rambling thoughts - karl bartos

I recently revisited Karl Bartos’ 2013 album Off The Record.

 

The cover has a picture of Karl’s Kraftwerk robot (a move which apparently enraged Ralf Hutter, who tried and failed to get the record withdrawn...). And the KW influences don't stop there.

 

The music itself shows Karl returning very much to the classic KW sound after experimenting with simpler guitar based pop on his previous album. Whilst Bartos’ solo stuff is often not as interesting as the stuff he produced with his old band, it’s still strong and Off The Record represented a sort of rounding up exercise as some of these songs had been knocking around for years and years waiting for Karl to finish them off.

 

Bartos claimed that after 20+ years out of KW he’d obviously moved on, but Off The Record doesn't bear this out. Maybe the excellent opening track “Atomium” shows a much more muscular rhythm track than anything KW would have done, but Karl still relies on the Robovox for the vocals which obviously invites direct comparisons with the Dusseldorf boys. And this direct link crops up throughout the album - for example, many of the drum sounds are identical to those that Karl played when he was KW’s drummer – and, sadly, whenever this happens it’s Karl’s songs that seem to come off as second best. Which is a shame as this is actually a very good collection of synth pop. "Rhythmus" takes this even further, using much of the melody from "Computer World" but seeing as Bartos composed this Kraftwerk melody in the first place, it's probably not too surprising.

 

Karl dips even further into the past with the final track, “Hausmusik”, which has tinny rhythm box percussion and wibbly analogue synth sounds and sounds like Harmonia or Cluster from 40+ years ago! It’s a charmingly simple piece and it’s probably my favourite.  

 

kraftwerk - utrecht december 1981

For no obvious reason today's listening started off with part of a Kraftwerk concert from 1981.

This isn't the whole show, sadly, but it's a soundboard recording, which is terrific to have from 1981. Kraftwerk undertook the Computer World Tour across the summer of 1981 but they also played handful of gigs in Germany and the Low Countries in December '81, four months after the main tour had finished. I seem to recall reading something years ago that said these gigs were scheduled at very short notice as the band wanted to road test some major upgrades to the Kling-Klang studio that had been necessary due to wear and tear incurred on the big summer tour. 

 

Whatever the reason this soundboard from Utrecht sounds significantly different from other recordings I have heard from the Computer World Tour. For one thing the band sound more 'live' than at any point since 1975. There's a clear sense of four guys actually playing this music, wrestling with the technology, trying to keep the machinery under control. Ralf and Florian's vocals are noticeably more animated, the drumming is more forceful (and at times actually sounds like Wolfgang is hitting those delicate metal pads really hard) and everything has a far more immediate feel about it.

 

Some songs are rearranged slightly - "Autobahn" is now cut to 12 minutes, but a very busy 12 minutes with Ralf and Florian seemingly improvising and almost scat singing towards the end, which is very unusual. "Radioactivity" is mid way between the slow, stately, measured original (and this was how it had been performed during the summer 1981 dates) and the faster, more urgent Mix version that came at the end of the 1980s. The drumming is especially different.

 

It may have been rather weedy on the album, but this live "Pocket Calculator" rocks. Really. 9 minutes long, it's a stomping powerhouse performance. And we get the only live outing for "Metropolis" until the Katalog shows of the current decade. It's a cracking performance too.  

All in all, one of the very best Kraftwerk live recordings in existence.

 

 

iggy pop - mass production

Still waiting for a decent remaster of Iggy Pop's seminal 1977 album The Idiot (and Lust For Life for that matter). 

In the meantime the 25 year old cd will have to do, all muddy and hazy but still brilliant. 

Now's not the time to go into the whole album, but I must just mention the final song. The Idiot ends with what is perhaps one of the oddest song Iggy ever committed to tape. "Mass Production" is basically the culmination of Bowie and Iggy's vision for the album. Teutonic, industrial, experimental, a weird mish-mash of Neu! and early Kraftwerk, Stooges and Detroit Rawk, and Station To Station and Low.  

It drags the listener into a nightmarishly twisted landscape of rain and darkness full of massive, industrial, smoke-belching factories. The lyrics are a clever, wry look at the identikit girls that Iggy used to find when on the road and the music is woozy, warped and more than a little deranged.

The opening was meant to conjure up images of the Ford car plants near to where Iggy grew up in Michigan - as a boy he'd been captivated by the rhythmic metallic clanging and bashing that emanated form these giant plants. But what I find most interesting is that the opening of his track is also virtually identical to the opening track on an oft-bootlegged Kraftwerk show from June 1971. Kraftwerk is German for power plant and Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider were equally fascinated by the musical possibilities offered by big industry. 

This 1971 gig however only features Florian (no Ralf, who was finishing his degree) plus Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger who shortly afterwards split to form their own band - Neu! This is a very heavy show all motorik drumming and lots of overdriven guitar - nothing like the Kraftwerk we came to know and love, and also nothing like the first three Ralf and Florian albums for that matter. But it's wonderful that Bowie and Iggy were so into the Germanic synth / experimental bands that they were paying homage to (or ripping off, if you prefer) tracks on very obscure bootlegs!

Anyway, "Mass Production" has to be played extremely loudly. It's just better that way.

it's kraftwerk jim, but not as we know it...

I recently came across a Kraftwerk gig from nearly 41 years ago, 25/01/74 - a long lost concert, never bootlegged before, that was recently rebroadcast in spiffing quality on German radio.

It was originally recorded for a radio show called "Avantgarde Und Pop", which I think pretty much sums up Kraftwerk. It pre-dates the recording of Autobahn by some months and finds Kraftwerk playing tracks from their first three albums but with an increasingly mechanical beat. This is primarily due to recent recruit Wolfgang Flur and the knitting needle / metal plate electronic percussion that he and Florian had developed in late 1973.

Also in the band - Klaus Roeder on guitar and violin, which gives some of the tracks a weirdly dreamy quality. Florian is still breathily playing his electrified flute and Ralf is in charge of the electronics.  

The first three Kraftwerk albums rarely sound like the band we know from Autobahn onwards. The massive leap in tech, in sound, in compositional approach, between Ralf Und Florian in 1973 and Autobahn in 1974 is almost inexplicable based solely on the records. But this gig sort of shows the band in transition. Whilst they are still playing the older, more freeform pieces there is a new, more regimented approach. No longer are Kraftwerk really improvising, instead they are nailing down the melodies, the rhythms, the essence of the band, and gently hammering it into a form that would, just a few months later, create the mechanised, factory-honed "Autobahn". 

For a long time I've had a gig from the summer of 1974, after the Autobahn album has been finished (and they play a version of the title track that runs for over 40 minutes!) - it's primitive for sure, but allowing for the valves and chunky wires and knitting needles and everything, it's still recognisable as the Kraftwerk that's touring today. But this gig is something else. And it's brilliant to have it in such wonderful quality.

lettie - good fortune, bad weather

Lettie has been releasing her music since 2008's excellent debut album Age Of Solo, on which a charming and beguiling mix of old fashioned synths, guitars and clever looping combined to create startlingly original folky electro songs. This was rapidly followed by the more acoustic Everyman. Both albums mixed personal reflections with dashes of sci-fi, ecology and loads more to create hypnotic, dreamlike songs. Both albums were intelligent, catchy and hugely inventive and if there was any justice in this world then both should have reached a much wider audience.

2009 found Lettie occupying an excellent support slot on Peter Murphy's European tour (Murphy's producer David Baron had worked with Lettie on her albums), plus she gained some valuable exposure via the BBC Electric Proms, and in 2010 she was performing on the BBC Introducing... stage at Glastonbury.

Then it all seemed to go quiet. Occasional new songs trickled out onto you tube, there were indications that a new album, probably called Other Days, was underway but then everything seemed to grind to a halt. Lettie had to keep what seemed like several day jobs running in order to fund her music, but the daily grind appeared to be robbing her of her passion for songwriting. Her online blog hinted at more personal relationship problems too with the result that a number of completed tracks were then abandoned.

In the autumn of 2010 Lettie spent a couple of weeks with David Baron at his studios in the US and it was there that the bulk of the new album took shape. As on her previous records Baron co-wrote the music but this time, instead of it being mainly the two of them creating all the music, Baron called in some formidable talent to assist with many of the tracks. Among them were drummer Zachary Alford (Bowie, B52's and many others), bassist Sara Lee (Robert Fripp, Gang of Four, Robyn Hitchcock, B52's and tons of others) and guitarist Danny Blume (a massive array of artists from Kid Creole and the Coconuts to John Cale).

Over the course of 2011 the album was slowly tweaked and teased into shape - a few tracks were dropped as newer improved songs were added and by the end of 2011 David Baron had mixed and mastered the final version. The long and troublesome gestation period has been well worth it, as the new album is surely her strongest collection of songs yet. The title Good Fortune, Bad Weather obliquely hints at the ups and downs endured in trying to get this record finally ready (even the cover photo caused problems as the original photographer turned out to be a con man who ran off with Lettie's hard earned money!) But all those trials are forgotten when the songs kick in, for the album is a wonderful collection of uniformly strong tunes.

These songs (the fourteenth was added when Lettie decided that it would be bad luck to have only thirteen) cover all of Lettie's styles and add considerably more. Her vocals are stronger than ever across the whole collection and her lyrics range from what appear to be personal and intimate to rather more oblique subjects such as technology and robotics.

"Swirl" starts the album off with an amusingly sly lyric having a dig at X Factor and similar talent shows (surely that's Cowell as 'the puppetmaster'?). The irony is that while this song is 100 times better than anything ever produced by a TV talent show, I doubt Lettie would ever get anywhere on X Factor as she's too original to fit into any of their shallow pigeon holes. Thank goodness.

"Lucky" initially sounds like a throwback to an earlier Lettie sound, all simple keyboard and breathless vocals but with every passing line the sound grows and deepens and by the midway point you realise that a full band is playing. This is then topped off by a delightfully playful piano which joins the band and jauntily plays until the end. Such a fun song. 

"Bitter"- an incessant acoustic guitar underpins the whole song, but layers of other instruments all but bury it at times. This is a cracking tune with a terrific chorus. Great drumming from Zachary Alford. 

"Never Want To Be Alone" is a brilliant dance floor stomper, and would be great to hear on the radio. Interestingly it seems like Lettie and David let their influences run riot on the track. It might just be me but in the ghostly synth intro I can hear the choral fade out of Bowie's "Word On A Wing", the jumpy keyboard melody sounds a bit like "My Sharona" and the heavenly backing vocals on the choruses remind me of Kraftwerk's "Metropolis", but it's all stirred together in a perfect slice of infectious electro pop that manages to sound totally fresh. Possibly the catchiest track on the album, and certainly the most upbeat.

"Sanctuary" is up there with "Mission" as one of my favourite Lettie tracks. Again there's a rhythm track with skittering electronics mixed with Alford's powerful beats. I love the desultory 'oh, ohh's which come in faintly on the verses. As with many of the tracks on this record it's the little details that impress. Nearly every song allows the listener to find more and more happening in the backing tracks. The more you listen the more you discover. David Baron has managed to create fascinatingly complex musical beds for the songs, but at no point do any of the songs sound cluttered or overly busy, which is quite an achievement. 

"Digital" has some very amusing lyrics which seem to encapsulate Lettie's love of mixing the old and defunct with the modern, shiny and new. 'I've still got VHS, and tapes inside my car', yet everything is going digital... like the brilliant little synth solo in the middle eight which sounds like an updated version of Eno's analogue VCS3 freak out on Roxy Music's "Editions Of You".

Without a pause we move into "Pandora". Truly funky and full of little guitar licks from Danny Blume. Great bass work from Sara Lee. The chorus is beautiful, and the track is the seventh song in a row which would make a very commercial single.

"Fitter" - another one which could easily be a hit, given the chance. Great lyrics and I love the little touches again. The stuttering synths after the choruses are terrific, and the handclaps are lovely. (Another bit of back up to my argument that many songs are immediately improved with the addition of either handclaps or oboes - of course that depends on whether the song is upbeat or melancholy...)

Mind you, violins also really help with an introspective mood. "Mister Lighter" was available last year for a while but didn't have the beautiful strings or vibes that this version has. And both really complete the song. It's a lovely arrangement too, almost like chamber music. Gorgeous vocal, really intimate and up front, as if Lettie is right beside you. 

"Aluminium Man" was also up on you tube last year with a funny video. The idea of a robot boyfriend made out of recycled aluminium cans seems both very amusing and very ecologically sound. Much fun to be had from this song with the delightfully robotic synths and the rigidly clattering drum pattern.

A total change of mood with the title track as Lettie solemnly intones "Good Fortune, Bad Weather" over a dub reggae backing, all shuffling beats and heavily echoed rimshots. It's as if we're deep inside the speakers as the whole song takes on a very dreamlike quality. Gentle whistling and half heard guitar only add to the faintly spooky air. I could happily have more of this sort of stuff.

"Come Back" is a rather sad little song of yearning, but again it's full of detail and invention. Based around a pulsing guitar "Come Back" is expanded by some great swirly keyboards as well some incongruously jaunty whistling, which actually works perfectly.

"Crash And Burn" harks back to the sparser sound of "Everyman", but there's nothing wrong with that. Is it perhaps about the crook who ripped off Lettie over the album photos? Seems like it could be... 'can you forgive yourself?' But although the lyrics hint at retribution the song's arrangement is kept fairly light with some gentle piano accompanying the guitar for most of the song, along with some more of David's synths. 

"On And On" closes the album on a quiet note. Choral synths start us off before guitars and cheery keyboards join in, with slide guitar taking us to the fade out. It sounds to me as if it could have gone on longer, but the song decided that, once it's achieved what it needed to, it simply chose to fade away. Which again somehow fits perfectly with the sometimes dreamlike quality of many of the tracks.

Basically this one hell of an album. Every song is strong, different from each other, original, inventive, charming, supremely catchy and above all extremely entertaining. It's a great way to spend 45 minutes, and another 45 minutes, and another... Because I'm pretty certain that after one listen almost anyone would be hooked. 

a ramble through some electronic music

I suppose, to be strictly accurate, that ALL music that appears on CD, or on magnetic tape, or even on old fashioned phonographic records is electronic in some form. The grooves on a gramophone record aren't smooth or even, there are minute textures that are registered by the movement of the stylus and these textures are then, electronically, translated back into audible sound. Likewise recording onto tape creates fluctuations in the magnetic field strength and these fluctuations can be converted, electronically, back into sound. 

Now, in the digital age, actual sound is sampled and converted into discrete binary numbers or pure data, the faster the sample rate, the higher the recording quality. It doesn't get more electronic than this.

But what I'm really talking about is music created by electronic means, not by striking a piano key, or hitting a snare drum or strumming a guitar string. The word synthesizer is often used as an umbrella to describe various electronic keyboards and gizmos, but synthesizers really just manipulate other sounds, and rarely create their own.

Brian Eno used a VCS3 on the early Roxy Music records. It was simply a box, carried in a medium sized suitcase that could change and distort any imput signal. Usually Phil Manzanera's guitar was fed into the VCS3 for Eno to play with. Frequently the guitar sound that emanated would be backwards, or treated to sound like a crashing plane. In the same way Andy Mackay's saxophone mic would be fed through Eno's synth to create the most other worldly sounds. The VCS3 had no keyboard and thus could not be 'played' as an instrument in it's own right, instead Eno had a series of knobs to twiddle to affect the sounds and would have to frantically switch the leads over when he wanted to switch from guitar to sax and from there to electric piano. One reviewer memorably compared him to a crazed telephone operator. 

Of course at the same time synths were being created that did have their own keyboards or joysticks, meaning that analogue input wasn't always needed. Bob Moog set his tonal manipulators into smart wooden surrounds creating a keyboard that was more akin to a piece of furniture. At least it was fully electronic. Mellotrons, a mainstay of prog rock from the mid sixties onwards relied on samples of sound recorded onto short loops of tape, which could then be played in the same way as a conventional keyboard. The sustained strings sounds thus created were usually beautiful, but Mellotrons were liable to drift out of tune due to fluctuations in the power supply, or tapes that frequently stretched. Robert Fripp coined a number of helpful maxims for the various members of King Crimson, one of which runs simply 'Tuning a Mellotron doesn't.' 

By the mid 1970s synths were portable enough, easier to control and genuinely play, and were capable of creating a huge variety of realistically musical sounds. Rock bands were generally wary of such new fangled devices, usually adopting the attitude that if you couldn't play guitar like Clapton, or drum like Bonham then you couldn't possibly be a 'real' musician. Even Pete Townshend was viewed with suspicion when he incorporated arpegiated synths into "Won't Get Fooled Again". Later in the mid 1970s Queen famously stated that their albums did not feature synthesiz, as if this was something to be admired.

So those who played electronic music started on the fringes. German bands loved the technological aspects of synths and fully utilised the wide range of sounds to found. Tangerine Dream initially created cosmic journies to the outer galaxies, before gradually switching to gently warm and inviting synth pop; NEU!, Cluster and Harmonia emphasized the rhythmic capabilities of the early percussion programmes, building complex melodies around an unwavering mechanised beat, and Kraftwerk took both aspects to create perhaps the most carefully crafted, ultra precise music ever heard, but somehow they were able to avoid their music sounding clinical and imbued it with a warmth and humanity that many other bands would struggle to achieve. For all their Man Machine pretensions the secret of Kraftwerk's success lay in the fact that the men fully controlled the machines. And men could make mistakes. And, for that matter, the machines were not 100% reliable either. These analogue machines had moving parts, valves, transistors, elements which could wear out, switches that could break or overheat, circuit boards that would change their performance depending on the humidity of the room, sounds that would fluctuate depending on the reliability of the electricity supply around the world. This was not cold, clinical unvarying music at all. The sounds created by the early synth musicians has all the vagaries of 'real' music, and thus it contains a genuine warmth and an emotional punch that later digital music cannot possess.

In the mid 1970s Brian Eno experimented with tape loops. He played a simple rising and falling motif on a keyboard and recorded on tape loops of varying length. When the loops were played back simultaneously, but at different speeds, the overlapping notes created a hypnotically calming effect. Eno would set this up and let it play for hours while he read, and then he decided to record a snapshot of this potentially endless music. Half an hour was released as Discreet Music in 1976. But what could have been very calculated and clinical is nothing of the sort, and perhaps surprisingly the whole piece has a strong emotional core. This is all down to movement. The tape loops physically move, and none can be absolutely precise. The combination of sounds they generate pushes the air around and this is captured on yet more tape, before being physically carved onto vinyl. Another potentially variable movement occurs when you play the record. This actual genuine movement surely contributes to what moves the listener emotionally. A digital version of this wouldn't have the same impact. In fact Eno once tried to digitally recreate Discreet Music. And he failed miserably. There was no way to recreate the effects of various tapes at different unstable speeds and pitches. The digital version wanted to correct all the wobbles and unevenness, although it's exactly these imperfections which that give the original it's power.

The differences between analogue and digital are clearly demonstrated by Jean-Michel Jarre. His pioneering albums Oxygene and Equinox are fabulous, with a warm buzzy sound to the analogue synths that is missing from most synth music once digital becomes the norm. By 1983 he'd converted to digital and sure enough all the warmth has gone. Zoolook still contains some cool tunes but it relies too heavily on technology which doesn't have the heart and soul of the old valve driven Moogs and ARPs that powered Oxygene.

One of the main problems with digital music is that it is generally so unwavering that it quickly becomes repetitive. Back in 1975 Brian Eno came up with some helpful aphorisms to overcome creative blocks. One of the most famous of these Oblique Strategies reads - "Repetition is a form of change". But this was coined before unwavering digital repetition which allows for no change at all. Repetition is only a form of change where there is a human and therefore unstable element in the equation. Which is why Kraftwerk continue to have such a large involvement in the controlling of their concerts. They don't simply turn up and press 'play' on their laptops; each concert is actually quite different as the four members take a very strong control over the programmes and samples that go to make up their music. And stuff often goes wrong. Without the human element the show would be very flat.

These sorts of problems are being recognised and there is a gradual movement back to analogue synths and moving part technology. Actually recording the music digitally is fine and allows for all sorts of improvements in storage and transfer, but it's become widely accepted that creating music digitally can lead to dullness and a cold unfriendly end result. Many synths are starting to have random elements built in, to replicate at least some of the variables of using tape. This is surely a good thing. Our human ears are not machines and our brains can cope with sounds that are not absolutely perfect. In fact our brains make the tinye adjustments needed to compensate for a dropped beat or a slightly out of tune note. If the music is so perfect, with little or no human variation then our brains actually switch off, as there is nothing for them to do. What ought to be active listening becomes something passive and therefore a fairly pointless exercise.

Music exists to played, not repeated by a machine. Music is something that humans have created, something that inspires us and moves us and involves us. Music needs to played by people - it doesn't matter what instruments are used, or whether it's a triangle or a violin or a complex synthesizer, what matters is the human involvement and the physical movement of the sound through the air molecules. That is music.

To perhaps a lesser degree the same applies to Kraftwerk. The sequencers and buzzes of The Man Machine album give it an organic, rich feel, but the Boings and Tschaks of Electric Cafe, fun and brilliantly constructed though they are, are much colder and less welcoming. It's only with very recent advances in technology that digital synths can give off that much needed warmer feel. But digital still can't give you that actual physical movement of sound created by moving parts in the machinery and the stylus scratching away at the vinyl... 

the idiot - iggy pop

The first seeds of what became The Idiot were sown when David Bowie visited the hospital room occupied by Iggy Pop and proposed a collaboration.

Early 1975 found Iggy Pop disillusioned with the whole Los Angeles scene, musically and chemically. His band, the Stooges, had imploded in February 1974 after years of heavy drug abuse, poor record sales, and increasingly violent and unhappy concerts. After spending much of 1974 just hanging around Los Angeles, Iggy took the long overdue decision to clean up his act. His unorthodox and frankly extraordinary method of getting clean was to voluntarily check himself into the UCLA Hospital, where he figured that he would be able to detox, undergo cold turkey, have some square meals provided and get some long overdue rest. But as his behaviour had been so erratic he was actually committed to the Neuropsychiatric Ward. After a week he’d had enough and tried to leave, but Iggy found that the doctors had decided that he was not safe to release – he was too crazy, even for LA! Iggy was forced to remain in the Neuropsychiatric Ward for some weeks and gradually he recovered from being a slobbering pill popping idiot into a more socially acceptable human being. But he did this virtually alone. He received very few visitors. Hunt and Tony Sales, who would form the backbone of his next band, and Stooges keyboard player Scott Thurston came to see him, as did his Stooges songwriting partner James Williamson. Encouraging and supportive though this was however, the most important of his visitors was undoubtedly David Bowie. Iggy had rarely seen David since the Raw Power mixing sessions in November 1972 but the two had kept in occasional contact. According to Iggy, David smuggled in some cocaine for them to share, then suggested yet another revival of Iggy’s career. Bowie had dozens of half written songs - Iggy could help him finish them. Iggy was delighted. Finally someone was showing faith in him.

During the spring of 1975 James Williamson and Scott Thurston, together with Brian Glascock on drums and Steve Tranio on bass recorded most of the backing tracks that would eventually become Kill City. On carefully sanctioned weekend leave from UCLA, Iggy recorded his vocals in short frantic bursts. Shortly after completing work on the new songs Iggy was fully released from hospital and he immediately hawked the tapes around the various LA record companies. James Williamson tried to dissuade Iggy, as he wasn’t convinced that the record was properly finished, but James needn’t have worried as Iggy’s reputation as a waster and a junkie had preceded him and no-one was willing to take a chance on him. Iggy later said, ‘I had a bad reputation in LA, which is a bad place to have a bad reputation.’

As a postscript to the Williamson / Pop sessions it’s worth noting that the tapes would remain locked away for two years and it was only in late 1977 that Williamson, now working at Paramount recording studios as an engineer, decided to make some cash from his time with Iggy. James dug out the 1975 tapes and with some judicious overdubs and careful remixing presented them to Bomp! records as Kill City. By late 1977 the Stooges were being venerated as the progenitors of punk and Kill City finally made sense. (A superbly remixed and remastered version of Kill City was issued in 2010 – the album sounds terrific now, full of fire and passion, and is considered by both Iggy and James to be a triumph.)

Meanwhile back in 1975 – Iggy remained undeterred by the lack of takers for his new recordings and contacted Bowie to see if his offer of studio time still stood. It did, and Rolling Stone’s Cameron Crowe witnessed the few days of recording. Crowe’s article, published in the February 1976 issue of Rolling Stone, spoke admiringly of Iggy’s ability to improvise at the mike – termed ‘verbal jazz’ by Bowie. Bowie himself came across as tired and coked out. Paranoid and hugely weary of LA he would soon flee the city to spend the summer making his first film, The Man Who Fell To Earth, in New Mexico.

These sessions at the small Oz studio in LA were significant as they represented the first time that Bowie and Pop had ever recorded together. Iggy was firing on all cylinders, vocally and lyrically, and David had tons of ideas for songs – too many it appeared, as at one point he moaned to Cameron Crowe ‘another song, that’s the last thing I need!’ Bowie’s old friend Geoff MacCormack, at that time known as Warren Peace, came up with a soulful piano melody over which Iggy improvised a semi-spoken, semi-sung reflection on heavy drug use. The end result, the astonishing “Turn Blue”, was abandoned and only finished off during the January 1977 rehearsals for the Idiot tour, finally being recorded Lust For Life in May 1977. “Drink To Me” was a new piece which Iggy improvised over a dirge-like Bowie instrumental in which David had played all the instruments. Another track, “Moving On”, was also abandoned and left unfinished while a further song, “Sell Your Love”, was an abortive attempt to remake the already Bowie-esque Kill City track.

After a couple of days the unpredictable Iggy went missing. David mooched about the studio muttering ‘I hope he’s not dead, he’s got a good act.’ But with Iggy still AWOL Bowie headed off to New Mexico where he would be kept busy filming for the rest of the summer. Iggy meanwhile had returned to his hedonistic ways and the rest of 1975 was pretty much written off. All thoughts of a Bowie / Pop collaboration appeared to have been forgotten.

Early 1976 found Bowie making some harsh resolutions. Determined to kick his severe cocaine addiction he decided that the only way would be to distance himself from Los Angeles. An American and European tour would keep him on the road from 2^nd February until 18^th May. Bowie decided to buy a house in Switzerland and his wife Angie set about finding a new home – this was seen by many as a last ditch attempt to patch up their failing marriage.

Bowie left Los Angeles behind and set off on tour. He only returned to LA for three nights at the Inglewood Forum where one of the backstage liggers was Iggy Pop. Enthused by Bowie’s determination to travel the world and leave his drug-ridden lifestyle behind Iggy eagerly accepted David’s offer to travel with him.

During rehearsals Bowie’s guitarist Carlos Alomar had been playing a funky guitar piece. Bowie quickly recognised the tune’s potential and added some sketchy lyrics, which referred in part to his recent film role in The Man Who Fell To Earth. As a work in progress the song, a bass heavy, slow funk track entitled “Calling Sister Midnight” was performed a handful of times on the Station To Station tour. After Iggy Pop joined the entourage, talk turned to a new collaboration between the two, and the unfinished song was suggested as a possible single - to be performed by Pop and produced by Bowie.

As soon as the tour ended in Paris on 18^th May David and Iggy took the chance to book some studio time at the Château d’Herouville, about an hour from Paris. Beautiful grounds surrounded the sixteenth century Château, which had opened in 1969 as probably the world’s first residential studio suite. David loved the space and relaxed vibe of the Château, but at night the slightly creepy atmosphere unnerved him – ‘the studio itself was a joy, ramshackle and comfy… (but) it was a spooky place. I did refuse one bedroom, as it felt impossibly cold in certain areas of it.’

With no clear idea as to where they were heading David and Iggy set to work. Whenever Iggy was stuck for a direction or a lyric David would usually come up with some left field suggestion. “Funtime” started life as a very straightforward song entitled “Fun Fun Fun” until Bowie suggested that to get away from the overtly rock style maybe Iggy should adopt the style of Mae West! At other junctures he suggested that Iggy should sing more deeply than ever before - ‘He pushed forward the proposition that my bass registers were more impressive and interesting than my rock registers… I worked to make it as dark and kinky as possible.’ Iggy has hinted that this working relationship was not without conflict – he later commented, ‘how can two friends make music like that?’ Being a background director rather than the star calling the shots was an unusual position for Bowie, but one that he thoroughly enjoyed.

Another innovation was Iggy’s insistence on using the primitive drum machines he found at the Château. Iggy had begun his music career as a drummer and was fascinated by the unwavering machine driven rhythms. Bowie also loved the mechanical drumming of Kraftwerk and Neu!, which although played by real musicians created similar stripped down beats. “Nightclubbing” features a throbbing drum machine throughout and “Funtime” (which shows a remarkable similarity to Neu!’s “Lila Engel”) sees a drum machine underpinning some ‘real’ percussion. By contrast, “Baby” has no drum sounds at all, taking its rhythm track from the darkly descending stabs of synthesizer.

Much of the music was played by David and Iggy themselves, and in the absence of any musician credits it is often assumed that Bowie’s regular band assisted. In fact, French session drummers, Michel Marie and Michel Santageli, augmented the initial Château sessions. In addition to engineering and co-producing the Château sessions, the manager of the Château, Laurent Thibault, contributed some bass. Previously the bassist in experimental French band Magma, Thibault was somewhat put out when he received no credit whatsoever when the album was finally released. Bowie himself played keyboards, sax and much of the guitar. According to Iggy, 'David plays better Angry Young Guitar than any Angry Young Guitar Player I’ve ever heard, apart from James Williamson.' But at some point during the Château sessions it was decided that, despite Iggy’s enthusiasm, Bowie’s limited ability on lead guitar would need to be augmented. Ricky Gardiner, a Scottish guitarist recommended by Bowie’s producer Tony Visconti was initially called up, but before he could journey to Paris, session guitarist (and nephew of Ray Davies) Phil Palmer added some overdubs to “Nightclubbing”, “Dum Dum Boys” and notably the brilliant conclusion to “China Girl”. Gardiner was recalled a couple of months later to play on Bowie’s Low.

A usual day at the Château would consist of Bowie constructing loops of music culled from long exploratory jams. The French musicians were unsure of what was going on as Bowie would rarely issue any instructions and song structures only became apparent much later. Yet despite the lack of focus Bowie would regularly declare that he was delighted with what had been played. He would then fiddle around with the tapes for hours while Iggy spread dozens of sheets of paper across the floor writing lyrics manically on them all. One song that wasn’t finished during The Idiot sessions was a short spiky piece characterised by an urgently twisting guitar line. Never one to waste a good tune Bowie took it with him at the end of the sessions and turned it into “What In the World” on Low - with Iggy on backing vocals.

The Château sessions stretched into July, but had to be curtailed as other artists had booked the studios during August. Although Bowie himself was due back at the Château in September to record what would become Low, he and Iggy were determined not to lose the impetus of their new music. At very short notice they were able to secure a fortnight at Munich’s Musicland Studios at the start of August. There they met and discussed synthesized rhythms with Donna Summer’s producer Giorgio Moroder. Whilst in Munich Iggy and David also found time to travel to Düsseldorf to meet Kraftwerk. Iggy was surprised to find that Ralf Hütter had been a huge fan of the Stooges. This meeting would be immortalised in Kraftwerk’s song “Trans-Europe Express” – ‘from station to station, to Düsseldorf City, meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie’.

When Bowie returned to the Château at the start of September to begin work on the album that would become Low, the Iggy songs were far from complete. The intention was to finish off the Iggy project with Bowie’s band, as well as record the new Bowie album, but after a couple of weeks the Château sessions were abandoned. Bad vibes caused by Bowie’s litigation with former manager Michael Lippman, and bad stomachs caused by food poisoning sent Bowie in search of another studio. Impressed with Musicland, David was keen to return to Germany. The availability of the Hansa studios in Potsdamer Platz, West Berlin coincided with Bowie’s desire to visit the city, so in October 1976 the sessions moved to Hansa. Both Iggy and David immediately fell in love with Berlin. Iggy would later comment, ‘I always wanted to come to Germany, even when I was a kid. I read everything about it. I always knew I wanted to come here, just like some guys always knew they wanted to wear a dress.’

Abandoning all thoughts of returning to Angie and his nominal home in Switzerland David rented a seven-room apartment at 155 Hauptstrasse, Schoeneberg. Iggy took a smaller flat in the same block. The apartments, above a café and a shop selling car spares, were within walking distance of the Hansa Studios and were situated in a relatively poor area, popular with Turkish immigrants. It was a far cry from the sumptuous houses David had rented in Los Angeles, but this was the intention. As West Berlin offered 24 hour bars and clubs, plus way more drugs and drink than Los Angeles, in retrospect it might seem an odd place in which to settle for two men trying to escape excess, but both David and Iggy delighted in the anonymity that West Berlin gave them. A remote city, stuck on it’s own in the middle of East Germany, Berlin’s divided schizophrenic nature appealed enormously to them.

Both men adored the faded glamour and seedy sense of fun associated with the tail end of the cabaret scene. There was a big drag queen crowd that intrigued David and Iggy, with celebrated nightclub host(ess) Romy Haag becoming a close friend. Although David described his life in Berlin as ‘therapeutic’ he would only fully live there for just over a year, until Christmas 1977. Iggy on the other hand, called West Berlin his home until at least late 1979, sharing his life for much of the time with Esther Friedmann. The daughter of a diplomat, Esther was an excellent photographer but had never heard of Iggy before she met him in a bar in late 1976. Their relationship lasted for nearly three years, allowing stability and calm into Iggy’s life for the first time in ages.

Iggy also loved the surprising amount of space that Berlin offered. ‘It's a big thing, the Berlin luft…the air sweeps in off the Ukraine plains. I like to walk around. When I first got here, I just walked and walked. Not thinking about anything. Just talking to myself.’ Later Iggy took up running, spending hours sprinting through Berlin’s many parks, building up his strength and stamina in the process. Though not as committed to a fitness regime as Iggy, Bowie took to cycling around the city.

Although the usual line is that David and Iggy fled to Berlin to escape the drugs and craziness of the States it’s quite clear that neither man was as clean as most stories state. In recent years both have hinted that their chemical intake in Berlin was still quite prodigious. Iggy outlined a typical scene - ‘There’s seven days in a week. Two days for bingeing for old time’s sake. Two more days for recovery, and that left three days to do any other activity’. Nevertheless despite relatively heavy reliance on stimulants both men were generally in a more positive frame of mind than at any time in the previous couple of years. Both had rediscovered their enthusiasm for music, and their work together would find them pushing each other to new heights. The final results were eight astonishing songs.

 “Sister Midnight” had been completed at the Château – harder, denser and more remorseless than the funky song originated by Carlos Alomar. A muddy wash of distorted guitars struggle to rise above the relentless thud of bass and drums. The whole song contains an unsettling mood of foreboding. Iggy’s lyrics incorporate elements of a disquieting Oedipal dream, which concluded with his father hunting him down ‘with his six gun’. ‘What can I do about my dreams?’ calls Iggy. Write them into compelling songs it seems. Bowie later used Carlos Alomar’s tune as the basis for a new song - “Red Money” - on his 1979 album Lodger, although it was “Sister Midnight” itself that was resurrected by David as one of the undoubted highlights of his 2003/2004 Reality tour.

During the recording of The Idiot Iggy was quoted as saying that his new music was a sort of cross between James Brown and Kraftwerk. He must have had “Nightclubbing” firmly in mind - with its powerful blanked out drum machine beats and wobbly bass it’s a fearsome slice of Germanic music, yet still retains an undeniably funky edge. Iggy acknowledged the song’s influences by singing the first verse in German on his autumn 1977 tour. “Nightclubbing” accurately outlines the sort of lifestyle that Iggy and David were living and its machine driven new wave sound ensured that it became a firm favourite with the post-punk bands. Human League incorporated “Nightclubbing” into a cracked medley with Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part Two.” Grace Jones recorded a seriously moody version as the title track for her 1980 album. And “Nightclubbing” was surely a big influence on Gary Numan.

Just as “Nightclubbing” described Iggy’s life in 1976, so too does “Funtime.” Interestingly the lyrics to both songs are in the plural (‘we like your lips’, ‘we’re nightclubbing’ etc), which emphasizes the importance of David in the action. In keeping with the title “Funtime” has a much more carefree feeling than that evoked on “Nightclubbing” and it’s cheery refrain ‘all aboard for funtime’ has the effect on including the listener too. “Funtime” has been covered by numerous artists, including Peter Murphy, who also recorded a delightfully lazy ‘cabaret’ version.

In contrast to the joyous abandon of “Funtime”, “Baby” is a rather depressing experience. Angular shards of guitar cut through ominous descending synth chords as Iggy produces a numb Sinatra croon.

But side one crashes out on a genuine high with “China Girl.” The song kicks off at full pelt with the album’s most euphoric melody full of robust guitars, gloriously swirling synthetic strings and all topped with a vaguely oriental sounding toy piano that Bowie had found at the Château. Thanks to the worldwide success of Bowie’s cover in 1983, “China Girl” is probably is probably Iggy’s best-known song. Originally called “Borderline” it is a prime example of a classic Bowie tune mixed with Iggy’s outré lyrics and imagery. There are elements of imperialism, and the corrupting influence of the West (‘I’ll give you’ll television, I’ll give you eyes of blue, I’ll give you men who want to rule the world’). But it’s also oddly romantic - the lovely self-referential line towards the end of the lyric as the little china girl says ‘Oh Jimmy, just you shut your mouth…’ ensures a moment of genuine emotion. Iggy would later describe “China Girl” as being about falling in love with someone from another culture. It appears that during the initial Château sessions a frequent visitor was Kuelan Higelin, an oriental friend of Skydog records boss Marc Zermati. Iggy frequented Zermati’s Paris record shop and had something of a crush on Kuelan. 

Side two of The Idiot opens with a low piano picking out a mournful refrain while Iggy mutters about what happened to the Stooges. It makes for somewhat depressing listening, as failure and death seemed to be their fates –

Dave Alexander (original Stooges bass player, died in 1975 from alcohol related illness);

Zeke Zettner (one of Zander’s replacements, died of an overdose in 1975 after volunteering for Vietnam service in order to score cheap heroin);

Rock Action (Scott Asheton - Stooges drummer, back living with his mother, but still playing drums);

‘Strait’ James Williamson (Stooges guitarist 1970 – 1974, “he’s going straight” mutters Iggy punningly, working as a studio engineer in Los Angeles).

Oddly, there’s no mention of Stooges guitarist / bassist Ron Asheton who was beginning a solid if unspectacular career as a guitarist in New Order (not the later UK band formed from the ruins of Joy Division) with other ex-Stooges Jimmy Recca and Scott Thurston.

Roll call over and the song, “Dum Dum Boys” blasts off in a mass of grinding guitars and powerfully thudding drums. Bowie attempted to play the remorselessly twisting guitar lines but his inexperience led to Phil Palmer overdubbing much of the guitar, based on Bowie’s original attempts. The song itself is a surprisingly straightforward and accurate recollection of the career of the Stooges from standing ‘in front of the old drug store’ to when ‘the boys broke down.’ Intriguingly the last verse offers an olive branch to those Stooges that remained alive - ‘Where are you now, when I need your noise?’ Throughout the song the incessant guitar squeals evoke the feeling, if not the actual sound, of the Stooges, and this inspires Iggy to let rip on his vocals for the only time on this album.

The mood then suddenly switches. “Tiny Girls” is a tender and beautiful interlude between the two longest tracks on the album and this little gem is all too frequently overlooked. Opening with a peacefully reflective Bowie saxophone melody, the song meanders along on a bed of warm and fuzzy mechanised drums for nearly a minute before Iggy’s vocals appear. Part snarl, part croon the vocals address the demands of the young groupies who pursued Iggy. All their perceived shortcomings are listed over the sedate pseudo waltz backing. Lyrically the song represents a real departure for Iggy as a truly adult, wisely poetic quality, not previously apparent in his writing, reveals itself. With a weary ‘ah, what did ya think?’ Iggy lets Bowie’s trademark asthmatic sax return to play the tune out for a final minute. “Tiny Girls” is a genuine delight; swamped in welcoming reverb and echo, it’s probably the most human and emotional song on an album all too often characterised as emotionless and numb.

With the recording of “Mass Production” at Hansa in October, the Iggy Pop songs were finally completed. Bowie’s regular bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis played on this nightmarish song, inspired by the sometimes bleak and frightening industrial landscapes that Iggy remembered from home. Parts of Berlin’s industrial areas reminded him of the massive production line factories of Michigan and he strove to replicate factory sounds and mechanical noises. The song fades in slowly with weird siren-like sounds and concludes with harsh blasts of foghorn-like synths. (Interestingly, a bootleg recording of Kraftwerk live in 1971 opens with strikingly similar electronic sounds.) The music seeks to conjure up harsh and dirty Metropolis visions of men subordinated by machines. The lyrics are despairing, with suicidal thoughts and miserable references to the production line nature of groupies. All in all this powerful chunk of Germanic rock is simply one of the best and most under-rated tracks that both Bowie and Pop have ever been involved in and it makes for a truly epic conclusion to the album. This track, arguably more than any other on The Idiot carved out a new and influential way forward - Joy Division, Gary Numan and the doomy side of the European new wave owe much to The Idiot and especially “Mass Production.” When poor Ian Curtis was discovered hanging, The Idiot was still revolving slowly on his record player.

With the recording over, Tony Visconti assisted David with the final mix of the Iggy songs. Partly due to the haphazard recording process and partly due to the new technology used and not properly understood, Visconti’s work was, in his words, something of ‘a salvage job.’

The title of the album came from Bowie. Not only is it a reference to Dostoyevsky’s novel, the story of which offered strong parallels with Iggy’s life (a Russian prince, who’s honest soul and big-hearted kindness is sometimes taken for simple mindedness, returns from an asylum) but it is also an affectionate jibe at Iggy’s inept social skills. 

The grey cover photo of Iggy in the rain was taken by Andrew Kent, not Bowie as is often claimed. It shows a new Iggy, looking slightly fearfully into the camera whilst holding his arms in an awkwardly twisted stiff manner. The photo invoked feelings of madness and insanity, ideas that are reinforced by the stark title of the album. The pose was directly copied from a 1906 painting that hung in the Brücke Museum in West Berlin - Roquairol by Erich Heckel. (Bowie would later copy another Brücke painting - Walter Gramatte’s self portrait - for the cover of his 1977 album “Heroes”.) The grey back cover contained all the lyrics but very little else – no list of musicians, for example.

David then used his influence at RCA to secure a three-album deal for Iggy. Bowie must have been persuasive as it is somewhat surprising that RCA were willing to bankroll three albums by someone who had spent some months in the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute only a year earlier and who’s previous albums had shown little discernable commercial appeal. RCA did however hold the album back until March 1977 when Iggy had agreed to tour to promote the record. In the meantime Bowie’s Low had been completed and released. Originally submitted to RCA as New Music: Night and Day the Bowie album had been met with a stunned silence at RCA. Lacking any of the strong commercial sense shown by Station To Station or Young Americans RCA seriously considered not issuing the record. Bowie had also rejected their offer to tour in support of his new album suggesting instead that he would tour with Iggy, as a pianist only. RCA reluctantly let the now retitled Low out in January 1977. With minimal promotion it still sold respectably and the delightfully anti-commercial single “Sound And Vision” perversely became one of Bowie’s biggest hits. With Low out of the way RCA finally issued The Idiot on 18^th March 1977.

Not surprisingly, due to the Bowie connection, The Idiot had an enormous expectancy to deliver. Billboard somewhat surprisingly praised Bowie for making Iggy more commercial, a comment echoed by many other reviews. Whether this was actually true is a moot point, but the Bowie touch was assumed to have softened Iggy’s nihilistic vision. Certainly The Idiot was nothing like as commercial as any of Bowie’s records (including Low). It’s swampy, muddy sound wasn’t radio friendly and despite RCA’s efforts to extract a couple of singles (“Sister Midnight” ahead of the album in February 1977, and “China Girl” in May) clearly neither were going to set the charts alight. But the critics were impressed and The Idiot had some high profile fans. Brian Eno loved the heavy industrial sound of the album, and he accurately described that listening to The Idiot was like having your head encased in concrete. Eno had been delighted when he first met David and Iggy at the Château – they could both hum, apparently note for note, the (No Pussyfooting) album of guitar abstractions and tape loops that he’d released with Robert Fripp in 1973. According to some sources Eno mixed “Sister Midnight” during the Low sessions at the Château – certainly the drums sounds are very Enoid – but as with virtually everything else on The Idiot, it went uncredited.

The strong Bowie influence led to some accusations throughout the year that Iggy was now somehow Bowie’s puppet. David went to considerable effort to redress this viewpoint, even writing to the British music papers to deny that he was any kind of Svengali figure. The pair conducted a number of interviews together, which significantly raised Iggy’s profile, notably in April on US housewives’ favourite The Dinah Shore Show. Iggy turned on the charm and came across as witty and self-deprecating – nothing like the degenerate lunatic of legend. Iggy and his band also played “Funtime” and “Sister Midnight” with the lyrics changed so that middle America wouldn’t be shocked - Iggy now found potatoes in his bed, rather than his mother…

The Idiot was not a big success in 1977, but it has sold steadily over the years, and remains one of Iggy’s best selling records. The album received a considerable promotional boost when David agreed to tour with Iggy in March 1977. Backed by drummer Hunt Sales and his younger brother Tony on bass, plus Ricky Gardiner on guitar and David Bowie on keyboards, Iggy kicked off his first tour in three years on 1^st March 1977 at the Friars Club in Aylesbury. Although rumours of Bowie’s involvement on the tour had begun to spread beforehand it seems that few people genuinely reckoned that David Bowie would be simply the piano player in Iggy’s band. It was a remarkably humble gesture from David – he remained at the side of the stage, unlit, so as not to take the attention away from Iggy. Interestingly David had never seen Iggy perform to a crowd until the Friars show.

Iggy was adopted by the emerging punk movement, and frequently hailed as the Godfather Of Punk, something which he neither encouraged or appreciated. Iggy would take every opportunity to deride the term ‘punk’ telling CBC TV in Canada that it was only used by ‘dilettantes and heartless manipulators.’

The Idiot tour finished in San Diego 16^th April 1977, but Iggy was so hyped up from the successful gigs that, with only a couple of weeks break to write some new songs, he headed straight back to Hansa. There he would record one of his most successful albums ever – Lust For Life. But that’s another story.

kraftwerk

You Tube is great - you can watch all sorts of stuff that would otherwise be consigned to the deepest depths of your memory. I re-watched Kraftwerk appearing at the MTV Awards in 2004, which was actually their first ever live TV performance.

They were introduced by a chirpy Kylie, which seemed slightly odd for some reason. And then there they were, stern and unblinking behind four identical podiums upon which rested their portable Kling Klang Studio - simply four powerful laptops. There were few close-ups of the band, not surprising I guess as there wasn't actually much movement. Clad in green ‘Tron’ suits, glowing in the pulsing lights, motionless apart from occasional foot tapping from Fritz and Henning. Kraftwerk founders Ralf and Florian barely moved at all. Green linear graphics pulsed all over the stage, and all over the giant screens dotted around the venue, which seemed to imbue the whole place with a slightly sickly luminous green glow.

The song itself lived up to its title - “Aerodynamik” pulsed and throbbed and bubbled and bounced in it's ultra precise manner. It was quite simply fantastic - totally out of place at the MTV awards, but fantastic all the same. Inexplicably Kraftwerk are somehow terrifically thrilling to watch. They shouldn't be (lack of movement etc etc) but, unaccountably, they just are.

Rather wonderfully Kraftwerk has not really changed their sound over the past 40 years. More complex and powerful technology means simply that they are able to pursue their singular vision with more clarity and precision than ever before.