David Bowie, NEU! and influences

as a result of reading this forum I discovered NEU! and in particular their (second) third album NEU! 75. This is now on daily play, I'm hooked on it.

However I was surprised to realise that the highlights of Bowie's Berlin albums, Low, Lodger and Heroes, which I have known since I was a teenager in the '70s, were really hardly original at all as they owe such a strong debt to this LP. I have read since then that in 1976 Bowie telephoned Michael Rother of NEU! to say that he and Eno had been listening to their records and were starting a project in Berlin (which would be Low) - and would he like to be involved, but he declined.

I'm shocked to find myself so unaware of NEU! 75, whoch on repeated listening seems to contain the inspiration of a lot of subsequent music, not only Bowie's clearly derivative tracks, but even punk.

If anyone else is interested in this area, I'd love to know more.

I'm also wondering what else in Bowie's work might have obvious sources elsewhere I didn't know about...

 

For me, it was the other way around. I'd been listening to NEU! since the 80's, and only started to listen to Bowie's Berlin trilogy after hearing that he was so influenced by them. NEU! '75 (their third album incidentally, not their second) is my favourite as well. The debut is a close second, and of NEU! 2 I only like the first side, the second consisting of two single tracks at various tape speeds. Nice to hear only once.

Didn't know Bowie asked Michael Rother to play with them though!

 

After listening to NEU! it's hard to escape the feeling that Bowie's work is, well, a bit commercial in comparison, lacking something of the edginess and drive of the Germans. The best of the Berlin work, songs like Heroes, Red Sails, Look Back in Anger, are to my mind the ones that best capture that relentless forward momentum of NEU!

 

I agree side 2 of Neu!2 is far from easy listening, but you're under-selling it a bit IMO The last track, "Super" is at its normal speed, and is one of the most ahead of its time 3 minutes in the history of rock music. Recorded in Jan '73, it's not just pure punk 3 years early, it sounds like something from the great 1979-1981 years of European POST-punk and new wave too. Not that I'm a fan of all these names for music eras, but you know what I mean!

For me, the way the track smashes in at the end of Side 2's tape manipulation mayhem only adds to its power, but even in isolation, it's one of the two most astonishing and original Neu! tracks of all IMO. (The other being "Negativland" from Neu!1).

 

Cluster: Sowiesoso / Zuckerzeit (1973-4) > some of Low / Heroes (1977-8). (Worth knowing that Eno was also a fan of Cluster before he worked with Bowie on those albums).

Eno: Another Green World (1975) > Low (1977) (the overal structure of the album and careful sequencing of the tracks).

(PS to RHCD, if you like Neu!75 a lot you'll probably enjoy the first La Düsseldorf album from that Neu! splinter group).

 

A quick look in the RT archives and found this from the NME review of Heroes by Angus McKinnon from October 77.

"V2 Schneider is splendid though. Bowie's nod to Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider, its electronic pad percussion and sheet noise - itself recalling Michael Rother's Neu - surge under Bowie's brusque sax riffing."

So the influence was certainly noted at the time.

 

and openly discussed by Bowie then and ever since... this is hardly news... the influence first surfaced on the title track of Station To Station and the move to Berlin pretty much underlined his intention and direction thereafter.

 

.. and didn't he ask Kraftwerk to open the European Station to Station shows too? Although, like the Rother guitar offer, they turned him down.

The best summary and acknowledgment of Bowie's magpie activities, ie the direct, strong link between his work and others' work who came before him, came from Bowie himself in the "Earthling at 50" TV documentary, when to camera he amusingly spoke a list of artists.

 

I never suggested it was news to anyone but me!

Anyway to continue the discussion: is it just me, or is the very early Bowie trying to be Syd Barrett? Bowie's earliest recordings strike me as just the same kind of cheery, inconsequential, slightly mad little ditties - though perhaps not as deft of touch and genuinely lunatic as Syd's songs.


David Bowie, Beckenham, 1969

 

I think Bowie's always been pretty open about his influences - VU for Ziggy/Hunky Dory; soul music for Young Americans; covering his mod favourites on Pin Ups; Neu! etc for the Berlin LPs. My view is that, in each case, he takes something great and, in filtering it through his own point of view, creates something as worthwhile and substantial as his sources.

 

I can't say I hear the Velvet Underground in Ziggy.

 

Well... I LOVE Neu!, one of my favourite bands ever but I don't think Bowie's European albums have a very strong Neu! influence. You might want to check "Epsylon In Malaysian Pale" by (Tangerine Dream's) Edgar Froese, "Zuckerzeit" by Cluster or "Another Green World" by Eno.

 

Isn't 'Suffragette City' on Ziggy?

 

Just found this - good read from '72.

http://www.5years.com/superstarwhosfan.htm

 

True, though that actually sounds more like Iggy Pop to me - first track on Raw Power for example

 

Get the two la dusseldorf records! Both essential for a new neu fan! You won't be disappointed.

 

made it my view

 

i have the 33 & 1/3 book about the low album and in it the author notes that bowie had kraftwerk's 'radio activity' playing on the p.a. before shows on the station to station tour. (also had un chien andalou screening iirc)

 

I think the Velvet influence on Bowie is more of a subtle thing in the attitude he puts through in the lyrics and some of his vocal delivery. Mick Ronson sounds like he's never heard the Velvets in his life so, sure, the music doesn't really sound like VU.