Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

where you could see gun turrets, with foreign
soldiers looking at us with binoculars.’
The tiny crew included Alomar, Dennis Davis,
George Murray and Visconti, all of whom would get a
taxi in from the Schlosshotel Gerhus every lunchtime.
According to the producer, one factor in getting the
album done quickly was that ‘David was paying my
hotel bills – so he didn’t want to waste time.’ The
musicians would therefore work ‘an intense eighthour
day, from 12 till 8, and then hit the Berlin clubs’,
says Visconti. Brian Eno stayed at Hauptstrasse, at
least some of the time. Iggy often entertained
listeners with a hilarious description of Eno’s
girlfriend handcuffed to a radiator, a superlative
example of art-school sophistication which
impressed the posterboy of rock ‘n’ roll excess,
although sadly it’s doubtful Eno had the leisure time
for such pursuits. Eno loved the ambience; Carlos
Alomar was less impressed: ‘The hotels were, for an
American, very old European, too many back
staircases. My first impression of German men was
that they were pigs. They ate a lot of pork, they
looked a certain way and when it came to treating
their women I was appalled … maybe it was an age
thing, but the overall German experience for me was
very “this sucks”.’
The difference in atmosphere between the
Château and Hansa, sensed by Alomar and the
rhythm section, had its effect from the moment the
backing tracks went down. Last time around, the
beats were funky, spritely; here, four-square rhythms
give a solid, dogmatic rock feel, more evocative of