
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