Hippies vs. Punks: David Bowie's Low (1977)

We are approaching the heart of the matter with Hippies vs. Punks. At the heart of the matter -- which you will recall are the years 1975 to 1979, years when Punks appear on the scene to wipe out the last vestiges of the Hippies from the avant-garde -- are David Bowie and Brian Eno.

David Bowie and Brian Eno have more to do with the destruction of the Hippies than the Ramones, Sex Pistols and Patti Smith combined. First, as progenitors of the "Glam/Glitter Thermidor" and then New Wave.

Low (1977) is the first installment of the "Berlin Trilogy" -- followed by "Heroes" (1977) and Lodger (1979) -- hugely influential collaborations between Bowie and Eno which establish a new sonic paradigm as the decade draws to a close.

This week I decided to immerse myself in Low, listening basically non-stop from Monday morning until last night on the train home, after watching a documentary on Brian Eno -- Brian Eno: 1971-1977 - The Man Who Fell to Earth (2012) -- and learning that Eno was really the driving force behind Low and the key track on the album, "Warszawa." It is "Warszawa" that gives Joy Division its first name, Warsaw (which the band changed to Joy Division upon realizing that there was a London Punk group called Warsaw Pakt). Interestingly, the album that Ian Curtis listened to the night of his suicide is Iggy Pop's The Idiot (1977), an album that was released after Low but was actually recorded prior to it and is generally considered the opening salvo of the Berlin Trilogy since David Bowie produced it for his RCA label and has been quoted saying that he used Pop as a guinea pig for the development of a new sound.

So obviously the work that Bowie did at Château d'Hérouville in 1976 looms large in Hippies vs. Punks given that both The Idiot and Low were recorded there and those two albums provide bookends to one of the most important Post-Punk bands, Joy Division. (We'll return to Château d'Hérouville in a future Hippies vs. Punks post. It was there that Elton John produced Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973), another hugely devastating album for the Hippies.)

The story of Low is well known. Bowie, trying to rid himself of a cocaine addiction, abandoned Los Angeles, where he had recorded the extremely successful Station to Station (1976) in a drug-induced haze, and retreated to Europe. 

When Bowie hit a brick wall in production he called Brian Eno, whose Discreet Music (1975) was a personal favorite, and Eno arrived on the Continent with his EMS suitcase AKS synthesizer and worked his magic.

Immersed in the album all week there is of course the obvious. The first side is composed of pop songs ("Be My Wife" is the best of the bunch) with a New Wave vibe, something that must have sounded unique in January 1977 but today strikes one as fashionably au courant, and a second side of what Christgau derisively referred to as movie music. "Warszawa" does seem like a futuristic avant-garde musical interlude played during the intermission of Hollywood feature in the heyday of the studio system.

But my favorite track is the final one, "Subterraneans" which Bowie recorded as part of the soundtrack for the Nicolas Roeg film he starred in, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), but which Roeg spiked in favor of a score written by "Papa" John Phillips, a Hippie founding father.

Hippies vs. Punks: Joy Division's Closer (1980)

Mindful of the need to maintain symmetry between posts devoted to Hippies and those devoted to Punks, I cast about for a Punk album to spotlight this week. Initially, I thought I might do a Damaged (1981) or Golden Shower of Hits (1983) immersion. West Coast Hardcore Punk was the amniotic fluid of my young-man youth.

Then I struck upon the idea of Joy Division's Closer (1980) since I had just finished up an immersion in Joy of Cooking's Closer to the Ground (1971). Closer and Closer to the Ground, respective offerings of the Punk and Hippie "Joy" bands, offer as clear a contrast between adjoining avant-gardes as one can imagine.

I don't recall listening to Closer in my youth. Unknown Pleasures (1979) was a distinct presence though. A close friend owned a copy, and it was played frequently. The suicide of Ian Curtis added to the weight of the album. One did not hear Joy Division at that time -- the early 1980s -- without thinking of Curtis having hanged himself in his kitchen. Another friend, a girlfriend of a buddy, was morbidly fascinated by Curtis' demise and seemed to always have to re-tell the story whenever we listened to Joy Division.

What I was unaware of until this week is that Curtis had been watching Werner Herzog's Stroszek prior to his suicide.

In any event, Joy Division cast a shadow in my young-man youth of the early 1980s.

That is why when a young man who I worked with asked me to listen to a new album that he was impressed with, Turn on the Bright Lights (2002) by a band called Interpol, I told him right away, authoritatively, that they were ripping off Joy Division.

Around this time there was a rediscovery of Post-Punk by the young smart set, which is probably what paved the way for the renewal Joy Division's popularity, culminating in the effective biopic Control (2007) by Anton Corbijn and the terrific Grant Gee documentary Joy Division (2007).

While Control was still in the theaters I ran into a girlfriend with whom I had recently separated and she told me that I absolutely had to see it. I took note. Not too long thereafter I saw both Control and the Gee documentary, which impressed me enough that I started to accumulate Joy Divisions' recordings.

Closer, the band's second and last studio album released two months after Curtis' death, has always remained resistant and inscrutable to me. None of the songs "pop" like say the amazing "Disorder" from Unknown Pleasures.

Nonetheless Closer is consistently rated at the same level or above Unknown Pleasures by rock critics. (Christgau gives both albums an A-minus.)

This week of immersed listening I finally figured it out. It took a beautiful sunny day of clear skies after a day or two of rain to get it, to understand all that darkness. The consistency of Closer is its key. The steady level. The steady state is all there is. That is the message. Dark and light, matter and spirit, void and substance, the charnel house and the maternity ward -- it is all the same on the astral plane. That is what Closer tells us. It's a very Hippie message. It took a walk in the solartopia of winter's end in the Pacific Northwest to figure it out, to see it.

Listen to Joy Division's Closer sometime soon.