Seabrook goes too far beyond Bowie In Berlin

Capping off a book about Bowie in the seventies with a section about the influence of the music he made then makes sense. But naming the final chapter after a song from an album outside of the realm covered by said book is a sure sign that things will go too far.

The impression that I'm left with after finishing Bowie in Berlin is that Seabrook wanted to write a compendium about Bowie but was limited to a single era for a reason that remains a mystery. Branching out, as he does, into a swift overview of the rest of the twentieth century, strikes me as more than the necessary capstone about the influence of Bowie's 70s output.

Ultimately, because of this extended end point I'm left wanting to know more about Bowie in the seventies. What the musician got up to in the final two years of the decade might not have been music-related, but surely it would shed some light on Bowie's state during the music making of that era and the next.

Not to mention, cramming the remainder of Bowie's career up to the 2000s into less than 30 pages leaves it little room to breathe.

Though what I think Seabrook covers justifiably he covers well. With a definite lean towards the musical side of things rather than Bowie's life and practice more generally.

But still.

Thomas Jerome Seabrook's Bowie in Berlin is a good starting place for those interested enough in Bowie in the 70s to not mind the odd hole left for another source to fill.

Lodger left out

Something I'd been wondering after I realized that "Heroes" was the last album Seabrook would break down song-by-song was: "Why won't Lodger get the same treatment?"

Now I know that it does. Sort of. 

Pages 221 to 236 feature Seabrook's writing purely about Lodger. He goes over the album song-by-song and points out how it was received, how Bowie reacted to that, and the general impact that the album had. Just as he did for "Heroes", for Low - even for Iggy Pop's The Idiot.

Except Seabrook doesn't set his break down of Lodger apart from the book's regular text with headings and credits. 

Not doing so seems like an oversight to me. 

Maybe Seabrook didn't think he had enough material to justify giving Lodger the full treatment, or that there just wasn't enough to say about the songs themselves. So far, it sounds like he, along with the rest of the music critic world, doesn't regard Lodger very highly. Perhaps his not setting the album apart then, is a kind of snub. 

Whatever the reasoning behind this editorial choice, not giving Lodger equal treatment definitely throws off my notion that Low, Heroes, and Lodger form any kind of trilogy. Having mentioned the fact that many critics saw Lodger as an anticlimax after Low and "Heroes" on page 234, Seabrook is certainly asserting that the album does not fit with the previous two.

Seabrook hits a nerve writing of opening notes

Without having to worry about analyzing an album, Seabrook's writing about Bowie has markedly improved. Bowie in Berlin's third part is instead full of interesting facts and observations. It's the sort of narrative construction of a person's life that I genuinely enjoy reading.

And within that narrative, there's a welcome twist.

Bowie's bringing the violinist Simon House on for the "'Heroes'" tour is quite interesting to me. Not because I'm familiar with House's work, but because I've dabbled in playing the violin.

Throughout my self-tutelage I was always trying to figure out the opening riff to "Ziggy Stardust" by ear since I couldn't then (and still can't now) reliably read violin sheet music (or translate guitar tablatures). And what did House most remarkably do while on tour with Bowie? He played the opening riff to "Ziggy Stardust" on electric violin.

So now I just need to dig up a copy of Stage and try to work through it with an actual example. Any book that broadens your listening (or reading) like this is definitely a success.

But, not everyone is an amateur, self-taught violinist.

Obviously this is a very specific example of Seabrook's retelling of Bowie's life and music affecting me, but it still goes a long way to confirming my suspicion that without albums to focus on Seabrook's general attention to detail would increase. Sure, most biographers would likely include Bowie's bringing a violinist in for his tour, but only a handful would mention House's playing the opening of Ziggy Stardust with Seabrook's enthusiasm.

Seabrook gives his all for "Heroes"

Seabrook's build up to his song-by-song analysis of "Heroes" and said analysis are exactly what I was looking for.

There's trivia, there's Seabrook's standard in-depth look at all of the production that went into each song, and there's a reflection on how each of them contributes to the whole of the album. Everything is there. 

The only problem I have with this part of Bowie in Berlin, in fact, is that the rest of the book doesn't measure up. "Heroes" (the song and the album) being what they are, it's to be expected that the most attention be paid to it. But why deliver only what readers expect?

Seabrook's constant winking references to incidents given more page time in other works or that are already well known to fans of Bowie in earlier sections of the book are fine for those fans. But what about people for whom Bowie In Berlin is their initiation into the secret life of the man and his music? 

Surely things like Bowie's seeing Visconti and Antonia Maass smooching in the shadow of the Berlin wall and then integrating it into "'Heroes'" happened on Low and Station to Station.

Oddly enough the only comparably deep cut of information that Seabrook gives about another of the albums that he covers can be found in his analysis of Iggy Pop's "China Girl." Maybe "real" fans already knew about Iggy's affair with Jacques Higelin's then girlfriend Kuelan Nguyen and how it inspired that song.

But again, why isn't there more there and in his writing about the other albums?

The worst part of this inconsistency in coverage is that it looks like it will continue to the end of the book.

Heroes is the last album that Seabrook gives the song-by-song treatment to. Perhaps, though, with his attention turned from musical analysis, more of it will be paid to illuminating just what in the world was going on with David Bowie as he moved on to Lodger and beyond.

Why is there so much Iggy Pop in this Bowie book?

If Seabrook has established one thing about Bowie's life in the 70s, it's that Iggy Pop was a substantial part of it. He's written about Bowie's working to bring Pop's career back on track and already gave his 1976 album, The Idiot, the old song-by-song Seabrook treatment.

Now here comes Thomas Jerome again, because Iggy's put out a Lust for Life.

What's strange about Seabrook's writing about this album though is that he has a great deal less to say about it.

On one hand, based on the context that Seabrook builds for the album, his dearth of commentary could just be because there really isn't much to say about Lust for Life.

Having given it a listen as I read his track-by-track write up, I can say myself that there's not much to it. Maybe I've not listened to enough pop albums lately, but it definitely sounds like it's an eclectic mix of styles with very little direction.

On the other, I'm not convinced that, however trite, there's as little to say about something like Lust for Life as Seabrook claims. Any work of art is open for analysis of any depth. Though, if I'm reading the implication properly, I do agree with Seabrook in saying that Lust for Life as a whole isn't that artistic. Measured against The Idiot specifically and other albums in general.

My biggest problem with this part of Bowie in Berlin though is that it doesn't seem justified.

Within the context of a book about Bowie, I feel like Seabrook just doesn't give enough attention to what Bowie did on Lust for Life. Crediting him to vocals or instruments in the headings to his write ups is one thing, but it's definitely not enough to merit a whole section about the album.

The Idiot is much more clearly a collaborative effort.

At best, it seems that on Lust for Life Bowie was just plonking away (very artfully, of course) on this or that instrument. And plonking's just not deserving of the full write up that Seabrook attempts.

Seabrook on Low

Reading Seabrook's in-depth analysis of Low, and of the situations surrounding its creation leaves me feeling like I should pick up the violin again.

Reading about Bowie's particular methods for putting his albums together and realizing just how much thought and consideration went into it along with how much improvisation and spontaneity makes it seem, paradoxically, like music theory isn't really needed.

Though talent definitely is.

Talent and technical know how. I never knew there were so many different synthesizers and loopers and devices involved in the album's production. Or that so many were even in existence in the 1970s.

Aside from opening up the world of music producing for me, reading so much of Seabrook's analysis of an album I'm fairly familiar with made me realize that music is the only thing that can be criticized and written of in a technical fashion simultaneously while still appealing to a popular audience.

If book reviewers wrote about how an author uses the subjunctive mood or subordinate clauses, or Oxford commas, most readers would not get much out of their reviews.

Similarly, if video game reviewers included details about the programming language and techniques that a company used to make their game in their reviews most gamers might be intrigued but would likely regard that discussion as irrelevant.

Music (and art, to some degree) is the only thing in which popular criticism can involve technical language that is directly about its subject's creation. What's more, I think including that technical speak does increase the enjoyment of what's being criticized.

Reading Seabrook's song by song breakdown while listening to Low definitely made some things I'd missed much more apparent (like the funeral bell in "Warszawa"). At the same time, though, a little more conviction in his linking the characteristics of Low to Bowie's point and life would be appreciated.

Thomas Jerome Seabrook: Writing (mostly) rightly about music

Thomas Jerome Seabrook must've just chosen his words poorly when he used "blistering" to describe Bowie's "Stay." I've now read a better sample of his writing about music, having gone through his song-by-song break down of Iggy Pop's The Idiot. 

Yet, I find Seabrook's adjectival descriptions of the songs to be a strange thing in print. For some reason, I have an easier time imagining them being spoken by a music critic sitting at a piano or keyboard in a documentary than reading them on a page.

Maybe this disconnect exists for me because I never learned to read music, and so in reading about it I just don't make the connections between the adjectives and their precise meaning. In the case of a documentary, just what a critic means can be demonstrated on whatever basic instrument they have to hand.

I find Seabrook's name dropping to be quite a bit more helpful. Even his categorizing of the songs on The Idiot into genres that I know little about, like Industrial, is evocative for me. Much more so than drumming being described as "taut" or bass chords as "brash" (90).

Apparently, Seabrook does a similar breakdown for Bowie's Berlin trilogy, so I'm looking forward to reading all about what influenced Low, Heroes, and Lodger. Not to mention about the essential intrigues and trivia surrounding them. That is, as long as Seabrook continues to follow his pattern of describing Bowie's situation, who he's with and their relationship, and then working through an album.

Bowie the "pseudo-intellectual"

It's hard to read David Bowie's "Stay" described as "blistering" after you've listened to metal. I don't doubt that the guitar parts of "Stay" are demanding or difficult, but they're just not that fast. And that's what I take "blistering" to mean when it's used to describe music.

Though, I think that that's the problem when it comes to writing about music. Unless you're writing for a group of people that have listened to the same things that you have. Music is just too subjective to write about with precision.

Thankfully, though, Seabrook's veered away from music writing over the last few pages. He's come at last to Bowie's moving to Berlin. In doing so he's started to get more into Bowie's character and personality at the time. Reading that Bowie's bandleader Carlos Alomar described him as "a pseudo-intellectual" (70) definitely puts a different spin on my listening to Bowie's stuff.

Not that it takes anything away from it, but rather, it forces me to consider just how creativity works.

Seabrook does mention that Bowie would always have books with him. Though from Seabrook's description Bowie rarely studied much in depth. Such a broad interest and his "near-constant desire to grow and change" (70) lead me to believe that Bowie's creative process involves aggregating information and putting it through his own personal filter.

If this process can make things like David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Diamond Dogs that's fine with me. Even if "blistering" isn't a great word to describe any of Bowie's work.

Bowie's works over Bowie himself

Well, he's not there yet, but Bowie is just about on his way back to Europe in Bowie in Berlin.

As I read onward I'm still distracted by the book's physical form. The pages are just too chunky and stiff for their own good.

As per the book's content over the last 20 pages, Seabrook has varied it greatly. It's all centered around Bowie, of course, but it orbits him rather than focuses on him.

In the past when I've read books about musicians (most notably The Real Frank Zappa Book) there have been anecdotes and name drops galore. But what I'm finding to be unique to Seabrook is an approach that focuses less than on the musician himself and more on his creative endeavours.

Of course, the book is much less a biography than a book about such endeavours, but it's still bothersome how ephemeral Bowie seems to it all. Seabrook foregrounds his works, generally giving a paragraph or two of information about them, but has Bowie himself relegated to the background.

With the manifold biographies of the music icon out, Seabrook's understanding is undoubtedly that his readers will have already read at least a few of them. Having read none of them, however, I can't help but feel like his nods and winks to major moments in Bowie's career are just as substantial as said gestures.

But, things have left Station to Station and the book's nearly up to Bowie's return to Europe. And if Seabrook's tendencies to concentrate on Bowie's creative output rather than the man himself is any indication, the attention that Seabrook gives to the Berlin Trilogy will be riveting. Once that's finally reached.

A new post for a new book

If Bowie in Berlin: A New Career in a New Town is indicative of Jaw Bone Press's usual practices, they make very blocky books. And on a peculiarly stiff paper stock. Each page feels weirdly solid, as if it's a couple of more standard pages pressed together.

As a whole, this 272 page book feels unwieldy. Especially if you're holding it while reading and trying to not bend its spine.

Thankfully, this is a book about David Bowie.

Specifically, how his time spent in Berlin changed his career for the better. At least, that's the sense that I'm getting from the opening 40 pages. So far I've read about Bowie's becoming deeply addicted to cocaine, his growing obsession with the occult, and what sounds like a mental break from reality that resulted from the combination of the two.

Thomas Jerome Seabrook keeps foreshadowing what's to come, though. Things like why Iggy Pop didn't return to Hollywood's Oz Studio after one day of recording with Bowie in 1975, and what makes Bowie's Berlin Trilogy of albums such a critical success.

Much has been promised, and it's looking like Seabrook will deliver.

At the very least, Bowie's crazed obsession with the occult does help explain just what he was doing in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Even if that movie appearance was nearly 20 years later.