Bowie in Berlin Documentary (BBC, 2024)

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How David Bowie saved his life and career in 1970s Berlin. Bowie had become a superstar by creating musical characters. Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke were alter egos through which he could tell stories. They helped him achieve global fame and wealth, and yet by 1976 his notorious excess had become the cause of his deep depression. Living in Los Angeles, addicted to cocaine and financially broke, he was feeling artistically washed-up and suicidal. David Bowie stood at a crossroads: become yet another rock ‘n roll casualty or face his demons.

“I started getting very very worried for my life and just had to get myself out of that situation….so I ended up in Berlin”

In 1976, moving to the epicentre of the Cold War more than saved his life and career. It allowed him to rediscover his youthful creative passions for art and literature, and – as one of the most famous people on the planet – to hide in plain sight. Dressed in simple check shirt and jeans, Bowie enjoyed relative anonymity on the streets of Berlin. With Iggy Pop as his flatmate, he lived in a cheap apartment in a working-class district of the city. And in Hansa Studios, alongside musical collaborator Brian Eno and producer Tony Visconti, he began one the most artistically ambitious periods of entire career, honing a completely new sound with the albums Low and Heroes.

For many years his time in Berlin between 1976 and 1978 has been mythologised and romanticised by writers, filmmakers, critics and by Bowie himself. There’s no footage of Bowie in Berlin and very few photographs. But now documentary filmmaker Francis Whately reveals what really happened thanks to the testimonies of three women who knew Bowie intimately, all talking publicly about their relationships with him for the first time. Artist and former RSC actor Clare Shenstone, performer and legendary nightclub owner Romy Haag, and former journalist Sarah-Rena Hine all shared time with him in Berlin. Exclusive interviews with these remarkable muses, alongside other first-hand witnesses and a cache of previously unheard archive interviews, help tell a completely new story. Bowie In Berlin reveals how he drew upon the history, culture and anonymity of the German city to recuperate and regenerate.

Over those Cold War months of rain and beer, cycle-rides and cigarettes, Bowie wrenched himself from his past and thrust himself towards the future. For the first time we can hear how, in Berlin, David Bowie reinvented himself…as himself.

Writer and presenter: Francis Whately
Producer: John Wilson
A Blackstar production for BBC Radio 4
Interviewees: Clare Shenstone, Romy Haag, Sarah-Rena Hine, Esther Freidman, Michael Rother, Tony Visconti, Earl Slick, Carlos Alomar.
Archive: David Bowie, Iggy Pop