“WHITE LINES, BLACK MAGIC” David’s Dark Doings – And How He Escaped To Tell The Tale: David Bowie’s Station To Station and the “Berlin Trilogy”.

By Ian MacDonald. First published in Uncut Magazine, October, 1998. “I ran across a monster who was sleeping by a tree. And I looked and frowned and the monster was me” (David Bowie, “The Width Of A Circle”, 1971) EMI’s latest batch of mid-price Bowie reissues, discs released at full price in 1990-1, consists of the 1976-8 sequence, Station To Station, Low, “Heroes”, and Stage. It might have been truer to his career to have made a foursome of Low, “Heroes”, Stage and Lodger – the “Berlin Trilogy” plus their complimentary live album – and to have corralled Station To Station with his other “American” albums, David Live and Young Americans.