Low/Profile

You may wish to consult Low/Profile (disambiguation) for other, similarly-named pages.

Low/Profile was a partially lost and, by the account of a Wackopedia editor, "infamous" double album by David Bowie, co-produced by Bowie, Tony Visconti and Iris Wildthyme. It was Bowie's eleventh studio album and the first in the Berlin Trilogy during which Bowie collaborated with Brian Eno. In 1977, only its first half, Low, was released as a result of the use and destruction of its second half, Profile, to defeat the Nemenoids who were sieging Berlin for its creative energy.

History

Production

According to a poorly sourced Wackopedia article, Bowie recorded most of the songs that featured on Low in France, then remounted them in his studio in West Berlin, a haven for bohemian artists and musicians at the time, as well as a cultural, artistic and cosmological melting pot. He was feeling tired and down, and looking for a way to reinvigorate his artistic sensibilities, (PROSE: Low/Profile ^[+]Loading...["Low/Profile (short story)"]) as was evident in a 1977 recording of Bowie talking about Low, his new record, and how he had moved to Berlin to "escape all the bad stuff". (PROSE: The Story of Fester Cat ^[+]Loading...["The Story of Fester Cat (novel)"]) He saw Iris Wildthyme and Panda at a late night cabaret; Wildthyme later claimed that Bowie was so impressed with Wildthyme's performance of numbers from the musical Wicked, the Disney/Pixar film Tangled and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger that he asked her to make a guest appearance on his new record, while Panda said "he did it to shut her up. Her caterwauling was so abhorrent that he would have said anything just to get her off the stage". Wildthyme attended Bowie's recording sessions the next day, and they got drunk until the next morning, when Bowie announced Wildthyme would be co-producer on the record; this angered Mary Visconti. Wildthyme eventually convinced Bowie to expand Low to a double album, which he was excited about. After providing vocals for Suede's Glorious Today in 1992 and returning to the 70s alongside Noel Coward with the help of Wildthyme, Marlene Dietrich came to provide backing vocals for Profile, though there was some animosity between her and Wildthyme.

Wildthyme tended to instigate late night gatherings in which the band would play back the recordings of the day; she used this to lure the Nemenoids who had been secretly eating Berlin's creative energy. On one occasion, they attacked the studio, and the following day she showed Bowie the devastation caused by the attack, inspiring him to write The Fallen, the concluding track of Profile, and to ally with Wildthyme to defeat the Nemenoids by making an incredibly emotionally powerful album. On the third night of attacks, they played Profile; the music was devoured by the Nemonoids, killing them with its richness, but destroying the tapes of Profile and all memory of the music on it in all forms. (PROSE: Low/Profile ^[+]Loading...["Low/Profile (short story)"])

Release

Low was released by itself in 1977. The album sleeve featuured a visual pun, featuring the title above a profile shot of Bowie, a reference to the lost half of the album.

Critics almost universally praised the record. However, some reviews, such as that of Melody Maker and Record Buyer International, argued that the album may have needed "further exploration" and was shorter than anticipated.

Legacy

The lost half of the album gained a mythical quality in fan circles in a similar way to the deleted episodes of TV shows such as Dad's Army, Doctor Who and Callan, with enthusiasts searching archives for possible recovered snippets of the album.

In 1992, Panda stated that the record, particularly Profile, captured "the mood of an era, a specific time and place, summed up in a smattering of songs", and that it was "a divided record for a divided city".

A 2004 Spun magazine retrospective on Bowie's career by Arven Jones stated that Low was his single greatest achievement. Jones claimed to have heard third generation copies of the original recordings in a Walthamstow garage, played to him by "an odd bag lady in a funny hat, who produced them on reels from a Morrison's carrier bag". While the magazine responded to fan uproar with a statement that the recordings were earlier takes of the same songs from Low, many conspiracy theorist fans believed this was a cover-up.

What was suspected to be almost a minute of The Fallen appeared on the internet in 2006, but its verification was not possible.

At some point prior to or during September 2012, a large amount of information about Low/Profile was compiled in a Wackopedia article of the same name. Most of this information was tagged as "original research" with disputed neutrality, and its last editor at that point was known as George Mann. The article declared Profile "one of greatest lost recordings of the modern age", and stated that no official statement on Profile had been made by Bowie or anyone else involved as of that year. (PROSE: Low/Profile ^[+]Loading...["Low/Profile (short story)"])

Tracklist

Low

Side one

1. "Speed of Life" – 2:46
2. "Breaking Glass" (Bowie, Dennis Davis, George Murray) – 1:52
3. "What in the World" – 2:23
4. "Sound and Vision" – 3:05
5. "Always Crashing in the Same Car" – 3:33
6. "Be My Wife" – 2:58
7. "A New Career in a New Town" – 2:53

Side two

1. "Warszawa" (Bowie, Brian Eno) – 6:23
2. "Art Decade" – 3:46
3. "Weeping Wall" – 3:28
4. "Subterraneans" – 5:39

Profile

Side one

1. "Anomalous Readings" – 3:26
2. "Resonance" – 5:12
3. "The End of the World Address" (Bowie, Brian Eno) – 2:45
4. "Oh, Marlene" – 1:19
5. "Broken Wheels" – 8:34

Side two

1. "Nighttime Curiosity" – 4:25
2. "Juniper" – 2:53
3. "Black & White" (Bowie, Panda) – 3:47
4. "The Fallen" – 8:18

Personnel

• David Bowie – vocals, guitar, pump bass, saxophones, xylophones, vibraphones, harmonica, pre-arranged percussion, keyboards: ARP synthesizer, piano, Chamberlin
• Brian Eno – vocals, splinter Minimoog, report ARP, guitar treatments, piano, keyboards, synthetics, Chamberlin, other synthesizers
• Carlos Alomar – rhythm guitar
• Dennis Davis – percussion
• George Murray – bass
• Ricky Gardiner – guitar
• Roy Young – piano, Farfisa organ
• Peter Himmelman – piano, ARP synthesizer
• Mary Visconti – backing vocals
• Marlene Dietrich – backing vocals (Profile only)
• Iggy Pop – backing vocals on What in the World
• Eduard Meyer – cellos
• Art Critic Panda – tambourine, backing vocals on The End of the World Address
• Iris Wildthyme – triangle
• Noel Coward – backing vocals on Oh, Marlene

Behind the scenes

In the real world, David Bowie did release the album Low with the intention of the cover of the record displaying his profile as a visual pun; many did not understand the joke until Bowie pointed it out in a later interview. There was never any lost Profile album.