David Bowie 2017-10-07 BBC World Service – David Bowie’s “Heroes” 40th Anniversary (with Florence Welch)
Sound Quality Rating
“Florence Welch, from the British band Florence + The Machine, marks the 40th anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s seminal “Heroes” LP by exploring the personal and musical factors that influenced the album’s writing and recording in Berlin in 1977.
Florence will feature an archive of the late David Bowie explaining why he chose to live and work in Berlin and the impact the city’s history had on the masterpiece he created. She’ll also meet the album’s producer Tony Visconti to get an insight to the unique recording techniques he employed to interpret Bowie’s creative vision and how the characteristics of the famous Hansa Studios, which are situated in a huge former chamber music concert hall, contributed to the album’s influential sounds. Iggy Pop, who was living with Bowie in Berlin during the recording of the album, recalls how a battle with drug addiction, bankruptcy and a legal dispute with his ex-wife for access to his son all provided inspiration for the album’s lyrics and Brian Eno, who collaborated with David throughout the LP’s recording, explains the unique musical structures he and David employed to compose the innovative songs.
Berlin’s radical cultural diversity had always fascinated Bowie and Florence will explain how the opportunity to live and work in the city during the turbulent political period prior to the fall of “the Wall” provided the perfect austere environment for David and his collaborators to experiment with music inspired by several German techno bands of the 70’s, including Neu!, Kraftwerk and Can.”
A bit shoddy in parts – Florence Welch didn’t seem to have done very much fact-checking – but worth a listen all the same for the sake of the… parts which aren’t spoken by her. There were even spelling errors in the Beeb’s iPlayer description – corrected as many as I found!
Label : No label
Audio Source : Broadcast BBC World Service
Lineage : BBC iPlayer > Audio Hijack > FLAC
Taper: Diedrich
Total running time : 0:53:02
Sound Quality : Excellent quality! Equals record or radio
Artwork : None
