David Bowie

Station to Station

David Bowie's career wasn't quite in a holding pattern in 1976, but he hadn't done anything truly monumental since 1973 with Aladdin Sane. However, the marginal interim period was brought to an end 30 years ago this week with the release of Station to Station, when the man formerly known as David Jones set aside his ostentatious glam aspirations and embraced the possibilities of the avant-garde and experimental.

Station to Station was the predecessor to Bowie's storied Berlin Trilogy, when he holed up in Germany with ambient musician Brian Eno, did tons of blow and released three of the best albums of his career: Low,

"Heroes" and Lodger.

It makes sense that Bowie would have turned to a strong collaborator, as his former guitarist and songwriter, Mick Ronson, had departed the band in 1974, and it's clear that it took Bowie a few albums to fully get over Ronson's departure.

The album's opening title track -- still the longest in Bowie's career, at more than 10 minutes -- contains the genesis of a new Bowie persona -- the Thin White Duke -- that would last him through the rest of his most creative days. Immediately, the blue-eyed soul of "Young Americans" was cast aside as a one-time diversion, as Bowie took off in a new direction, embracing the avant-garde, yet staying within the realm of the detached hipster cool that made him so enjoyable and accessible.

While there's nothing overtly mind-blowing about Station to Station, especially in comparison to some of Bowie's other work, there are plenty of brilliant touches, such as the off-kilter yet gorgeous "Word on a Wing," which approaches a sort of transcendental pop plateau as closely as one can without landing squarely on it.

So even though it's not at the absolute top of the Bowie heap, Station to Station is one of the recordings that most clearly encapsulates what he was about -- always reaching for something new, testing to see what was around the corner, be it hit or miss.

None of the songs are staggeringly great individually, but the album is the epitome of the clich? that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts -- it's truly an overall experience, rather than a song--based album, and was the perfect stepping stone into one of the most interesting creative periods of any artist in the 1970s.
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