Life in Los Angeles was killing David Bowie. He’d moved to the city to begin work on Nicolas Roeg’s science fiction drama movie The Man Who Fell To Earth in July 1975, but a cocaine addiction he’d developed the previous summer had caused him to develop a series of damaging obsessions, not least with the occult.
Not sleeping for days, paranoid and delusional, he’d avidly read texts on religion, magic, the Third Reich, Nietzsche, Crowley and then habitually coke-babble half-considered concepts to a grateful press. He was teetering on the brink of losing everything.
Despite Bowie’s chemical-induced fall-out with reality, he retained a degree of self-awareness and a desire to get clean. To this end he made a decision to relocate to Europe. Having remade the acquaintance of ex-Stooge Iggy Pop he was determined to record with him, and where better than away from temptation at the Château d’Hérouville in France?
After all, he was suddenly in need of a project upon which to focus his mind, as he’d just abandoned work on The Man Who Fell To Earth soundtrack. When informed he’d have to present his work alongside other composers just like any other candidate, he’d chosen to abandon the project, retaining Subterraneans for later use on Low, the first of three albums latterly corralled as The Berlin Trilogy. Upon Low’s eventual release, Bowie sent it to Roeg with the note: “This is what I wanted to do for the soundtrack. It would have been a wonderful score.”
As Bowie’s Isolar tour progressed from the US to Europe in the Spring of 1976, Iggy joined the entourage as Bowie’s constant companion and on arrival at Wembley, the singer bumped into Brian Eno. Turning on the charm, Bowie revealed he’d been avidly listening to Eno’s ambient album Discreet Music,released the previous year. “Naturally, flattery always endears
