The Record That Changed My Life: Ian Astbury on David Bowie – Low (1977)

It was on Canadian radio where I heard songs from Low for the very first time, that was in 1977. The older brother of a friend owned a copy of the record, it had just been released. I remember how especially the instrumental tracks struck me. They felt almost plastic, like a landscape that as a teenager I had never walked before, let alone explored, even though I had been a Bowie fan for a couple of years by then. To put it in somewhat drastic words: when I was ten years old, Bowie had cracked open my skull and put an esoteric light in it. I had been addicted to him for a very long time. Still, Low was an escalation- leave alone the fact that the album would influence many of my later heroes like Ian Curtis from Joy Divison (their album Closer would have been my second choice here).

My relation to Low is deep and personal, but the general value of the album is also immense: Even after all these years, I keep noticing how much Low influences rock music. The legacy of the record is growing permanently. And one shouldn’t forget that Brian Eno‘s involvement on the album was essential – Bowie didn’t do the magic alone on these sensual songs, from which at the same time experience- if not wisdom- radiates. Low made it possible for me to escape. And it presented Berlin as a place of many possibilities to me, as a fortress of the muse and high culture. Many years later I went through turbulent times in my private life. Low was reliably there for me. It made me hold on.

by Ian Astbury