Berlin, Germany – When David Bowie’s Glass Spider Tour arrived in West Berlin on June 6, 1987, the town was the world’s de facto capital of geopolitical turmoil, cleft in two bodily and politically by 168km (104 miles) of machine-gun-guarded concrete wall.
The stage on which Bowie was to carry out lay to the west of the division line on the derelict garden of West Berlin’s Platz der Republik, a grassy sq. in entrance of the imperious Reichstag constructing. The constructing had as soon as been the seat of the German authorities (and is once more at the moment) however within the late Eighties had stood largely unused since World Struggle II resulting from its proximity to the Berlin Wall looming immediately behind it.
The tour had come to take part within the Live performance for Berlin, an occasion held as a part of the town’s 750th-anniversary celebrations, and when the efficiency venue was erected, its West Berliner organisers made certain that a number of audio system have been pointing immediately on the Wall.
It was a cool night when Bowie and firm took to the stage beneath a 15-meter (50-foot), illuminated spider earlier than an viewers of some 80,000 followers. On the similar time, listeners from the east gathered as shut as they dared, their numbers accumulating steadily.
Attendees to the west acquired their cash’s price, as Bowie rocked by way of a prolonged 24-song set adopted by three encores. The tracks have been largely drawn from his newest run of albums – Scary Monsters, Let’s Dance and By no means Let Me Down – however just a few harkened again to these he’d recorded a decade earlier whereas residing within the metropolis, most notably his anti-Wall anthem, “Heroes”.
By all accounts the efficiency was well-received by these watching from the Reichstag. Bowie himself later expressed that it was an emotional expertise.
For these listening to the east, nevertheless, the music might have been welcome, however the ambiance was oppressive as members of the Volkspolizei – the Individuals’s Police, a civilian wing of the much-feared Stasi secret police – spent the period of the live performance hassling and intimidating those that had congregated to listen to it.
The next night as the group swelled precipitously for a second day of music, violence erupted when East German authorities cracked down on jap listeners – a repressive act that solely infected opposition and in the end contributed to the Wall’s collapse.
A story of two cities
On the time, Berlin sat on the crux of the Chilly Struggle. Within the wake of World Struggle II, the victorious powers had chopped Germany into 4 areas, every occupied and administered by one of many United States, the USSR, the UK and France. However with Berlin located deep contained in the Soviet zone, it was agreed that the capital, too, can be divided alongside related strains.
Then in 1961, following years of rising rigidity, the Soviets boxed within the western Allied part of the town with a closely fortified and guarded barrier – the notorious Berlin Wall – which divided households and severed financial and social ties.
“It’s onerous for any of us to actually think about,” says Berlin Wall historian Hope M Harrison, professor of historical past and worldwide affairs at George Washington College. “This was a world metropolis like New York, London, Paris, Rome – and immediately to have it divided in two!” Households have been separated, staff reduce off from their jobs, college students from faculty. “It had an enormous, devastating influence on the individuals of Berlin.
“For Berlin, it was a gash by way of the town,” Harrison explains. “For the world, it symbolised two issues: the Chilly Struggle – right here it’s in concrete – but additionally each the brutality and concurrently the weak spot of the Communist regime.” That the powers that lay to the east felt it essential to wall its individuals in was “a form of admission of defeat”, she added.
Life on either side of the barrier grew to become more and more grim. These to the east skilled pervasive censorship and a fast diminishing of fabric requirements as a result of meals and provide shortages that plagued the Soviet Union. These in West Berlin settled into their besieged enclave, the place better cultural freedom allowed for wide-ranging inventive experimentation, however the sense that it was all teetering on the brink continued.
“West Berlin very a lot grew to become a countercultural place,” says Harrison, gravitating artists, punks, anarchists, and East Germans trying to escape obligatory navy service. “It was residing on the sting, so it attracted individuals who have been completely satisfied to stay on the sting, a few of them with the Berlin Wall actually of their again yard or throughout the road.”
The autumn of Ziggy Stardust
“That’s why I went to Berlin,” stated Bowie, who moved to West Berlin in 1976 on the age of 31. “I needed to have one other form of friction … individuals residing underneath the impression that the whole lot would possibly collapse in a short time.”
Drowning within the latest superstardom introduced on by The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and accompanied by flat-mate and then-floundering former Stooges frontman Iggy Pop, Bowie ostensibly went to Berlin to flee the raging cocaine dependancy that had prompted his earlier handful of albums – significantly Station to Station, the manufacturing of which Bowie later reported he had little to no recollection.
Raised in Bromley, not removed from London, he had gone to the US in 1974 however, after two years of maximalist rockstar debauchery throughout New York Metropolis and Los Angeles, the singer was determined for change. The Skinny White Duke (as he was monikered throughout his Station years) was in a transitional mode and Iron Curtain-era Berlin appeared an applicable atmosphere for this modulation.
“I knew I needed to get to an atmosphere that was completely completely different from Los Angeles,” he defined in direction of the top of 1977. “Probably the most arduous metropolis that I might consider, and it was West Berlin. It’s an excellent, therapeutic metropolis for an artist.”
By the point Bowie arrived in Berlin, its Chilly Struggle tradition battle was in full swing and music performed no small half within the wrestle. That very same yr, famed German people singer Wolf Biermann had his East Berlin citizenship revoked whereas he was away performing in West Berlin, barring him from returning dwelling: His crime – writing a tune important of the Stasi that was sung amongst its prisoners.
Western music was largely banned within the east, although East Germans nonetheless acquired radio and tv transmissions from the opposite aspect of the Wall, in addition to smuggled cassette tapes and information reduce into medical x-ray movies referred to as “ribs”, “jazz on bones”, or “bone music”.
The Berlin Trilogy
“It’s a really tight life there, surrounded by a wall with machineguns,” Bowie stated of life in West Berlin. “The longer you reside there the extra it is available in, and the Wall by the top feels as if it’s proper across the condominium or home you’re staying in.”
In actual fact, Bowie might see the Wall from Hansa Studio, the place he completed his eleventh and twelfth albums, Low and Heroes, and produced Iggy’s second solo launch, Lust for Life. Hansa continues to be there at the moment, simply across the nook from sections of the Wall displayed within the sq. of Potsdamer Platz (which Bowie talked about in “The place Are We Now?” 30 years later, a tune largely concerning the day the divide lastly fell – November 9, 1989).
As of late, it’s flanked by a modern procuring centre and the luxurious Ritz-Carlton lodge somewhat than the armed guard towers that enforced the division of the town for some three many years. It was beneath a type of towers that Bowie spied the inspiration for Heroes’ titular monitor. Producer Tony Visconti and singer Antonia Maass would steal away to kiss within the shadow of the Wall throughout recording classes; Bowie used the picture of that as a logo of the ability of affection over oppression.
“It’s about what it means to be a hero and arise,” stated Harrison. “I feel this tune could be very related proper now. Standing up in opposition to what you are feeling is fallacious and shameful.”
Over the following many years, the tune Heroes went on to change into probably the most recognised anthem from what was dubbed Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, however what’s most distinct about Heroes the album and its forerunner Low are their least-known tracks: The synth-driven, largely lyricless compositions that comprised the second aspect of each information.
“I wanted to find for myself a brand new type of musical language earlier than I continued writing,” Bowie defined. “Low and Heroes aren’t a lot conditions, however a technique of discovery. Looking for a brand new inventive language in order that I can go additional.”
Going additional meant leaving one thing behind, and it was in Berlin that he killed off the characters behind whom he’d lengthy hidden – Main Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Halloween Jack, the Skinny White Duke – and embraced an identification he had heretofore obscured: Himself.
“I by no means needed to seem as myself on stage ever,” he stated in 1979, shortly after leaving Berlin for the Isolar II World Tour – stated to be his healthiest tour in years as a result of noticeable discount in cocaine use – “till lately.”
Adjustments
Once you evaluate the interviews Bowie gave earlier than and after Berlin, it’s plain to see that he had undergone a elementary change in the course of the roughly 18 months he lived there. Earlier than, there was a dolled-up rock star attempting to bluff away nerves. After, he appeared remarkably mature, calm and clear-eyed.
Escaping the throttle of cocaine in all probability didn’t harm, but it surely was one thing greater than that. As he defined to interviewers who commented on the shift in his gown and manner in the course of the closing years of the Seventies, he had come down from the astral antics of Ziggy and the megalomania of the Duke and humbled himself amongst humanity. Gone have been the pomp and flash of fame, and right here now was this very normal-looking man with unhealthy tooth.
Visiting Hansa in 2025, one would possibly get the impression that Bowie lived a lavish way of life in Berlin – such is the studio’s more and more gentrified neighbourhood at the moment. However issues have been very completely different in 1976, when he rented a small condominium at 155 Hauptstraße in close by Schöneberg – a working-class district largely populated with Turkish immigrants and artsy gays – the place Bowie churned out lots of of work that he was too self-conscious to point out anybody.
“They’re all portraits of individuals in isolation,” he later defined. “A lot of the work are Germans or Turks who stay in Berlin … from East Berlin and now residing in West Berlin understanding their households are on the opposite aspect of the Wall.”
Within the 20 years earlier than Bowie’s arrival, some 650,000 Turkish staff had come to Germany as a part of a bilateral settlement with Turkiye to complement a steep labour scarcity. Many introduced households, and over the course of 20 years developed a thriving, seen migrant group in Berlin and past.
Wanting on the work you possibly can recognise the affect of Bowie’s favorite painter, the German expressionist Erich Heckel – declared “degenerate” by the Nazis – whose Roquairol impressed the quilt artwork for each Heroes and Iggy’s 1974 solo debut The Fool. Right now you possibly can see Heckel’s work on the Brucke Museum, which Bowie frequented throughout his time in Berlin.
The subject material of Bowie’s work hints on the transition he was present process. Within the lyrics all through Low and Heroes – with the notable exception of the latter’s title monitor – he maintained his early-career tendency in direction of introspection, typically to the purpose of outright wallowing. However together with his hallucinatory portraits of struggling Turks and Germans, immediately he was turning his gaze outward and analyzing the hardships of others somewhat than his personal. This inclination got here to a head with the missed and much-maligned finale to the Berlin Trilogy, 1979’s Lodger.
Misfire or misunderstood?
To say that Lodger fell flat can be an understatement. It was one of many worst-selling information of Bowie’s profession. Critics tore it aside, declaring it “self-plagiarism” and complaining of its “droning temper items”. Many claimed it was not a correct Berlin album in any respect; it wasn’t recorded there and was tonally divergent from the primary two instalments. Some went as far as to accuse Bowie of promoting gimmickry by way of his saddling of a lesser album to its extra highly effective predecessors.
However with the good thing about hindsight, one would possibly decide that Lodger was in truth the logical conclusion to his time within the metropolis – that it was a Berlin recording as a result of it was a direct response to the social and political plight he encountered there. It’s maybe probably the most human album he created within the first three many years of his profession – a file about actual individuals, immigrants and world affairs, important of society and virtually optimistic in its teasing of it, not like the introverted Chilly Struggle starkness of Low and Heroes.
Take into account its opener, “Unbelievable Voyage”, through which Bowie warns concerning the risks of apocalyptic nuclear brinkmanship, reminding these in cost that “Dignity is efficacious, however our lives are helpful too.” It’s a tune that champions life within the face of the political temper swings that threaten catastrophe, urging humanity over geopolitical partisanship – one of many few songs from the period that Bowie continued to carry out effectively into the brand new millennium.
Or “Yassassin” – Turkish for “Lengthy Stay” – which explores the struggles of Turkish immigrants dealing with bigotry and violence by the hands of native Germans, a problem that feels all too related in modern Berlin, dwelling as it’s to many African migrants and refugees from Syria and Ukraine amidst a rising tide of nationalism.
To proceed: The mock-toxic (moxic?) masculinity of “Repetition” and queer-coded “Boys Preserve Swinging”. His sardonic swipe on the vapidity of the music trade in “DJ”. Then wrapping up the album with “Purple Cash”, which concludes with the road, “Such duty/it’s as much as you and me.” These are the songs of somebody who has moved past the glamour of rock stardom to embrace the humanitarian energy of the platform.
The autumn of the Berlin Wall
A decade later, Bowie would return for the Live performance for Berlin. The three-day occasion was organised by Radio within the American Sector (RIAS 2), a station that was infamous for broadcasting Soviet-banned music to either side of the town. Held in an open-air venue and that includes performances from the likes of the Eurythmics and Genesis within the days to observe Bowie, one promoter later asserted that the present was, at the very least partially, an intentional provocation of Jap authorities.
The live performance introduced 1000’s of East Berliners crowding to their aspect of the barrier hoping to listen to, and impressed what was supposedly the primary public demonstration in opposition to the partition. By the second and third days of the live performance, eastside police had violently attacked listeners and demonstrators, arresting at the very least 100 individuals. This, many have since claimed, was the final straw, as soon as and for all shifting public opinion firmly in opposition to the Soviet state.
“These live shows and Western music have been listened to broadly in East Berlin and East Germany,” says Harrison. “These icons singing so shut, simply on the opposite aspect of the Wall, definitely for a lot of drove dwelling this division.”
There have been extra live shows to return related to the East-West Berlin battle. In July 1988, Bruce Springsteen carried out in East Berlin to an viewers of 300,000 on the invitation of officers who thought his working-class picture would swimsuit communist propaganda, solely to have it backfire when the Boss made statements in favour of tearing down the Wall.
“The Wall could be very well-known for the way it fell,” notes Harrison. “Unexpectedly and in reality by mistake. We must always by no means overlook the function of likelihood.”
Following months of large-scale protests and the piecemeal disintegration of the East/West German border, it lastly all got here down to 1 man – an East German official named Gunter Schabowski – who, on November 9, 1989, declared the border open earlier than a world information convention after misreading directions that have been merely a modification of journey restrictions.
Now East Berliners surged in direction of the Wall hoping to cross in a scene captured by Bowie within the monitor “The place Are We Now?”:
Twenty thousand individuals
Cross Bosebrucke
Fingers are crossed
Simply in case
Bosebrucke was one of many border checkpoints overwhelmed by East German plenty that night time, together with a younger Angela Merkel – the longer term chancellor of a unified Germany.
Footage of jubilant plenty from each east and west celebrating atop the barrier was broadcast around the globe. They began the work of dismantling it that very night time, utilizing sledgehammers and saws to tear it down brick by brick and panel by panel, although the demolition wouldn’t start in earnest till the next yr.
On New 12 months’s Eve 1989, David Hasselhoff headlined the Freedom Tour Stay live performance attended by 500,000 individuals from either side of the Wall. Its climax got here when Hasselhoff sang his hit “Searching for Freedom” whereas a crane raised him above the Wall alongside the Brandenburg Gate, lengthy inaccessible to these within the east resulting from its location only a few metres into the west.
Officers started the official teardown in June 1990, and East and West Germany have been reunified into Germany as we all know it at the moment on October 3. The writing was now on the wall for the Soviet Union, which collapsed over the following yr, dissolving formally on December 26, 1991.
Whereas Harrison doesn’t attribute the Wall’s fall to Bowie – it’s onerous to argue that it wasn’t pushed by the broader socioeconomic, geopolitical scenario – some Germans desire the legend to the fact as evidenced by a tweet from the German International Ministry upon the singer’s loss of life in January 2016: “Goodbye, David Bowie. You at the moment are amongst #Heroes. Thanks for serving to to convey down the #wall.”
New shores
Right now, little stays to mark Bowie’s time in Berlin, besides the music. There’s Hansa Studio the place he recorded it, which shows in its window the singer’s continually shifting portrait. Or you possibly can have a drink at his previous boozing spot, Neues Ufer – German for “New Shore” – which was supposedly the primary homosexual bar on the town again in 1977.
However simply down the road from the bar, at Hauptstraße 155, is probably the most placing memorial to Bowie’s stint within the metropolis: The graffiti-haloed bust of Aladdin Sane – considered one of his most well-known alter-egos – rising from the constructing facade, candles and votive choices on the stoop under, a plaque above explaining the Berlin Trilogy and bearing the phrases “We could be heroes, only for at some point.”
Simply above is the second-storey condominium Bowie known as dwelling for a yr and a half, and it was right here amongst struggling Turkish immigrants and German households separated by the Wall that he tore down his personal boundaries and metamorphosed from self-centred rock star to socially conscious artist.
Now, practically 35 years after the Wall fell, with previous divisions cropping up as soon as once more in Germany and the broader world, the story of Bowie and the Berlin Wall suggests vital classes. That there could be nice creativity and sweetness even by way of calamity. That the human compulsion in direction of freedom can’t be caged. That life is stuffed with modifications. That partitions come down.
“To so many individuals,” concludes Harrison, “the peaceable fall of the Wall confirmed that one thing you assume won’t ever finish can, in truth, finish. It made many individuals really feel that something is feasible.”
