A conversation between Tyler and Writers’ Loom guest Travis.
Tyler: David Bowie’s vast catalog has gone criminally undervisited by me, Travis. This is one eccentric record, Lodger, and I doubt it’s where you’d recommend an amateur Bowie listener start their journey.
Travis: Definitely not. It’s not even where I’d have a Bowie neophyte start with the Berlin Trilogy (that would be Low, the first of the three). Speaking of which, the Berlin Trilogy is the three albums Bowie made, mostly in collaboration with Brian Eno and producer Tony Visconti, in the late 70s after his Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke phases.
That being said, I think Lodger is a worthwhile and underrated album in Bowie’s catalog, and a lot more interesting to discuss than some of his more immediately appealing albums (The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars and Hunky Dory come to mind). I think Lodger was both very much of its (post-punk) time, and very forward thinking. Honestly, I think any 2000s indie rock band with even a hint of world music in their bones (TV on the Radio, Dirty Projectors, etc) took their whole shit from tracks 4-10 of this bad boy.
Still, Lodger doesn’t feature any of Bowie’s “greatest hits” or classic rock radio mainstays, so it’s a difficult entry point for someone who may only know Bowie from, say, “Changes” or “I’m Afraid of Americans” or the “Lets Dance” hits
Another thing that makes it difficult in my mind is that it leads with what are probably its two most difficult tracks.
What were your initial thoughts?
Tyler: I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. “Fantastic Voyage” sounded both familiar and strange. At first, I thought perhaps I was getting something that’d be comfortable on Hunky Dory, the only Bowie compact disc I ever owned. Then it took a cold left turn about enduring somebody’s depression.
Travis: “Fantastic Voyage” is interesting to me in context with the other two Berlin albums. Low and Heroes are both divided, by side, into “digestible” songs on side A, and more ambient/post-rockish instrumentals on side B. To me it sounds like one of the instrumentals from the first two but forced into being a pop song with vocals. I’m not sure it entirely works.
it’s also mostly a Bowie/Eno joint without as much collaboration from Bowie’s backing band at the time, the DAM trio (Dennis Davis, Carlos Alomar, guitar; George Murray, bass). I don’t think Alomar plays on it at all and his guitar is missed.
neither “Fantastic Voyage” nor “African Night Flight” are among my favorite tracks on the album. It’s almost a purposefully difficult start.
Tyler: “African Night Flight,” man.
From the opening effect through the clatter into Bowie’s affected quick-singing, it is one bizarre track, and that describes only the first forty seconds.
I’ll tell you, though, for as queasy as all the arranged discord leaves me, I also find something about it irresistible.
Travis: there is something about it that feels like a couple of masters at the top of their game fucking around and seeing what happens, and it doesn’t all work but its surprising how much of it does, if that makes sense
Tyler: It does.
“Yassassin” has me. I cannot understand it.
Travis: I would say it’s too menacing to be a total reggae lark, like Led Zeppelin with “Dyer Maker”
but it also feels a bit like “let’s fuck around and make a reggae song and see what happens”
a thing that helps the delves into african/jamaican/american R&B from going off the rails is that backing band. The person that made “Fame” funky enough James Brown wanted to rip it off was Carlos Alomar, not David Bowie
Tyler: Thank you for bringing up “Fame.” I hear that sound in fits and starts throughout Lodger.
Travis: at this point Bowie had been working with the DAM trio for about five years (they came aboard for Young Americans, his blue eyed soul album that followed the end of his glam period). to me this backing band can do no wrong and they bring a lot of soul to what could be seen as very dissonant and robotic music
Tyler: “D.J.” is another song that makes me feel a little off, while absolutely entertaining me.
Travis: i think “DJ” is a banger. and that it doth slap
Tyler: Bop.
Travis: Alomar gets a cowriting credit on “DJ,” you can hear the “Fame”ness in it I think
Something else I think helps, especially with tracks 5-8 (“Red Sails,” “DJ,” “Look Back in Anger,” “Boys Keep Swinging”) is that even at his most out there, Bowie can’t help but write a hook
Tyler: So many hooks.
Travis: I also think he’s on top of his game as a singer on this album, particularly on that four song stretch. You can hear the guy who would go toe-to-toe with Freddie Mercury on “Under Pressure” on some of these choruses
Tyler: There’s a point toward the end of “Move On,” when DB is growling “I stumble like a blind man” and “Can’t forget you” when the guy sounds like Nilsson. To my ear, anyway. And that’s high praise.
Travis: That is high praise.
Tyler: Aside. Does “Look Back In Anger” have a greater British context? I feel like he’s flirting with social commentary throughout the album, while remaining elusively opaque.
Travis: there is a movie called Look Back in Anger with Richard Burton. The quintessential “angry young man” movie. I don’t know that the song is about it in any meaningful way. it’s a classic movie that bowie definitely would have grown up with
as for the lyrical content, I have trouble finding too much deep meaning in it. Knowing Eno, I think it’s just as likely the words are chosen because they sound good in the context of the song as to have any greater meaning. I honestly don’t know. Repetition is about domestic violence. “DJ” is about how DJs suck. Beyond that I’m not really sure?
Tyler: That’s a revealing observation. The sounds, the hooks, the flourishes—that’s where this record is at.
Travis: Are you familiar with Oblique Strategies?
Tyler: I am not.
Travis: it’s a set of cards with little prompts that eno made, to help with creativity. they’re phrases like “use an old idea” or “try it backwards”
they used those a lot in making the Berlin Trilogy
Tyler: Can’t lie, SMH. That’s pretty damn good.
Travis: Eno being a person for whom the process of making art was more important than the final result a lot of the time. like one of the things that happened on Lodger was the main backing musicians trying switching instruments, which led to Carlos Alomar playing drums on “Boys Keep Swinging” instead of guitar.
Tyler: Hm.
Travis: and the guitar solo, by adrian belew (of King Crimson) is buckwild
Tyler: Buckcherry buckwild?
Travis: now i’m imagining a bowie/eno take on “crazy bitch”
i am not sure where I’d rank Lodger in Bowie’s discography. it’s not my favorite album of his, or even my favorite of the berlin trilogy (that would be Low). It’s not his last great album (the next year’s Scary Monsters, sort of the last hurrah of this grouping, was also great, and Blackstar, his final album, was a real return to form, with Tony Visconti producing to boot).
Tyler: I enjoy the thing. I can’t say how frequently I’ll revisit it, because there is that underlying swirl leaving me off-kilter. But the songs have sunk into my head.
Blackstar’s that high up there?
Travis: i think bowie’s best is Ziggy Stardust. it’s a basic bitch opinion but i stand by it. but i think the whole period from 1969-1980 is worth exploring. let’s dance, while not a great album, has some bangers. and there are random songs throughout even the fallow 90s that were good.
“little wonder” from Earthling is a standout “Bowie does 90s alt rock/electronica mashup”
shall we wrap up, you think? any final observaions about the hit album Lodger?
Tyler: I’m surprised that it’s grown on me. That first listen left me cold.
Travis: something about listening to hidden gems like Lodger really appeals to me, because I can hear the roots of so much later music in it that it had felt to me came out of nowhere. I love hearing something old and being like “oh that’s where they got their whole shit from”
Tyler: I also enjoy hearing artists somehow turn their most whimsical asides into rock-solid work.
Travis: yes. a flex
Tyler: Aight aight
Travis: I think that’s all I got really. For readers, I guess, if Lodger hit the spot I’d go with Low next, and Bowie’s work with Iggy Pop, The Idiot and Lust for Life. If Lodger did not hit the spot but you want to try more Bowie, can’t go wrong with Ziggy Stardust.
If you don’t like David Bowie, go to hell!
Writers' Loom 