Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

As David made his way down the steep stairway
that led from the control room, there was a sudden
thud, followed by a series of bumps, as he bounced
down the wooden steps. The musicians all crowded
around to check on their singer, sprawled in a heap
on the floor below – all, that is, except for Roy Young.
‘I hid under my piano,’ he says, ‘petrified.’ The next
morning David pulled up his shirt to reveal dark red
weals all the way up his skinny ribcage; the
spectacle was accompanied by Visconti’s warning
that if another gin and tonic made its way into the
control room, Young would be on the next plane
home.
The lack of a clear outcome to these experiments
was confusing, but at its heart was a simple, intuitive,
brilliant leap forward. David’s intentions on the album
that would become Low was to combine the glacial
electronic instrumentation that he’d heard on
Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream records, and
combine them with a boisterous, vibrant R&B rhythm
section. In sonic terms, the result was heavily
influenced by Neu!, the band founded by Kraftwerk
refugee Klaus Dinger – the harmonised, resonant
guitar lines of Neu! songs like ‘Seeland’, from their
last great album, Neu 75, have echoes throughout
Low, and “Heroes”, too. But where Dinger’s
drumming was static, a metronomic pulse, Dennis
Davis’ spirit and energy drives the first half of Low
ever onward.
A restless improviser, who worked in parallel with
Roy Ayers throughout much of his time with Bowie,
Davis was as obsessed with the recording process