100 Records that Shook The World, #28

"There's oodles of pain in the Low album. That was my first attempt to kick cocaine, so that was an awful lot of pain. And I moved to Berlin to do it. I moved out of the coke center of the world into the smack center of the world. Thankfully, I didn't have a feeling for smack, so it wasn't a threat."

It was intended to be the soundtrack for Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth, but Roeg preferred something more acoustic and folky. No matter. Bowie was kicking coke for the first time, recording in Paris with Tony Visconti producing, Brian Eno collaborating, and exploring the sounds of all those wonderful Krautrockers like Can, Neu! and Kraftwerk, all the while battling his former manager in court. The front cover, showing Bowie in profile under the word Low (a still from Man Who Fell To Earth),  was a deliberate pun about keeping a low profile. 


The end result was one of the most influential albums of the 70s, featuring the wonderful single Sound And Vision.


Enjoy.