Lodger (album)
Lodger is the thirteenth studio album by the English musician David Bowie, released on 25 May 1979 through RCA Records. Recorded in collaboration with the musician Brian Eno and the producer Tony Visconti, it was the final release of his Berlin Trilogy, following Low and "Heroes". Sessions took place in Switzerland in September 1978 during a break in the Isolar II world tour, and in New York City in March 1979 at the tour's end. Most of the same personnel from prior releases returned, along with newcomer guitarist Adrian Belew. The sessions saw the use of techniques inspired by Eno's Oblique Strategies cards, such as having the musicians swap instruments and playing old songs backwards.
The music on Lodger is based in art rock and experimental rock. It lacks the electronic and ambient styles and the song/instrumental split of its two predecessors, favouring more conventional song structures and exploring styles such as avant-pop, world and new wave music. Lyrically, the album is divided into two major themes: travel and critiques of Western civilisation. The pop artist Derek Boshier took the cover photo, portraying Bowie as an accident victim across the gatefold sleeve.
Lodger was a modest commercial success, peaking at number 4 in the UK and number 20 in the US. It produced four singles, including the UK top 10 hit "Boys Keep Swinging". Music videos directed by David Mallet accompanied three of the four singles. The album initially received mixed critical reviews, with many calling it the weakest of the Berlin Trilogy. Reception has grown in subsequent decades and it is now widely considered to be among Bowie's most underrated albums. Its world elements have been highlighted as particularly influential. Bowie and Visconti were dissatisfied with the album's original mix and, in 2015, Visconti remixed the album with Bowie's approval for inclusion on the 2017 box set A New Career in a New Town , along with a remaster of the original.
Background
In the second half of 1976, David Bowie and his friend Iggy Pop relocated to the Château d'Hérouville in Hérouville, France, to escape from the drug culture of Los Angeles. There, Bowie produced Pop's debut studio album The Idiot and recorded his own, Low, in collaboration with the musician Brian Eno and the producer Tony Visconti; the album came to be known as the first in Bowie's Berlin Trilogy. After Lows release in January 1977, Bowie toured with Pop before co-producing his second solo album Lust for Life, at Hansa Tonstudio in West Berlin.Bowie's productivity continued throughout the rest of 1977. He recorded his second Berlin release with Visconti and Eno, "Heroes", released in October 1977, after which he conducted extensive promotion for the album. These included a collaboration with the singer Bing Crosby on Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas television special, and contributing narration for an adaptation of Sergei Prokofiev's classical composition Peter and the Wolf, released as an album in May 1978. He also starred in the David Hemmings film Just a Gigolo, and toured Low and "Heroes" on the Isolar II world tour from March 1978 to the end of the year.
Recording and production
Recording for Lodger began during the four-month break in the Isolar II world tour during September 1978. Although Lodger is known as the final release of the Berlin Trilogy, it was largely recorded at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, with additional recording to finish the album at the Record Plant in New York City. The atmosphere in Montreux was very different from that in Berlin; the studio was built on the site of a previous studio that had burned down. Whereas Hansa Tonstudio was located near the Berlin Wall, Mountain Studios was located in an Alpine retreat. The guitarist Carlos Alomar described the location as "boring", preferring the "excitement" of Hansa. Mountain also lacked the Hansa's acoustics.File:Adrian Belew, live in Lisbon, 2017.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|alt=A man in a red hat playing a yellow guitar|Lodger features contributions from the future King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew '.
Many of the same musicians from the previous records—Eno, Visconti, Alomar, Dennis Davis and George Murray —returned for the Lodger sessions. A new addition was guitarist Adrian Belew, whom Bowie had "poached" while the guitarist was touring with Frank Zappa. Belew later joined King Crimson, whose de facto leader Robert Fripp played guitar on Bowie's album "Heroes". Much of Belew's work on Lodger was composited from multiple takes played against backing tracks of which he had no prior knowledge, not even the key. Belew recalled, "When I arrived, they had about twenty tracks already done: bass, drums, rhythm guitar, but no vocals. They said, 'We're not going to let you hear these songs. We want you to go into the studio and play accidentally – whatever occurs to you'." Belew described the final guitar solo on "D.J." as sounding like "you're changing channel on the radio and each channel has a different guitar solo on it".
File:Brian Eno 2008.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.8|alt=An older, bald-headed man with glasses looking to the right|Lodger marked the third collaboration between Bowie and Brian Eno '. Compared to "Heroes", the sessions saw greater use of Eno's Oblique Strategies cards, which were intended to spark creative ideas.
The sessions saw Bowie and Eno utilise techniques from Eno's Oblique Strategies cards. According to the biographer Chris O'Leary, these cards were "part-fortune cookie, part-Monopoly 'Chance' cards", intended to spark creative ideas. Eno and Bowie used them previously to create some of the instrumentals for "Heroes". Using the cards, Bowie and Eno conducted numerous experimental methods during the sessions. Some of these included using old tunes played backwards, employing identical chord sequences for different songs and having the musicians swap instruments, as Alomar and Davis did on "Boys Keep Swinging". The pianist Sean Mayes explained: " was very keen on spontaneity. He liked everything to be recorded in one or two takes, mistakes and all." The biographer Nicholas Pegg writes that several songs, including "African Night Flight", "Yassassin" and "Red Sails", were composed "around a melodic clash of disparate cultures". Due to the experimental nature of the sessions, initial working titles for the album included Planned Accidents and Despite Straight Lines. Unlike the lyrics for "Heroes", which Bowie largely improvised as he stood next to the microphone, he wrote most of Lodgers lyrics at a later date; they were unknown during the Mountain sessions. Other than "Yassassin" and "Red Sails", most of the tracks were recorded with working titles.
Alongside the use of Eno's Oblique Strategies cards, Visconti recalled Eno having more leeway during the sessions than those for Low and "Heroes". For "Look Back in Anger", Eno gave the backing band eight of his favourite chords and instructed them to "play something funky". Alomar disliked this, telling biographer David Buckley that he "totally, totally resisted it". Despite Eno assuming control at certain points, he appeared on, and co-wrote, only six of the album's ten tracks. Eno felt the trilogy had "petered out" by Lodger, and Belew also observed Eno's and Bowie's working relationship closing down: "They didn't quarrel or anything uncivilised like that; they just didn't seem to have the spark that I imagine they might have had during the "Heroes" album." Visconti shared similar sentiments, saying on multiple occasions: "I don't think heart was in Lodger." "We had fun, but nevertheless an ominous feeling pervaded the album for me."
The sessions at Mountain Studios lasted three weeks, after which the band went back on tour. At the tour's conclusion, Bowie reconvened at the Record Plant in March 1979, where he recorded his lyrics and instrumental overdubs, and began mixing. Belew returned to record further guitar overdubs while Visconti recorded a replacement bass guitar part for "Boys Keep Swinging" after Bowie decided Davis' original was unsuitable; work was completed in a week. Visconti recalled having "sonic problems" during the mixing stage because the studio did not have the technical advancements of European studios.
Musical style
Much like its two predecessors, Consequence of Sound described the music on Lodger as art rock and experimental rock. However, the album abandons the electronic and ambient styles and the song/instrumental split that defined the two earlier works, in favour of more conventional song structures. Visconti explained: "We dropped the ambient-side-two concept and just recorded songs!" As such, Lodger is the most "accessible" record of the Berlin Trilogy; AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine described the songs as "twisted avant-pop", while Belew similarly characterised them as "avant-garde pop music". Its musical textures, particularly on "African Night Flight", have been cited as presaging the popularity of world music, Bowie himself considered the album a forerunner of the sounds developed by Eno and David Byrne for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Frank Mastropolo of Ultimate Classic Rock wrote that Lodger combines world and new wave music into a "pop format". Although Bryan Wawzenek, also of Ultimate Classic Rock, found Lodger to be the more accessible record of the Berlin Trilogy, he also felt it to be the most experimental, observing elements of Middle Eastern music, reggae, world and krautrock within the vast array of pop songs. Biographers have singled out the final track on "Heroes", "The Secret Life of Arabia", in particular, as a precursor to what Bowie would explore on Lodger, both musically and thematically.After the ominousness of Low and "Heroes", biographers have described the opening track, "Fantastic Voyage", as "surprisingly delicate" and "serene"; a thought author Peter Doggett believes implies a "less intense" record. The song shares the same chord sequence as "Boys Keep Swinging" and features three different players playing mandolin parts; each part was triple-tracked to create a total of nine parts. Bowie composed "Move On" after accidentally playing his earlier composition "All the Young Dudes" backwards, then having Alomar write out the reversed chord sequence. "Yassassin" combines funk and reggae, using a violin played by Simon House to create a sound reminiscent of a Middle Eastern folk song and Turkish music. In part, the music of German band Neu! inspired "Red Sails", sharing their distinctive "motorik" drum beat; Pegg describes it as "an upbeat slab of new wave pop". The track has also been compared with Harmonia's 1975 track "Monza ".
Bowie said that "D.J." was "somewhat cynical" and his "natural response to disco". Bowie mimics David Byrne of Talking Heads in his vocal performance. Wawzenek highlighted "D.J." as a "danceable gem". Doggett describes "Look Back in Anger" as "propulsive and impatient", while Ned Raggett of AllMusic called it a "sharp-edged, thrillingly modern rock song". O'Leary particularly highlights Davis' drumming as the standout, while Alomar's guitar solo was influenced by John Lennon's rhythm guitar work in the Beatles. The Quietus found "Boys Keep Swinging" to contain elements of glam rock and garage rock. For the recording, which has the same chord sequence as "Fantastic Voyage", Bowie instructed the band to swap instruments. "Repetition" features a bass guitar riff that is described by Buckley as "insistent and very odd". Doggett highlights its sound as similar to funk music. "Red Money" is built around the backing track of "Sister Midnight", an Iggy Pop song he recorded with Bowie for The Idiot. New guitar parts were added, along with electronic effects, backwards guitar and vocal harmonies.