What do you think?
Rate this book
One day I blew my nose and half my brains came out." Los Angeles, 1976. David Bowie is holed up in his Bel-Air mansion, drifting into drug-induced paranoia and confusion. Obsessed with black magic and the Holy Grail, he's built an altar in the living room and keeps his fingernail clippings in the fridge. There are occasional trips out to visit his friend Iggy Pop in a mental institution. His latest album is the cocaine-fuelled Station To Station (Bowie: "I know it was recorded in LA because I read it was"), which welds R&B rhythms to lyrics that mix the occult with a yearning for Europe, after three mad years in the New World. Bowie has long been haunted by the angst-ridden, emotional work of the Die Brucke movement and the Expressionists. Berlin is their spiritual home, and after a chaotic world tour, Bowie adopts this city as his new sanctuary. Immediately he sets to work on Low, his own expressionist mood-piece.
144 pages, Paperback
First published August 19, 2005
46 people are currently reading
1,124 people want to read
About the author
Hugo Wilcken
9books7followersHugo Wilcken was born in Australia and is now based in Paris. He has written the novels The Reflection, Colony and The Execution, as well as a book about David Bowie's album Low.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 160 reviews
December 20, 2015
Jan/Oct 2015
This book isn't just about Low, it's about Station to Station and Iggy Pop's The Idiot. I'm cool with that.
But not so much with the author's casual overuse of psychiatric terms - especially, but not limited to, 'autistic' and 'schizophrenic'. He throws them about pejoratively, begging the question, "If you think these albums are so nuts, man, why do you even like them?" David Bowie has been a powerful destigmatising cultural force for all manner of weirdness, but Hugo Wilcken's pathologising approach contradicts and undermines that. His harsh judgement is also a disservice to a man whose later interviews showed coherent, non-jargonised understanding of the mess he'd once been in, and the effect that had on others (even if he can't remember all the concrete facts about the time) - a wisdom of age that's practically the antithesis of Angie Bowie's continued lack of self awareness. Wilcken also implies that interest in the occult is itself a sign of insanity. I had no choice but to dock a star - I even felt protective of Bowie, which he doesn't exactly need. Otherwise the book is very good.
33 1/3s don't have author bios, and all I found about Wilcken (whilst not trying very hard) was some info on his literary agent's site referring to his two novels. From this book, it's difficult to tell what his acquaintance with psychology is like - given that it's a field where approaches and opinions differ radically - but he must have been a proficient musician, and probably worked in studios, to give such detailed commentary on structures and production.
This does one of the main things I'd like from a book about music: to give names to the different sounds and effects and qualities I can hear, and Low does a good job. Not every single instance of "is that cute little gurgly sound on the left a theremin?", or whatever, is answered, but many such things are, along with similar questions I hadn't thought to ask. Those paragraphs would be good to revisit.
(Before the point, a couple of years ago, when I virtually stopped listening to music, I'd been trying to figure out how to learn to work these things out for myself - if there is a shortcut. I learned how to recognise the sound of orchestral instruments when I was a kid. But it seems peculiarly difficult to learn about the hidden nuts and bolts of popular music - which has a greater range of sounds - without being in a band, without being an active participant. I can't think of many subjects which still remain arcane unless you participate. What did I even need? Music appreciation courses were mostly about classical; Dummies-level books on production I looked at didn't seem quite the thing... )
The 33 1/3 book on Joni Mitchell's Court & Spark, which I read just before this, had a lot of discussion of her other albums � but I'm not super-keen on Joni Mitchell and that stuff probably would have been more interesting had I liked her music more. The theory was confirmed here, as I like most of Bowie's work, and loved hearing about every project mentioned in the book; Low-the-book is also better organised, and its way of relating works to one another is almost literary - as might be expected from a novelist.
The seeds of the album Low are seen in the title track of Station to Station and Eno's Another Green World. The Idiot was recorded, with Bowie producing, just before Low and the latter contained leftover material from it. I listened to Low, Another Green World and The Idiot in one day (the latter two, whilst I had them - among a bloated 250GB of music built up from my old CD collection, and a few friends and exes - I wasn't sure if I'd listened to before.) The family resemblance between the three albums was striking. Although each has its own character. Much of the Iggy Pop had the glamorously threatening moodiness of a Tarantino film, plus a couple of tracks that sounded oh so 90s - 'Dum Dum Boys' is a lot like a particular song I can't quite remember, and bits of 'Mass Production' reminded me of feedbacktastic experimental US college rock. 'China Girl', here originally sung by this 70s sleazebag whom no-one would expect to know better, fits better than it did with alert, corporate besuited 80s sellout Bowie who probably should have. Meanwhile, Another Green World has many Low-ish noises in the background, and surprising, innocent melody and vocals as if Gorky's Zygotic Mynci had adopted an English accent. (The title track and BBC Arena theme, inevitably, is its own separate, melancholy evocation of calm nights in across decades and their varying picture quality.) It now seems obvious that Gorky's were derivative of this � not that I had any idea at the time, twenty-odd years ago.
Back to Bowie's own work, Station to Station and Low I remembered across that two year gap as utterly central; those were the albums which it seemed impossible that I'd only consciously, repetitively listened to them for the first time this decade (no doubt they'd played in the background before). They felt like they'd been a part of my life as long as Suede or Modern Life is Rubbish. Bits of them had - albeit not the most characteristic songs � via the compilation ChangesBowie; I'd owned a few books about or by Crowley, one of the inspirations behind some lyrics; I liked electronica, so of course these records felt rather like home. I thought of them as examples of that rare and special breed of album which suits almost any mood - The Stone Roses being another.
Station to Station still is. The title track itself contains many moods. You can emphasise the soaring hope. Or 'once I could never be down... before knowing better. It's too late can be a lament, or the relieved kind of 'too late' which means not having to try any more, free to relax. (And in analysing the relationship of the albums to one another, that 'European canon'...) 'TVC-15' is comical, or, well, there are times when a speaker might be an easier object of attachment than a person. In 'Stay' it can be better not to have said, or maybe it'll be a good thing to say next time.
'Word on a Wing' was tricky, less adaptive, so many love-song elements - until... thank you Wikipedia! "There were days of such psychological terror when making the Roeg film that I nearly started to approach my reborn, born again thing. It was the first time I'd really seriously thought about Christ and God in any depth, and 'Word on a Wing' was a protection. It did come as a complete revolt against elements that I found in the film. The passion in the song was genuine... something I needed to produce from within myself to safeguard myself".... Bowie later admitted that "there was a point when I very nearly got suckered into that narrow sort of looking... finding the cross as the salvation of mankind around the Roeg period". I don't know how many people understand this - oddness here could be a mirage, for one of Bowie's talents is to make the individual feel like he connects particularly with them - but religious phases that are deeply and sincerely felt, and also expedient and ultimately disposable, yes; the effort to manufacture emotion that you need to receive, yes, though I'd forgotten and hadn't done it for years - there's even a physical sensation to it, in the chest.
I think Station to Station is the only album of songs - as opposed to instrumentals - I feel comfortable with just now.
January 2015.
...October 2015
By now there's quite a bit of music I enjoy listening to again, which is fun rather than an emotional burden. It was the fact of its being music, any music, which was too much for a while. Annie Nightingale said once [I don't have a link] that she had kept looking for new music all her life because the old stuff harboured too many memories. Yeah, I get that. Though what has worked for me more than once is time off from music � before it was always just certain pieces or subgenres of music, not all music its very self. Then either the music becomes simply itself again, the pure sound with no memories stuck in its amber � easier with instrumental albums � or I become resolved and content with the fragments that are in it. Morrissey's Viva Hate and some early Pulp are bound up with a situation not dissimilar to the one that made me abandon Low. House moves; complicated and impossibly intense romantic situations that seemingly inexplicably withered on the vine. Both these experiences were examples of an atmosphere described by the author as characteristic of Bowie's best work: a sense of yearning for a future that we know will never come to pass. (I feel more able to see the depth of melancholy in that phrase than I could before, and find the sight of that particular ravine tolerable, sit there still and contentedly and look it in the eye. It was always a beautiful idea but I'd hidden from the full tragic implication of it before: I was yearning for a future that might possibly be, dreaming of a moment of looking back on it, and I was reading that into the phrase rather than seeing the meaning of the words actually present.) I can now curl up in the nostalgic glow of those Pulp and Morrissey records and I love them, I actually love being back in those moments: some of that is thanks to other people, but much of it simply to distance and the process of emotional /psychological.
I put Low on about an hour before sitting down to finish this post: the first track is the hardest, it's not somewhere I could enjoy going back to yet � I could only think of the pain that awaited me in the future stretching out from the day trapped inside that song. But then, that's one hell of a groove on 'Breaking Glass': this is fun. I remembered how much more hearing 'Be My Wife' used to hurt; it didn't hurt like that now, but it was still a memory of pain. Not fun. Was I really just enjoying 'Sound and Vision' and 'Little Girl With Grey Eyes' and noticing all those little sounds rather than dwelling on what else I'd imbued them with? I think so. Gosh. Pinch self. Some of the album had started to become itself again, to be adaptable like The Stone Roses: I felt if it was heard in the warm it would make the room warmer; if cold, it would give an icy-grey chill � still a little too strong, but getting there. Controlled exposure at own pace. And after all, this is something to do for fun, not work. And something had changed over those eight months.
This book isn't just about Low, it's about Station to Station and Iggy Pop's The Idiot. I'm cool with that.
But not so much with the author's casual overuse of psychiatric terms - especially, but not limited to, 'autistic' and 'schizophrenic'. He throws them about pejoratively, begging the question, "If you think these albums are so nuts, man, why do you even like them?" David Bowie has been a powerful destigmatising cultural force for all manner of weirdness, but Hugo Wilcken's pathologising approach contradicts and undermines that. His harsh judgement is also a disservice to a man whose later interviews showed coherent, non-jargonised understanding of the mess he'd once been in, and the effect that had on others (even if he can't remember all the concrete facts about the time) - a wisdom of age that's practically the antithesis of Angie Bowie's continued lack of self awareness. Wilcken also implies that interest in the occult is itself a sign of insanity. I had no choice but to dock a star - I even felt protective of Bowie, which he doesn't exactly need. Otherwise the book is very good.
33 1/3s don't have author bios, and all I found about Wilcken (whilst not trying very hard) was some info on his literary agent's site referring to his two novels. From this book, it's difficult to tell what his acquaintance with psychology is like - given that it's a field where approaches and opinions differ radically - but he must have been a proficient musician, and probably worked in studios, to give such detailed commentary on structures and production.
This does one of the main things I'd like from a book about music: to give names to the different sounds and effects and qualities I can hear, and Low does a good job. Not every single instance of "is that cute little gurgly sound on the left a theremin?", or whatever, is answered, but many such things are, along with similar questions I hadn't thought to ask. Those paragraphs would be good to revisit.
(Before the point, a couple of years ago, when I virtually stopped listening to music, I'd been trying to figure out how to learn to work these things out for myself - if there is a shortcut. I learned how to recognise the sound of orchestral instruments when I was a kid. But it seems peculiarly difficult to learn about the hidden nuts and bolts of popular music - which has a greater range of sounds - without being in a band, without being an active participant. I can't think of many subjects which still remain arcane unless you participate. What did I even need? Music appreciation courses were mostly about classical; Dummies-level books on production I looked at didn't seem quite the thing... )
The 33 1/3 book on Joni Mitchell's Court & Spark, which I read just before this, had a lot of discussion of her other albums � but I'm not super-keen on Joni Mitchell and that stuff probably would have been more interesting had I liked her music more. The theory was confirmed here, as I like most of Bowie's work, and loved hearing about every project mentioned in the book; Low-the-book is also better organised, and its way of relating works to one another is almost literary - as might be expected from a novelist.
The seeds of the album Low are seen in the title track of Station to Station and Eno's Another Green World. The Idiot was recorded, with Bowie producing, just before Low and the latter contained leftover material from it. I listened to Low, Another Green World and The Idiot in one day (the latter two, whilst I had them - among a bloated 250GB of music built up from my old CD collection, and a few friends and exes - I wasn't sure if I'd listened to before.) The family resemblance between the three albums was striking. Although each has its own character. Much of the Iggy Pop had the glamorously threatening moodiness of a Tarantino film, plus a couple of tracks that sounded oh so 90s - 'Dum Dum Boys' is a lot like a particular song I can't quite remember, and bits of 'Mass Production' reminded me of feedbacktastic experimental US college rock. 'China Girl', here originally sung by this 70s sleazebag whom no-one would expect to know better, fits better than it did with alert, corporate besuited 80s sellout Bowie who probably should have. Meanwhile, Another Green World has many Low-ish noises in the background, and surprising, innocent melody and vocals as if Gorky's Zygotic Mynci had adopted an English accent. (The title track and BBC Arena theme, inevitably, is its own separate, melancholy evocation of calm nights in across decades and their varying picture quality.) It now seems obvious that Gorky's were derivative of this � not that I had any idea at the time, twenty-odd years ago.
Back to Bowie's own work, Station to Station and Low I remembered across that two year gap as utterly central; those were the albums which it seemed impossible that I'd only consciously, repetitively listened to them for the first time this decade (no doubt they'd played in the background before). They felt like they'd been a part of my life as long as Suede or Modern Life is Rubbish. Bits of them had - albeit not the most characteristic songs � via the compilation ChangesBowie; I'd owned a few books about or by Crowley, one of the inspirations behind some lyrics; I liked electronica, so of course these records felt rather like home. I thought of them as examples of that rare and special breed of album which suits almost any mood - The Stone Roses being another.
Station to Station still is. The title track itself contains many moods. You can emphasise the soaring hope. Or 'once I could never be down... before knowing better. It's too late can be a lament, or the relieved kind of 'too late' which means not having to try any more, free to relax. (And in analysing the relationship of the albums to one another, that 'European canon'...) 'TVC-15' is comical, or, well, there are times when a speaker might be an easier object of attachment than a person. In 'Stay' it can be better not to have said, or maybe it'll be a good thing to say next time.
'Word on a Wing' was tricky, less adaptive, so many love-song elements - until... thank you Wikipedia! "There were days of such psychological terror when making the Roeg film that I nearly started to approach my reborn, born again thing. It was the first time I'd really seriously thought about Christ and God in any depth, and 'Word on a Wing' was a protection. It did come as a complete revolt against elements that I found in the film. The passion in the song was genuine... something I needed to produce from within myself to safeguard myself".... Bowie later admitted that "there was a point when I very nearly got suckered into that narrow sort of looking... finding the cross as the salvation of mankind around the Roeg period". I don't know how many people understand this - oddness here could be a mirage, for one of Bowie's talents is to make the individual feel like he connects particularly with them - but religious phases that are deeply and sincerely felt, and also expedient and ultimately disposable, yes; the effort to manufacture emotion that you need to receive, yes, though I'd forgotten and hadn't done it for years - there's even a physical sensation to it, in the chest.
I think Station to Station is the only album of songs - as opposed to instrumentals - I feel comfortable with just now.
January 2015.
...October 2015
By now there's quite a bit of music I enjoy listening to again, which is fun rather than an emotional burden. It was the fact of its being music, any music, which was too much for a while. Annie Nightingale said once [I don't have a link] that she had kept looking for new music all her life because the old stuff harboured too many memories. Yeah, I get that. Though what has worked for me more than once is time off from music � before it was always just certain pieces or subgenres of music, not all music its very self. Then either the music becomes simply itself again, the pure sound with no memories stuck in its amber � easier with instrumental albums � or I become resolved and content with the fragments that are in it. Morrissey's Viva Hate and some early Pulp are bound up with a situation not dissimilar to the one that made me abandon Low. House moves; complicated and impossibly intense romantic situations that seemingly inexplicably withered on the vine. Both these experiences were examples of an atmosphere described by the author as characteristic of Bowie's best work: a sense of yearning for a future that we know will never come to pass. (I feel more able to see the depth of melancholy in that phrase than I could before, and find the sight of that particular ravine tolerable, sit there still and contentedly and look it in the eye. It was always a beautiful idea but I'd hidden from the full tragic implication of it before: I was yearning for a future that might possibly be, dreaming of a moment of looking back on it, and I was reading that into the phrase rather than seeing the meaning of the words actually present.) I can now curl up in the nostalgic glow of those Pulp and Morrissey records and I love them, I actually love being back in those moments: some of that is thanks to other people, but much of it simply to distance and the process of emotional /psychological.
I put Low on about an hour before sitting down to finish this post: the first track is the hardest, it's not somewhere I could enjoy going back to yet � I could only think of the pain that awaited me in the future stretching out from the day trapped inside that song. But then, that's one hell of a groove on 'Breaking Glass': this is fun. I remembered how much more hearing 'Be My Wife' used to hurt; it didn't hurt like that now, but it was still a memory of pain. Not fun. Was I really just enjoying 'Sound and Vision' and 'Little Girl With Grey Eyes' and noticing all those little sounds rather than dwelling on what else I'd imbued them with? I think so. Gosh. Pinch self. Some of the album had started to become itself again, to be adaptable like The Stone Roses: I felt if it was heard in the warm it would make the room warmer; if cold, it would give an icy-grey chill � still a little too strong, but getting there. Controlled exposure at own pace. And after all, this is something to do for fun, not work. And something had changed over those eight months.
May 16, 2024
Bowie Goes Alien and Ambient
Review of the Bloomsbury Academic 33 and 1/3 paperback (August 19, 2005), released simultaneously with the eBook.
Reading David Bowie's Low after reading (2007) was a natural as Eno joined Bowie in recording the album in 1976 while still very much under the influence of using his Oblique Strategies methods. The * (1975) are a set of offbeat texts printed on cue cards as assembled by Eno together with artist Peter Schmidt. They were used as a method of breaking out of an impasse or writer's block in an artist's work. Not all of Bowie's musicians were enthused about the process, but things still managed to resolve themselves.
Album cover for Low by David Bowie from 1977. Image sourced from .
Hugo Wilcken's summary of Low's album tracks is preceded by a survey of Bowie's personal issues involving drug-induced paranoia while recording his album (released January 1976) the previous year, as well as the recording of Iggy Pop's (released March 1977) in France during the sessions just before Low. Bowie and Pop had moved to Europe, initially to France and then to Berlin, in order to escape the LA drug culture. Wilcken's overview of this extended period was excellent and I very much enjoyed this story of the beginning of Bowie's (1976-1979) series of albums which is still the Bowie music that I most enjoy listening to almost 50 years later.
The cover image for the movie tie-in edition of "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1963) by Walter Tevis which adapts the image from the "Low" album cover. Image sourced from ŷ.
Soundtrack
Listen to the full 11-track Low album via a YouTube playlist which starts or on Spotify .
Trivia and Links
David Bowie's Low is part of the Bloomsbury Academic 33 1/3 series of books surveying significant record albums, primarily in the rock and pop genres. The GR Listopia for the 33 1/3 series is incomplete with only 38 books listed as of May 2024. For an up-to-date list see with 193 books listed as of May 2024.
Footnote
* I'm somewhat surprised that the NABers (i.e. Not A Bookers) have not found and deleted this one yet. But perhaps their activities have become more restrained since the NAB Wars of 2020-2021.
Review of the Bloomsbury Academic 33 and 1/3 paperback (August 19, 2005), released simultaneously with the eBook.
Reading David Bowie's Low after reading (2007) was a natural as Eno joined Bowie in recording the album in 1976 while still very much under the influence of using his Oblique Strategies methods. The * (1975) are a set of offbeat texts printed on cue cards as assembled by Eno together with artist Peter Schmidt. They were used as a method of breaking out of an impasse or writer's block in an artist's work. Not all of Bowie's musicians were enthused about the process, but things still managed to resolve themselves.
Oblique Strategies certainly created tensions, as [guitarist] Carlos Alomar explained to Bowie biographer David Buckley: "Brian Eno had come in with all these cards that he had made and they were supposed to eliminate a block. Now, you've got to understand something. I'm a musician. I've studied music theory. I've studied counterpoint and I'm used to working with musicians who can read music. Here comes Brian Eno and he goes to a blackboard. He says: 'Here's the beat, and when I point to a chord, you play the chord.' So we get a random picking of chords. I finally had to say, 'This is bullshit, this sucks, this sounds stupid.'"
...
It may well have been the creative tension between that kind of traditionalist approach and Eno's experimentation that was more productive that the "planned accidents" themselves. As Eno himself has said. "The interesting place is not chaos, and it's not total coherence. It's somewhere on the cusp of those two." - excerpts from pgs. 67-68 in "David Bowie's Low."
Album cover for Low by David Bowie from 1977. Image sourced from .
Hugo Wilcken's summary of Low's album tracks is preceded by a survey of Bowie's personal issues involving drug-induced paranoia while recording his album (released January 1976) the previous year, as well as the recording of Iggy Pop's (released March 1977) in France during the sessions just before Low. Bowie and Pop had moved to Europe, initially to France and then to Berlin, in order to escape the LA drug culture. Wilcken's overview of this extended period was excellent and I very much enjoyed this story of the beginning of Bowie's (1976-1979) series of albums which is still the Bowie music that I most enjoy listening to almost 50 years later.
The cover image for the movie tie-in edition of "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1963) by Walter Tevis which adapts the image from the "Low" album cover. Image sourced from ŷ.
Soundtrack
Listen to the full 11-track Low album via a YouTube playlist which starts or on Spotify .
Trivia and Links
David Bowie's Low is part of the Bloomsbury Academic 33 1/3 series of books surveying significant record albums, primarily in the rock and pop genres. The GR Listopia for the 33 1/3 series is incomplete with only 38 books listed as of May 2024. For an up-to-date list see with 193 books listed as of May 2024.
Footnote
* I'm somewhat surprised that the NABers (i.e. Not A Bookers) have not found and deleted this one yet. But perhaps their activities have become more restrained since the NAB Wars of 2020-2021.
December 25, 2022
This could have been a four star book, but even in 2005 (when it was written) Wilcken's use of 'autistic' (the single word most often used in this book to describe Bowie's music during the Berlin period?), and 'schizophrenic' is pretty unconscionable; not only does neither term do the heavy lifting he wants it to, not only are both deployed in the laziest fashion imaginable, but they give the book a strong streak of totally avoidable and unnecessary ableism that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Because Wilcken, in the midst of what is honestly otherwise mostly a strong take on Bowie, lapses too quickly into considering all the ways he was 'crazy' (seriously, what line of approach would be lazier, or cut the writer off from considering the actual work here more than this?), significant chunks of this slim volume suffer from the shallowness of received wisdom. And that's leaving aside the bits that I disagree on just on aesthetic/critical grounds (I think his treatment of Station to Station is weirdly dismissive of an album that's possibly better than Low, for example; but I wouldn't rate a book down for that at all, as long as the writing and thinking were good). Wilcken does a better job getting into the actual circumstances of the album's making, and disentangling Bowie and Eno (and earlier, Bowie and Iggy) without giving too much praise or blame to either man. If there had been a few more drafts of this - that focused more on the interesting ways Wilcken sees Bowie fracturing and mutating his music, ones that move away from his almost obsession with the idea of Bowie as artificially autistic (ugh), maybe even ones that did as strong a job connecting Low to the albums after it as the ones before, it'd be a much better entry in the series.
July 11, 2019
Ontem revi The Man Who Fell to Earth em honra ao Rip Torn, nada mais natural que hoje me inclinasse a ler o livro do disco que teve início com aquele filme, justamente da trilha sonora renegada pelo Nicolas Roeg que posteriormente foi aprimorada por Bowie com a ajuda de Brian Eno.
Cá entre nós, por mim haveria um disco do livro para cada álbum do Bowie, mas devo me contentar com esse que cria uma linha psicanalítica em torno de sua feitura que muito me apetece, apesar de ter achado de mau gosto o autor usar e abusar do termo autista - confesso que eu mesma já iniciei uma pesquisa há um tempo atrás com o intuito de escrever um artigo científico sobre as personas de Bowie sob o viés psicanalítico, talvez daí nasce meu desconforto com algumas liberdades tomadas pelo autor.
No mais é um trabalho interessantíssimo para os interessados na história da música e nos desdobramentos da carreira de Bowie (nas duas, rá!) já que Low é fundamental em ambas as perspectivas.
Cá entre nós, por mim haveria um disco do livro para cada álbum do Bowie, mas devo me contentar com esse que cria uma linha psicanalítica em torno de sua feitura que muito me apetece, apesar de ter achado de mau gosto o autor usar e abusar do termo autista - confesso que eu mesma já iniciei uma pesquisa há um tempo atrás com o intuito de escrever um artigo científico sobre as personas de Bowie sob o viés psicanalítico, talvez daí nasce meu desconforto com algumas liberdades tomadas pelo autor.
No mais é um trabalho interessantíssimo para os interessados na história da música e nos desdobramentos da carreira de Bowie (nas duas, rá!) já que Low é fundamental em ambas as perspectivas.
November 14, 2008
I would have never thought it possible that a bite-sized book about cocaine-addled, Berlin-era David Bowie and the making of one of my favorite Bowie albums could be a tedious read. But surprises all around, folks, because it can be. Wilken's declared intention--"to talk around Low as much as I talk about it"--is an interesting one, and given Bowie's propensity for artistic homage, mimicry, and pastiche, a very appropriate way to discuss his work. I'm really happy to know some of the background about his 'occult' and religious references, about what Kraftwerk and Eno were up to around the same time, about the fact that both Low and Iggy Pop's The Idiot were being recorded at the same time without anyone distinguishing what material would end up on what album. And, of course, I get a sort of Us Weekly enjoyment reading about Bowie convincing everyone that the recording studio was haunted, believing that he was being poisoned, driving around in circles in a parking garage after intentionally crashing into the car of a man he thought ripped him off. These things are all fascinating and highly amusing.
But Wilken is not a subtle analyst. He focuses in on one 'reading' of the album, and then neither describes it convincingly or ever seeks to elaborate on it. He simply repeats it over and over (as he repeats certain words--morass, occult, psychosis, schizophrenic, autistic) and seems to hope that by the end of the book he'll have battered you into submission. I'll go with him on the premise that Bowie had drug-related mental problems at the time of the 'Berlin trilogy.' I'll go with him that the album can be understood as a sonic rendering of 'madness' and antisocial withdraw. But I don't think that these are hugely original assertions in and of themselves.
But Wilken is not a subtle analyst. He focuses in on one 'reading' of the album, and then neither describes it convincingly or ever seeks to elaborate on it. He simply repeats it over and over (as he repeats certain words--morass, occult, psychosis, schizophrenic, autistic) and seems to hope that by the end of the book he'll have battered you into submission. I'll go with him on the premise that Bowie had drug-related mental problems at the time of the 'Berlin trilogy.' I'll go with him that the album can be understood as a sonic rendering of 'madness' and antisocial withdraw. But I don't think that these are hugely original assertions in and of themselves.
March 19, 2019
The 33 1/3 series is one of the most absurdly inconsistent series of books ever written. Some are great, some are O.K. and some are so terrible they are entertaining in a completely unintended way. But this one is just straight up solid. The author goes back and forth from a chronological narrative of the whole time of finishing Station to Station, touring and recording with Iggy to recording in France and then, famously moving with Iggy to Berlin. This way of presentation is only mildly disconcerting. The book is packed with relevant facts about how everything went down, from which instruments and studio tricks were used to Bowie's relationships with Eno, Visconti, and Carlos Alomar. It's pretty much everything you hope for from a book like this. Even the critical opinions are well-formed, which is the thing that ruins a lot of these kinds of books. Highly recommended for serious or casual fans. But probably more for serious fans, since the album is not exactly packed with radio hits.
January 13, 2014
I liked that this had more focus on Bowie himself, and his relationships to cities, people, drugs, etc. Specifically how they all converged to influence the creation of Low. Reading track by track tear downs is boring and tedious, so I'm happy that the author saved those for a brief visit in the last few (short) chapters.
BUT, I felt there was just too much lingering writing on his cocaine psychosis and black magic/occult hallucinations and obsessions.
If you're someone who read this, and is interested in Bowie's massive book collection, I have a Listopia list with a small sampling from the Bowie exhibit in Toronto
BUT, I felt there was just too much lingering writing on his cocaine psychosis and black magic/occult hallucinations and obsessions.
If you're someone who read this, and is interested in Bowie's massive book collection, I have a Listopia list with a small sampling from the Bowie exhibit in Toronto
January 15, 2016
Drinking game: take a shot each time something is described as "autistic".
January 26, 2019
this starts out with David Bowie suffering cocaine psychosis in Los Angeles, burning black candles in his mansion, seeing dead bodies falling out windows - Stations to Stations has just come out and he's going on TV saying Hitler is a rockstar. Next he goes to the insane asylum and bails Iggy Pop out and they go to Germany, not because Hitler is a rockstar, but because of Kraftwerk. David Bowie keeps calling them on the telephone saying, Hey come be my new band, and Kraftwerk keeps saying in German, "This guy is weird." In walks Brian Eno with a magic deck of cards. The castle is haunted. The days odd. After the tracking of the album, the action moves to the Berlin wall, no reason, it just seems fun to mix the album with the Berlin wall right there and the guys with the machine guns looking in the studio windows, right? Right? Right?
This particular 33 1/3 is a well written consolidation of so much myth, and maybe some truth. One of the greatest albums of all time was created by cartoons in a cartoon. This book pairs well with the 33 1/3 on Lou Reed's Transformer and Brian Eno's Another Green World.
This particular 33 1/3 is a well written consolidation of so much myth, and maybe some truth. One of the greatest albums of all time was created by cartoons in a cartoon. This book pairs well with the 33 1/3 on Lou Reed's Transformer and Brian Eno's Another Green World.
June 19, 2018
Autism... ”You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means�.
The author’s definition of OCD, autism, and schizophrenia as if they are under the same psychiatric definition, are rather careless, if not insulting to any victim of the above.
Seriously though, other than his generosity with the word “autism�, which I really can’t understand how it describes “Low�, there are some interesting insights in this book.
I was surprised though that unlike many books in this series, it’s less philosophical and more about the times and conditions of Bowie around that era, and a second half of the book describing the album, track by track.
Overall it’s a fun reading for a Bowie fan, and you might learn a nice biographical fact or two.
The author’s definition of OCD, autism, and schizophrenia as if they are under the same psychiatric definition, are rather careless, if not insulting to any victim of the above.
Seriously though, other than his generosity with the word “autism�, which I really can’t understand how it describes “Low�, there are some interesting insights in this book.
I was surprised though that unlike many books in this series, it’s less philosophical and more about the times and conditions of Bowie around that era, and a second half of the book describing the album, track by track.
Overall it’s a fun reading for a Bowie fan, and you might learn a nice biographical fact or two.
December 20, 2008
The first half of this book, which describes Bowie's vampiric existence in L.A. (subsisting just on cocaine, milk and cigarettes), his obsession with the occult, and the recording of The Idiot with Iggy Pop and Low with Brian Eno in a converted French chauteau is very satisfying.
The analysis of the songs on Low, and the aesthetic of the album as a whole, is unfortunately unilluminating. This was the defect with the Paul's Boutique installment in 33 1/3 as well.
Is writing interesting history simply easier than writing good criticism?
The analysis of the songs on Low, and the aesthetic of the album as a whole, is unfortunately unilluminating. This was the defect with the Paul's Boutique installment in 33 1/3 as well.
Is writing interesting history simply easier than writing good criticism?
September 5, 2019
Lots of mixed feelings here. Love learning more about Bowie and his process, but the way this book is written is baffling. The author makes connections where there doesn't seem to be any, and describes both Bowie and the music in very odd ways. He kept using "autistic" to describe things. Someone please explain to me how a song can be autistic. Wait. On second thought, don't do that.
February 16, 2010
this book was a giant typo. some interesting anecdotes. better off just listening to the album again.
May 15, 2017
What could have been a good book is marred by the wince-inducing use of "autistic" to describe music.
April 20, 2019
The only people who follow this ŷ account are people who know me from that one music server I mod, so, yes, guys, I actually read a book about David Bowie. I am a delusional fan and I have absolutely no shame at all. Feel free to laugh at me. I deserve it.
The only entry in the 33 1/3 series that I've read before is Celine Dion's Let Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, and as you can see in my review for that book, I found its exploration of how societal factors influence our cultural perceptions of pop music to be absolutely wonderful. The way Hugo Wilcken writes about Low is, by contrast, not too heavy on the whole philosophical aspect. In this book, Wilcken strictly follows the rapid descent of David Bowie's mental and physical health in the mid 70s that lead to the creation of Low as an album, along with the rest of the Berlin Trilogy and Iggy Pop's two classics, The Idiot and Lust For Life.
There is nothing necessarily wrong about this. Yes, I am sad there was no opportunity to have my erratically scheduled weekly existential crisis at any time during reading Wilcken's thoughts on Low, but he does a fine job at communicating to you why the record is such a special one. His thoughts on the musical qualities and standings of each song on Low is interesting, though I disagree with some of his takes, and his description of Bowie's influences and Brian Eno's groundbreaking production techniques are concise yet enthralling. There's just one problem.
This book is ableist as fuck, fellas.
Yes, I know I like to over-analyze the social implications of everything on Earth, but, dear God, I cannot count how many times Hugo Wilcken decides to describe either Bowie or somebody else as 'autistic' or 'schizophrenic'. One or two times would make me cringe, although not in shock, since Wilcken was writing this in 2005, but I started to see those words every other page, and, well, that just got on my nerves. Wilcken trying to cage people into neurological cages by analyzing their artistic decisions during one particular time period is incredibly obnoxious, and even if you're one of those people who complains about everybody being sensitive nowadays, this reckless labeling the book goes for is going to annoy you eventually. There's even rather invasive speculation into Bowie's private life at one point, when Wilcken mentions Bowie's schizophrenic half-brother that passed away from suicide in 195, Terry Burns. I wasn't exactly raging at how he was mentioned, but, boy, did that lower my opinion of Wilcken's journalistic merit!
All the ableism in the book becomes a wider issue that prevents it from fulfilling its true potential as a whole; by stereotyping Bowie as some sort of inhumanly odd artistic savant, Wilcken really never goes into the emotional depth of Low as much as you'd hope. Occasional glimpses into real-world events like the ones I've mentioned prevent that aspect of the record's making from being ignored entirely, which is good, because then I would have been too frustrated to be merciful enough to give Wilcken three stars, but the relative absence of any psychological analysis of Low past the bloke attempting to claim that Bowie or Eno or whoever else has some kind of specific mental illness that's factored into their musical talent weighs this book down a lot. You know, some people might disagree with me, but I think to fundamentally understand a work of art you'll have to understand the human behind it. As a book, this fails to accomplish that.
So, what's my final verdict on Wilcken's evaluation of Low? Well, if you're looking for some intermediate music criticism on Low's technical and sonic aspects, you can probably read this book without any worry. If you're interested in virtually anything else about Low, expect to be disappointed. Whether this is worth a read or not is up to you.
The only entry in the 33 1/3 series that I've read before is Celine Dion's Let Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, and as you can see in my review for that book, I found its exploration of how societal factors influence our cultural perceptions of pop music to be absolutely wonderful. The way Hugo Wilcken writes about Low is, by contrast, not too heavy on the whole philosophical aspect. In this book, Wilcken strictly follows the rapid descent of David Bowie's mental and physical health in the mid 70s that lead to the creation of Low as an album, along with the rest of the Berlin Trilogy and Iggy Pop's two classics, The Idiot and Lust For Life.
There is nothing necessarily wrong about this. Yes, I am sad there was no opportunity to have my erratically scheduled weekly existential crisis at any time during reading Wilcken's thoughts on Low, but he does a fine job at communicating to you why the record is such a special one. His thoughts on the musical qualities and standings of each song on Low is interesting, though I disagree with some of his takes, and his description of Bowie's influences and Brian Eno's groundbreaking production techniques are concise yet enthralling. There's just one problem.
This book is ableist as fuck, fellas.
Yes, I know I like to over-analyze the social implications of everything on Earth, but, dear God, I cannot count how many times Hugo Wilcken decides to describe either Bowie or somebody else as 'autistic' or 'schizophrenic'. One or two times would make me cringe, although not in shock, since Wilcken was writing this in 2005, but I started to see those words every other page, and, well, that just got on my nerves. Wilcken trying to cage people into neurological cages by analyzing their artistic decisions during one particular time period is incredibly obnoxious, and even if you're one of those people who complains about everybody being sensitive nowadays, this reckless labeling the book goes for is going to annoy you eventually. There's even rather invasive speculation into Bowie's private life at one point, when Wilcken mentions Bowie's schizophrenic half-brother that passed away from suicide in 195, Terry Burns. I wasn't exactly raging at how he was mentioned, but, boy, did that lower my opinion of Wilcken's journalistic merit!
All the ableism in the book becomes a wider issue that prevents it from fulfilling its true potential as a whole; by stereotyping Bowie as some sort of inhumanly odd artistic savant, Wilcken really never goes into the emotional depth of Low as much as you'd hope. Occasional glimpses into real-world events like the ones I've mentioned prevent that aspect of the record's making from being ignored entirely, which is good, because then I would have been too frustrated to be merciful enough to give Wilcken three stars, but the relative absence of any psychological analysis of Low past the bloke attempting to claim that Bowie or Eno or whoever else has some kind of specific mental illness that's factored into their musical talent weighs this book down a lot. You know, some people might disagree with me, but I think to fundamentally understand a work of art you'll have to understand the human behind it. As a book, this fails to accomplish that.
So, what's my final verdict on Wilcken's evaluation of Low? Well, if you're looking for some intermediate music criticism on Low's technical and sonic aspects, you can probably read this book without any worry. If you're interested in virtually anything else about Low, expect to be disappointed. Whether this is worth a read or not is up to you.
December 24, 2017
A short history of how Low, David Bowie's least accessible album, came to be. It's intertwined with the story of Brian Eno's involvement, with how Iggy Pop's The Idiot came to be, and a bit on Bowie's Berlin years (I find it enormously fitting that Bowie had a portrait of Yukio Mishima hanging in his Berlin flat - Wilcken doesn't go much into that, but like Bowie Mishima saw his life as art-work itself, I don't believe that Mishima ever really wanted a coup, he wanted to stage his death using his aesthetics).
Aaaaaanyway Wilcken overuses autism and schizophrenia a bit too much (I take the cocaine-induced psychosis - I reject the autistic album), it's still a very interesting story and interpretation of the album (if you're into that!)
P.S.: How weird that David Bowie who at the time didn't sleep for days and did nothing but cocaine while spouting Crowley tidbits was able to get custody for his child after a divorce, what lawyer made that miracle happen?
P.P.S.: It's also the only book I ever read that ends with 'if you need more details on quotes and citations, drop me a mail at '
Aaaaaanyway Wilcken overuses autism and schizophrenia a bit too much (I take the cocaine-induced psychosis - I reject the autistic album), it's still a very interesting story and interpretation of the album (if you're into that!)
P.S.: How weird that David Bowie who at the time didn't sleep for days and did nothing but cocaine while spouting Crowley tidbits was able to get custody for his child after a divorce, what lawyer made that miracle happen?
P.P.S.: It's also the only book I ever read that ends with 'if you need more details on quotes and citations, drop me a mail at '
February 20, 2020
I’ll admit coming very late to Low and the other two albums in Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy. I grew up with Bowie on AM radio, but in my teen years I was looking back. There was nothing on the radio that interested me. I think I was in high school when I picked up Scary Monsters, which should have given me a hint, only I was too busy being a punk. Then I started getting bored and fixated on Station to Station, Iggy Pop’s the Idiot and Low, “Heroes� and Lodger - rinse and repeat. This handful of records became an obsession, so I was happy to dive into Hugo Wilcken’s short book on Low. He excels at putting the music in context to its time and the other musicians and artists who were exploring similar expressions, which fed Bowie and he in turn feeds them. It’s a great portrait of creativity and makes me think: was it an anomaly or is the next explosion just around the corner?
May 20, 2020
Book 9 of my #2020readingchallenge is Hugo Wilcken's Low from 33 1/3 books. This nonfiction book goes into the story behind the album, and all the delightful Bowie-esque tales of drugs, the occult, France, Germany, psychosis, and schizophrenia.
All in all, good! This is my favorite Bowie album, so of course I'm interested in every detail. It's very much about Station to Station and Iggy Pop's The Idiot as well, so I found it fascinating.
"Heroes" and The Man Who Fell to Earth are woven throughout as well. It's staggering the amount of professionalism and work ethic Bowie had, despite (or perhaps because of) cocaine. He was ultimately extremely depressed during these years, and sometimes seems ... challenging.
RIP Bowie.
All in all, good! This is my favorite Bowie album, so of course I'm interested in every detail. It's very much about Station to Station and Iggy Pop's The Idiot as well, so I found it fascinating.
"Heroes" and The Man Who Fell to Earth are woven throughout as well. It's staggering the amount of professionalism and work ethic Bowie had, despite (or perhaps because of) cocaine. He was ultimately extremely depressed during these years, and sometimes seems ... challenging.
RIP Bowie.
September 30, 2019
Now that's more like it! Intense, detailed, inspiring, both narrative and documentary, this is a perfect example of the book series, and has brought on a mini-Bowie renaissance in my life - which is saying a lot, seeing as I already deify the man. Still, these peerless stories of touring with Iggy Pop, getting wasted in Berlin, recording in Switzerland, somehow still a driven, brilliant professional despite the intense paranoia and physical suffering that finally caught up to the man who just didn't really eat for a couple of years, and how this album represents the first few bits of crawling back towards living as a human being. Very highly recommended.
January 19, 2021
This was a highly informative deep dive into the making of David Bowie's album LOW. Tons of interesting tidbits about what led up to making the record and the production process. My only gripe was the author's use of mental health language to describe Bowie's actions and his music, in terms that made no sense to me.
July 6, 2020
Wilcken really clicks into the feelings that I had the first time I listened to the album when it first came out. I felt like I was hearing the music of the future.
This is a great example of the 33 and 1/3 series, in so much as when you are reading it you immediately want to listen to the music.
This is a great example of the 33 and 1/3 series, in so much as when you are reading it you immediately want to listen to the music.
January 13, 2019
Writing style not to my taste, though some of the stories/facts were ones that I had not previously heard.
One for true fans only.
One for true fans only.
January 26, 2016
"The birth of synthetic music"
Low is one of those albums that divided you from normal music listeners and placed you at the edge of what was to come, the future was here and it was not easy or happy but it was beautiful and strange.
I got my first copy of Low in Port Mcneill, Vancouver Island, Canada, for those of you who know it, it will be no surprise that this was like finding a wild amazonian flower growing out of Tokio’s pavement. Country music and straight rock was all you could openly listen to, the rest was was hippy music or queer music, my brother described it as spider music (no reference to Spiders from Mars just the feeling he got from it) I on the other hand could not get over this amazing album and have owned a copy of some kind ever since. For me the instrumental side and the musical electronics was what captivated me and influenced my taste for many years. So I could not resist this book, an erudite dissertation on Low, of a time, music, men and technology were creating new soundscapes out of the discordance of a world divided in so many ways, was just what I needed to cure my Bowie blues.
I put my earphones on and began to explore, book in hand computer on, itunes library at the ready, internet at ready too, and I was prepared to have a fully interactive experience of one of my favorite albums; I know it sounds extreme but the reference are musical and most of the influences are musical so using the internet or your musical library is most recommended, it will add a dimension to the topics you will enjoy.
Most of the discussion is about Low but a great deal of discussion of other artist and albums will make the preparation evident. Station to Station, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Iggy Pop, The Idiot, Philip Glass and many others.
It is very a very good book with tons of musical information , some of it is opinions and extrapolations but that is life, even Bowie's views are that, because of the amount of drugs he was taking. The biographical information is rich and full pertinent disclosures, the background information on the sessions is detailed and extensively researched. overall a satisfying read that will enrich anyone's knowledge of the period.
Low is one of those albums that divided you from normal music listeners and placed you at the edge of what was to come, the future was here and it was not easy or happy but it was beautiful and strange.
I got my first copy of Low in Port Mcneill, Vancouver Island, Canada, for those of you who know it, it will be no surprise that this was like finding a wild amazonian flower growing out of Tokio’s pavement. Country music and straight rock was all you could openly listen to, the rest was was hippy music or queer music, my brother described it as spider music (no reference to Spiders from Mars just the feeling he got from it) I on the other hand could not get over this amazing album and have owned a copy of some kind ever since. For me the instrumental side and the musical electronics was what captivated me and influenced my taste for many years. So I could not resist this book, an erudite dissertation on Low, of a time, music, men and technology were creating new soundscapes out of the discordance of a world divided in so many ways, was just what I needed to cure my Bowie blues.
I put my earphones on and began to explore, book in hand computer on, itunes library at the ready, internet at ready too, and I was prepared to have a fully interactive experience of one of my favorite albums; I know it sounds extreme but the reference are musical and most of the influences are musical so using the internet or your musical library is most recommended, it will add a dimension to the topics you will enjoy.
Most of the discussion is about Low but a great deal of discussion of other artist and albums will make the preparation evident. Station to Station, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Iggy Pop, The Idiot, Philip Glass and many others.
It is very a very good book with tons of musical information , some of it is opinions and extrapolations but that is life, even Bowie's views are that, because of the amount of drugs he was taking. The biographical information is rich and full pertinent disclosures, the background information on the sessions is detailed and extensively researched. overall a satisfying read that will enrich anyone's knowledge of the period.
December 28, 2015
The freaky alien's most elusive album, 'Low' is, of course, half clanking funk-rock covered in synthesizers and half mysterious ambient pieces. Side A has very few lyrics, Side B none whatsoever. Yet its retreat from direct narrative invites musing over the album's textures and moods, in a way that you might not over, say, 'Young Americans'. In my affection, it competes with 'Diamond Dogs', an album five times wordier but sharing a cocaine-specked agitation. 'Diamond Dogs' is the sound of an attempted escape from a dystopian hell; 'Low' is a description of a dying planet.
I've burned a lot of words of this review attempting to describe the album itself, but if you know the album you'll want to know whether the book's any good; surely nobody will read the book who is unfamiliar with the album. How many words can be written about an album which only has 410 words to offer us (some in a made-up nonsense language)? Well, Wilcken posits that the album is a journey through a schizophrenic mind, the first half full of paranoia and withdrawal, the second half wordlessly wandering through the wastelands of the brain's subconscious depths. I'm not sure how far I'm prepared to believe that - the idea of Bowie drugging himself into an insane state to create magic is a bit 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell'. More likely is the idea that Bowie was doing too many drugs, believed everyone was out to get him, and was encouraged by Eno and Visconti to move away from conventions like writing words or even finishing songs: a conclusion that's easy to reach from the text. After all, Bowie has always been galvanised by fruitful new sidekicks: Ronson, Eno, Reeves Gabrels (though your mileage may vary on the success of, especially, the latter).
It's an easy read, focusing on the wellbeing of the performers and the ideas more than the composition or production specifically (apart from the drum treatments and the 'mournful Dorian mode' sax on 'Subterraneans'), which saves it becoming too musicological; repeated references to the music being autistic and/or schizophrenic are off-putting, though.
I've burned a lot of words of this review attempting to describe the album itself, but if you know the album you'll want to know whether the book's any good; surely nobody will read the book who is unfamiliar with the album. How many words can be written about an album which only has 410 words to offer us (some in a made-up nonsense language)? Well, Wilcken posits that the album is a journey through a schizophrenic mind, the first half full of paranoia and withdrawal, the second half wordlessly wandering through the wastelands of the brain's subconscious depths. I'm not sure how far I'm prepared to believe that - the idea of Bowie drugging himself into an insane state to create magic is a bit 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell'. More likely is the idea that Bowie was doing too many drugs, believed everyone was out to get him, and was encouraged by Eno and Visconti to move away from conventions like writing words or even finishing songs: a conclusion that's easy to reach from the text. After all, Bowie has always been galvanised by fruitful new sidekicks: Ronson, Eno, Reeves Gabrels (though your mileage may vary on the success of, especially, the latter).
It's an easy read, focusing on the wellbeing of the performers and the ideas more than the composition or production specifically (apart from the drum treatments and the 'mournful Dorian mode' sax on 'Subterraneans'), which saves it becoming too musicological; repeated references to the music being autistic and/or schizophrenic are off-putting, though.
October 18, 2022
hoooooly shit oh my godddddddd oh my fucking goddddddd this book did actual psychic damage to me. I'm going to be using this book as an editorial exercise in the future. I'm going to spend the next week sitting there with a highlighter and red pen marking it up to hell and back. did anyone edit this. did anyone read over it. did anyone every say "hey hugo maybe take out some of the 'autistic' and use a different word" or "hey hugo are you familiar with what the fuck schizophrenia is" or "dude why are you pathologizing this music in the first place, you don't even accomplish what y0u think you're trying to accomplish." Other people here have talked about Wilcken's use of autistic as the most-used descriptor in this book, but i was ABSOLUTELY blown away by his characterizations of schizophrenia as well.
"His brother was also artistically inclined (as many schizophrenics are)...Bowie's interest in schizophrenia goes beyond te fact that his half-brother had the illness. At around this time Bowie was enthusiastically reading Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", a work that posits the essential schizophrenic nature of prehistoric man, and man's religious impulse as a direct result of it. [...] And to me, there is something distinctly modernist about the schizophrenic world. [...] Schizophrenia stretches the personality in both directions. The schizophrenic is both less of a person and more of a person. Negative symptoms send him to a grey limbo of autistic disconnection; positive symptoms overstimulate the imagination, leading to a conflation of myth and reality" (80-2)
(above is another notable thing that I did that Wilcken didn't—citations. there are no on-page citations (which is fine!!) but when I went to check sources at the back, the bibliography consisted of 10 books and 6 websites, with a note that says "...most [direct quotes] come from a wide range of articles published in the music press over the past 25 years. [...] For specific references for all other quotes, please contact me [by email]" alright sir uhhhh. quick question. what the fuck? maybe this is a standard in music biography but it seems to me a bit absurd to basically say "here are 16 sources for what is nominally a deep-dive into this work, contextualized by the surrounding 40 years of Bowie's life. everything else is from. dude just trust me. just. just trust me. if you want to know so badly you'll email me. i promise it's all true." i'm not doubting Wilcken's actual sourcing here. nothing seems to be outrageously offensive and incorrect (though perhaps he should have listed the DSM as a source, just to prove that he knew it existed, to preempt some of the criticism) but something rubs me particularly the wrong way about "Yeah *I* know where they came from, you just have to trust *me*". mr. wilcken sir you don't know what autism is why the fuck should i trust that you're not just making the rest of it up or twisting it extremely for your point.)
other notes include:
-"sure it's misogynistic BUT what ELSE do you expect from two isolated addicts in their 30s?? HUH?? anyways it's GOOD MUSIC" (followed in short order by "this song is like when a psychotic dude breaks a bunch of shit in the house and then blames it on his girlfriend to his girlfriend's face" sir this may come as a surprise but you don't have to be psychotic to do that. in fact if you're psychotic it'll probably happen to you instead of the other way around. something just about the casual "theorizing" of abuse and gaslighting, immediately following a lampshaded acknowledgement of the actual misogyny that is very present in this, just. makes me feel gross.)
-casual mention of a painting Bowie did, and then HUNG ABOVE HIS BED?, of Yukio Mishima, described by Wilcken only as a Japanese novelist "who spectacularly committed ritual suicide after a tragi-comic coup attempt (in other words, a very Bowie-esque character)" im SCREAMING. you're just gonna. just gonna throwaway mention "david bowie painted a portrait of THE weird gay fascist author dude, within six years of the guy dying" and not. like. elaborate on that? you're gonna strategically talk *around* the fascist politics of The Thin White Duke and dismiss it as cocaine psychosis (which you describe exclusively in terms of schizophrenia and autism, inexplicably) without actually acknowledging the ramifications of that, or what it even entailed, and then just casually add in that he SLEPT UNDERNEATH A PORTRAIT HE DID OF A JAPANESE FASCIST WHO TRIED TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT LESS THAN A DECADE PRIOR, and then just call it a "very bowie-esque character"???????? i'm actually AMAZED by this. im FASCINATED. im horrified, but in a like. it takes SKILL to be this obtuse around this subject matter.
-the sentence that implies, due to a lack of an oxford comma, that Eno and Visconti shared one (1) wife
-the INCREDIBLE reaches to compare certain lines or ideas and claim them as being *certainly* one-to-one between bowie and other artists when like, dude, you could just acknowledge that it was a reach and leave it at that, that would be a way better look than whatever the fuck this is.
-page 88, where Wilcken writes that "After failing to connect with female others in "Breaking Glass and "What in the World", the lyrics here are addressed only to the self [....] The neurotic travel ("I've lived all over the world, I've left every place") is exchanged for the blankness of immobility." The strange combination of how the phrase *female* others rings very grossly after the above matters. the fact that the lyrics Wilcken quotes as an example here come AFTER sound and vision, making the whole matter irrelevant.
all in all: it took me three weeks to get through this book because despite being less than 150 very short pages long, it was an agonizing read, and i wish that i wasn't actually interested in the good parts of the book as much as i was, because maybe then i would have put it down. if nothing else, i'm grateful to mr. wilcken for giving me material to practice editing.
"His brother was also artistically inclined (as many schizophrenics are)...Bowie's interest in schizophrenia goes beyond te fact that his half-brother had the illness. At around this time Bowie was enthusiastically reading Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", a work that posits the essential schizophrenic nature of prehistoric man, and man's religious impulse as a direct result of it. [...] And to me, there is something distinctly modernist about the schizophrenic world. [...] Schizophrenia stretches the personality in both directions. The schizophrenic is both less of a person and more of a person. Negative symptoms send him to a grey limbo of autistic disconnection; positive symptoms overstimulate the imagination, leading to a conflation of myth and reality" (80-2)
(above is another notable thing that I did that Wilcken didn't—citations. there are no on-page citations (which is fine!!) but when I went to check sources at the back, the bibliography consisted of 10 books and 6 websites, with a note that says "...most [direct quotes] come from a wide range of articles published in the music press over the past 25 years. [...] For specific references for all other quotes, please contact me [by email]" alright sir uhhhh. quick question. what the fuck? maybe this is a standard in music biography but it seems to me a bit absurd to basically say "here are 16 sources for what is nominally a deep-dive into this work, contextualized by the surrounding 40 years of Bowie's life. everything else is from. dude just trust me. just. just trust me. if you want to know so badly you'll email me. i promise it's all true." i'm not doubting Wilcken's actual sourcing here. nothing seems to be outrageously offensive and incorrect (though perhaps he should have listed the DSM as a source, just to prove that he knew it existed, to preempt some of the criticism) but something rubs me particularly the wrong way about "Yeah *I* know where they came from, you just have to trust *me*". mr. wilcken sir you don't know what autism is why the fuck should i trust that you're not just making the rest of it up or twisting it extremely for your point.)
other notes include:
-"sure it's misogynistic BUT what ELSE do you expect from two isolated addicts in their 30s?? HUH?? anyways it's GOOD MUSIC" (followed in short order by "this song is like when a psychotic dude breaks a bunch of shit in the house and then blames it on his girlfriend to his girlfriend's face" sir this may come as a surprise but you don't have to be psychotic to do that. in fact if you're psychotic it'll probably happen to you instead of the other way around. something just about the casual "theorizing" of abuse and gaslighting, immediately following a lampshaded acknowledgement of the actual misogyny that is very present in this, just. makes me feel gross.)
-casual mention of a painting Bowie did, and then HUNG ABOVE HIS BED?, of Yukio Mishima, described by Wilcken only as a Japanese novelist "who spectacularly committed ritual suicide after a tragi-comic coup attempt (in other words, a very Bowie-esque character)" im SCREAMING. you're just gonna. just gonna throwaway mention "david bowie painted a portrait of THE weird gay fascist author dude, within six years of the guy dying" and not. like. elaborate on that? you're gonna strategically talk *around* the fascist politics of The Thin White Duke and dismiss it as cocaine psychosis (which you describe exclusively in terms of schizophrenia and autism, inexplicably) without actually acknowledging the ramifications of that, or what it even entailed, and then just casually add in that he SLEPT UNDERNEATH A PORTRAIT HE DID OF A JAPANESE FASCIST WHO TRIED TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT LESS THAN A DECADE PRIOR, and then just call it a "very bowie-esque character"???????? i'm actually AMAZED by this. im FASCINATED. im horrified, but in a like. it takes SKILL to be this obtuse around this subject matter.
-the sentence that implies, due to a lack of an oxford comma, that Eno and Visconti shared one (1) wife
-the INCREDIBLE reaches to compare certain lines or ideas and claim them as being *certainly* one-to-one between bowie and other artists when like, dude, you could just acknowledge that it was a reach and leave it at that, that would be a way better look than whatever the fuck this is.
-page 88, where Wilcken writes that "After failing to connect with female others in "Breaking Glass and "What in the World", the lyrics here are addressed only to the self [....] The neurotic travel ("I've lived all over the world, I've left every place") is exchanged for the blankness of immobility." The strange combination of how the phrase *female* others rings very grossly after the above matters. the fact that the lyrics Wilcken quotes as an example here come AFTER sound and vision, making the whole matter irrelevant.
all in all: it took me three weeks to get through this book because despite being less than 150 very short pages long, it was an agonizing read, and i wish that i wasn't actually interested in the good parts of the book as much as i was, because maybe then i would have put it down. if nothing else, i'm grateful to mr. wilcken for giving me material to practice editing.
March 10, 2015
This was so very boring. I've never read any of the 33 1/3 books before, but I've bought a few for my kindle. I hope they aren't all like this. I listened to this - was probably an audible daily deal. And I love David Bowie. But I don't feel like I learned anything significant at all from listening to this.
And why did the narrator insist on reading punctuation - "quote" "end quote" through the whole book? So unnecessary. I used to work as a copy editor at a news distribution service, and sometimes we would have to read off press releases to each other and read out punctuation - that's what this reminded me of.
Also, the author really needs to reconsider his use of the word "autistic." It's not an adjective.
I didn't enjoy this at all. I only kept listening because I had paid for it and wanted a short book to finish listening to before a week long break. Deeply regret this purchase.
And why did the narrator insist on reading punctuation - "quote" "end quote" through the whole book? So unnecessary. I used to work as a copy editor at a news distribution service, and sometimes we would have to read off press releases to each other and read out punctuation - that's what this reminded me of.
Also, the author really needs to reconsider his use of the word "autistic." It's not an adjective.
I didn't enjoy this at all. I only kept listening because I had paid for it and wanted a short book to finish listening to before a week long break. Deeply regret this purchase.
May 23, 2024
I'm a big fan of the Low album and was looking forward to this book. But it was a disappointment. I would have liked more on the writing and recording processes and less of the author's attempt at Bowie psychoanalysis. It reads like an over extended article from a music mag.
July 19, 2014
The 33 1/3 series is kind of a mixed bag, sometimes you get these really insightful examinations of a specific albums production, historical context, and antecedents, and sometimes you just get a delerious fanboy's paean. Wilcken's book fortunately falls into the former camp. He obviously loves the album, yet manages to maintain a healthy distance and a high level of critical examination overall. And he shows the sort of ideas that Bowie, Eno et al were playing around with in the mid 70's before so much of it would become such a canonical part of contemporary popular music. And he does a good job of untangling a knotty, often over-discussed time in Bowie's career. This offers a really good balance of colorful anecdotes, techie production information, and a broader examination of the delightfully odd turns that pop started taking in the 1970s.
February 3, 2016
I'm devouring lots of Bowie at the moment, in honour of his passing. And anything about the album "Low" in particular is bound to pique my interest. It was the first and only Bowie album I owned for a long time. I had it on vinyl as a teenager when I was going through a phase of creative discovery, and found it and the story of its creation fascinating.
There's nothing particularly new in here, for someone who has read the "story" several times from several angles, and at times I thought the author too clinical in his approach, but it's a jolly good read about an essential album nevertheless.
There's nothing particularly new in here, for someone who has read the "story" several times from several angles, and at times I thought the author too clinical in his approach, but it's a jolly good read about an essential album nevertheless.
May 30, 2011
I believe "Nat" and I are of a mind on this book and I would rate it higher if it had continued along its initial lines.
"The first half of this book, which describes Bowie's vampiric existence in L.A. (subsisting just on cocaine, milk and cigarettes), his obsession with the occult, and the recording of The Idiot with Iggy Pop and Low with Brian Eno in a converted French chauteau is very satisfying.
"The analysis of the songs on Low, and the aesthetic of the album as a whole, is unfortunately unilluminating..."
"The first half of this book, which describes Bowie's vampiric existence in L.A. (subsisting just on cocaine, milk and cigarettes), his obsession with the occult, and the recording of The Idiot with Iggy Pop and Low with Brian Eno in a converted French chauteau is very satisfying.
"The analysis of the songs on Low, and the aesthetic of the album as a whole, is unfortunately unilluminating..."
Displaying 1 - 30 of 160 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.