| "Neuköln" | |
|---|---|
| Instrumental by David Bowie | |
| from the album "Heroes" | |
| Released | 14 October 1977 |
| Recorded | July–August 1977 |
| Studio | Hansa Studio by the Wall, West Berlin |
| Genre | Ambient |
| Length | 4:34 |
| Label | RCA |
| Songwriter(s) | David Bowie, Brian Eno |
| Producer(s) | David Bowie, Tony Visconti |
"Neuköln" is an instrumental piece written by David Bowie and Brian Eno in 1977 for the album Heroes. It was the last of three consecutive instrumentals on side two of the original vinyl album, following "Sense of Doubt" and "Moss Garden".
Neukölln (correctly spelled with a double "L"[1]) is both a borough and quarter of Berlin. Bowie's and Eno's music has been interpreted as reflecting in part the rootlessness of the Turkish immigrants who made up a large proportion of the district's population.[2] Edgar Froese, founder of Tangerine Dream, in whose Schöneberg apartment Bowie lived between 1976 and 1978,[3][4] had been a big influence on Bowie, and one of the driving factors that enticed him to move to Berlin. Bowie called Froese's 1975 album Epsilon in Malaysian Pale, which, like "Neuköln", utilized the Mellotron, a "soundtrack to his life in Berlin".[5][6][7]
NME journalists Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray described "Neuköln" as a "mood piece" for the "Cold War viewed through a bubble of blood or Harry Lime's last thoughts as he dies in the sewer in The Third Man".[3] The final section features Bowie's plaintive saxophone "booming out across a harbour of solitude, as if lost in fog".[2]
The main character Christiane from the film Christiane F., starring David Bowie as himself, is from Gropiusstadt in the south of the Neukölln borough. Bowie produced the Christiane F. soundtrack, which gave the film a commercial boost in Germany and abroad.
Bowie's and Eno's "Neuköln" was later reworked for orchestra by Philip Glass as the fifth movement of his Symphony No. 4 – Heroes (1996). It also inspired the fusion jazz diptych Neuköln (Day) and Neuköln (Night) by Dylan Howe (2007/14).
